There is one fire in this building and nearly everything you eat here has been near it. People ask whether that is a style. It is closer to a constraint. We chose it because of what it takes away.
Why wood
A wood fire cannot be set to a number. It has a hot side and a cool side, a morning and an evening, good days and sulky ones. A cook who works over it has to look at the food, not at a dial. That attention is most of what you taste.
The rest is the fire itself. Fat drips, smoke rises, the surface of a thing dries and darkens while the middle stays soft. A leek left in the embers comes out black on the outside and sweet all the way through. No other heat does that.
Oak and applewood
We burn two woods, and they do different jobs.
- Oak is the floor. It burns slowly and leaves deep, even coals that hold their heat for hours. Most of the cooking happens over oak that stopped flaming long ago.
- Applewood is the seasoning. It burns faster and its smoke is lighter and a little sweet. A log goes on near the end, for fish, for fruit, for anything that would be flattened by heavy smoke.
Think of oak as the oven and applewood as the last pinch of salt.
What the fire is bad at
Plenty. It is bad at hurry. It is bad at doing twenty different things at once, which is one reason there is a single dinner menu each night and not a long list. It is bad at anything that needs an exact, gentle temperature held for a long time, so some things are finished beside the fire and not over it.
It is also bad at repeating itself. The dish you had in spring will not come out quite the same in autumn, because the wood is drier, the air is colder and the vegetables have changed.
We have made our peace with that. If you want the same plate every time, the fire is the wrong tool. If you want dinner cooked by someone who was watching it the whole time, pull up a stool at the counter and see for yourself.