“We wanted a restaurant where you could watch dinner get made — no doors between the kitchen and the room, just the fire doing what fire does.”
Mara and Tomas met working the line at two different restaurants in the same neighborhood, and spent three years talking about the place they'd open together before they finally signed a lease on Alder Row. The hearth came first — everything else, including the forty seats, got built around it.
Tomas runs the fire most nights; Mara runs the room. Between them, there's rarely a table that doesn't get a visit before dessert.
No gas range in the building — everything on the menu passes over the same oak coals, from the bread to the dessert custard, torched to order.
Produce comes from three farms within twenty miles; the menu changes when what's good changes, not on a fixed seasonal schedule.
The dining room on a Friday night