Madison, Wisconsin · Fourteen seats · One fire

Dinner, cooked within arm’s reach of the flame.

Ember Row is a single counter wrapped around an open hickory hearth. One seating a night, ten courses, every one of them grown or caught within a morning’s drive.

The counter

Fourteen stools, one horseshoe of white oak, and nowhere to hide.

There is no dining room behind you and no kitchen behind a door. Chef Nadia Okafor-Lind and three cooks work the fire in the middle; you sit around it. You will feel the heat change when the duck goes over.

How the fire works

HEARTH1234567891011121314PASS · KITCHEN
Plan of the counter. Seats 1 and 14 face the pass; 6 to 9 sit closest to the coals.

An evening, by the clock

Three and a half hours, paced by the fire, not by a ticket printer.

One seating means one pace: everyone at the counter eats the same course at the same moment, cooked in the order the fire allows.

  1. 6:45Doors

    The room smells of hickory by now. Coats go on hooks by the woodpile.

  2. 7:00Bread

    Everyone sits at once. The first loaf comes out of the falling oven.

  3. 7:40Over the grate

    Fish and vegetables cooked a metre from your plate.

  4. 8:30Buried in coals

    Squash and celeriac that went into the embers at four are pulled and split.

  5. 9:20The duck

    Three days in the smoke, carved in front of the counter.

  6. 10:15The last coals

    Sweets roasted over what is left of the fire. Stay as long as you like.

Menu No. 31 · Late September

This season’s ten courses

$185 per guest. Wine pairing $110, zero-proof pairing $65. Every course has a vegetarian, pescatarian, no-gluten and no-dairy version.

Read the full menu

  1. ISungold & smoked wheyCrooked Furrow, 12 mi
  2. IIHearth breadDriftless Mill, 88 mi
  3. IIITrout, cherrywoodBayfield Line Fishery, 296 mi
  4. IVForty beansClary Hill Farm, 38 mi
  5. VSquash from the coalsCrooked Furrow, 12 mi
  6. VIWalleye in the huskRed Cliff co-op, 280 mi
  7. VIIHen of the woodsHen & Hollow Foragers, 64 mi
  8. VIIIHickory-hung duckAldergrove Duck, 71 mi
  9. IXPawpaw & smokeHen & Hollow Foragers, 64 mi
  10. XThe last coalsLindqvist Honey, 31 mi

Ember Row in numbers

3cords of hickory burned each month, all from one woodlot
12farms, fishers, foragers and woodlots, the nearest twelve miles away
900degrees Fahrenheit at the grate when the duck goes over
1seating a night, so no one is ever hurried off a stool

Stories

Written by the people who feed the fire.

Feature · 12 min

A year of one hickory tree

One shagbark hickory, felled in a Driftless windstorm, has fed our fire since last October. We counted every split.

 Feature · 9 min

The farmer who grows our forty kinds of beans

Ruth Clary saves seed that has been in her family since 1911.

 Feature · 7 min

Ash, the last ingredient

What happens to a fire after service: salt, lye, glaze and dessert.

What guests say

“I have eaten walleye my whole life. I had never eaten walleye that tasted like it had been in the woods.”
Marguerite H., seat 7, June 2026
“We came for an anniversary and stayed until the last coal went grey. The cooks told us the name of every farm.”
Dev and Sam R., seats 11–12
“The vegetarian menu is not a list of omissions. The ash-baked celeriac is the best thing I ate this year.”
Priya N., seat 3
Private dining

Take the whole counter.

Buyouts for up to fourteen, or a chef’s table for eight on Tuesdays, when the room is closed to everyone else. Build an estimate in a minute.

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