Ember & Salt PDX — Woodfire Tasting, Twelve Courses, Portland

Woodfire & fermentation — Portland 40 miles

Twelve courses. Fourteen seats. One oak kiln.

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Twelve courses◆ Within forty miles◆ Oak woodfire◆ Natural pairings◆ House fermentation◆ Twelve courses◆ Within forty miles◆ Oak woodfire◆ Natural pairings◆ House fermentation◆

The menu — dinner in five courses

Five plates land. Scroll to serve.

A tasting menu means the kitchen decides the order — small plates, eaten in sequence. Each course sticks while the next lands on top; two ask you to choose.

Course I / V

Ember

Sight — served in firelight

White oak from the valley floor. The room goes dark before the first plate lands.

Ingredients withheld

Course II / V

Garden

Smell — crushed herbs

Sauvie Island greens, picked at dawn and dead by dinner. No menu survives them.

Ingredients withheld

Course IV / V

Lake or Land

Taste — you decide

Columbia River against Willamette pasture. Two plates leave the kiln; one reaches you.

Choose one

Course VI / V

Hands or Spoon

Touch — you decide

One course is eaten with hands, the other forgives cutlery. Both embarrass the tablecloth.

Choose one

Course XI / V

Sweet Smoke

Taste — bitter cocoa

Hood River stone fruit under burnt caramel. The lights come up slowly.

Ingredients withheld

Box office — your menu

Two choices outstanding (0/2). The kiln waits.

Next service —

Request a table → The full evening

Scroll — the plate assembles

Course VII

The fire

Ember

White oak at four hundred degrees, laid at four in the afternoon. Nothing hurried, nothing forced — the kiln sets the schedule, not us.

Smoke

Leeks sleep in ash for forty minutes while the room goes quiet. Day-fourteen kraut comes out of crock seven.

III

Season

House miso aged eleven months, hot honey from the roof hives, lemon ash — weighed to the gram, never poured.

Plate

It lands heavy and it is eaten fast. Twelve courses, about three hours, no intermission. That is the whole contract.

The chef

One room, one kiln, fourteen seats.

By day a neighbourhood room; by night a fourteen-seat counter around a single oak kiln. Twelve courses, forty miles, one fire — fermentation as science, smoke as punctuation.

Mara cooked eleven years in other people's kitchens — Copenhagen, San Sebastián, a smokehouse outside Austin — before building her own fire. The back wall is crocks: fourteen of them, one per seat.

est. 2019

Read her letter →

Mara Okafor — Chef & Founder

“The kiln decides. I just translate.”

EMBER&SALT

Five plates land. Scroll to serve.

Ember

Garden

Lake or Land

Hands or Spoon

Sweet Smoke

Ember

Smoke

Season

Plate

One room, one kiln, fourteen seats.