Mara Ellison
Chef & co-founder
Fire cook, menu writer, keeper of the sourdough starter (est. 2014).
Our story
A foundry, a hearth, a decade of fire.
Ember & Oak opened in 2016 inside a disused iron foundry on Foundry Lane. We kept the brick, the beams and the name of the street — and built everything else around a single oak-burning hearth.
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2016 — First lighting
Mara Ellison and Dev Okafor, veterans of two of the city's best kitchens, sign the foundry lease and light the hearth for the first time. Opening menu: eleven dishes, all fire.
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2019 — The dining room grows up
We add the hearth counter — eight seats facing the flames — and launch the seven-course tasting. It sells out its first month and never really stops.
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2022 — Farm, formally
We put down roots with three Willamette Valley farms on whole-season contracts — the reason ninety percent of the plate now travels under a hundred miles.
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Today — Ten years in
Same fire, bigger family: twenty-two cooks, servers and bakers, a bread program of our own, and a dining room that still smells faintly of oak smoke.
The people
Hands that tend the fire.
Dev Okafor
Chef & co-founder
Runs the hearth and the tasting menu; obsessed with live-fire vegetables.
The hearth crew
Nine line cooks
Trained in-house on fire management before they ever plate a dish.
June Park
Head of bread & dessert
Bakes every loaf in the hearth; her budino has a small local fan club.
What we stand by.
- Fire first.No gas burners, no shortcuts. Constraint is the whole cuisine.
- Near & known.Season contracts with named farms; the menu credits them by name.
- Everyone's table.Vegetarian and vegan tastings every night; allergies handled with care, not sighs.