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Twelve years of cooking with fire.

How a fourteen-seat counter became a Brooklyn institution, and why we still build the fire by hand every afternoon at three.

The Beginning

It started with a borrowed kitchen.

In 2014, chef Marisol Reyes returned home to Brooklyn after a year staging through the Basque country and Tuscany. She had a notebook full of recipes, a battered set of knives, and one strong conviction: cooking food over real fire was not a trend. It was the whole point.

The first incarnation of Ember & Oak was a fourteen-seat counter inside a friend's wine bar on Nostrand Avenue. Marisol cooked the entire menu off a single wood-burning grill she'd hauled across three boroughs. Three nights a week, fully booked by the second month.

By 2017 we'd outgrown the counter and moved into our current home on Linden, a former leather workshop with twenty-foot ceilings and a hearth we built ourselves over six weekends. The fire has not gone out since.

Est.
2014

The Philosophy

Three principles, written on the wall.

One. We cook over fire because nothing else tastes like it. Gas is for boiling water. Induction belongs in the kitchen at home. Charcoal and oak make a difference you can taste before you've even started chewing.

Two. We name the farm of every protein and most of the produce on the menu. If we can't name where it came from, it stays off the plate. Our sourcing radius is fifty miles. Our growers are on a first-name basis.

Three. Hospitality is the whole job. Cooking is the easy part. Three quarters of our team has been here three years or more, and the dining room runs on the assumption that you came in to feel taken care of, not just fed.

What We Believe

The values we cook by.

Fire First

The hearth is the only heat source for proteins. The wood is split twice a week from a single farm in the Hudson Valley. We rotate oak and cherry through the season.

Local, Always

Every ingredient travels less than fifty miles to reach our kitchen. We've been buying from the same five farms for over six years. Their names are on the menu.

Hospitality, Earned

A dining room is only as warm as the team running it. We pay above market, share tips evenly, and close on Mondays so everyone has a real weekend.

The Chef

Marisol Reyes, chef and owner.

Marisol grew up in Brooklyn cooking alongside her grandmother, learned French technique at the Institute of Culinary Education, and spent her formative years in the kitchens of Etxebarri, Pujol, and Hartwood. She returned to Brooklyn in 2014 and never looked at a gas stove the same way again.

Her cooking has been recognized by the James Beard Foundation, the New York Times, and Eater. She still writes the menu by hand every Tuesday morning, still builds the fire at three in the afternoon, and still works the pass on every service.

She lives in Bed-Stuy with her partner, two rescue dogs, and a chest freezer full of stocks she won't let anyone else touch.

Marisol Reyes Chef & Owner, est. 2014

James
Beard
Nominee

Visit Us

Come sit by the fire.

Counter seats around the hearth book up first. Reserve early for the best view of the kitchen.

Book a Table See the Menu