Our Story
How one wood oven in a Portland warehouse became a kitchen built entirely around live fire — and the people who keep it burning.
Built around one stubborn idea.
Ember & Thyme started as an argument. Our founder, Marguerite Voss, had spent a decade cooking in kitchens that measured everything — temperature probes, timers, sous-vide baths. She wanted to go the other way: one live fire, no dials, and a cook’s judgment as the only instrument.
She bricked in a single oak-fired oven at the back of a leased warehouse on Foundry Row, hung a hand-painted sign, and opened with a five-item menu and twelve seats. There was no walk-in cooler large enough for a proper cellar, so the wine list was three bottles long.
A decade on, the seat count has grown, the wine list runs to forty labels, and the kitchen has a proper walk-in — but the oven is the same one from 2014, relined twice, never replaced. Everything we cook still answers to it first.
Milestones Along the Way
2014
The First Oven
Ember & Thyme opens on Foundry Row with twelve seats, one hearth, and a five-item menu.
2018
First Recognition
Named “Best New Use of Fire” by the Portland Table Review — a headline we still can’t quite believe.
2023
Farm Partnerships Formalized
Long-standing handshake deals with five local farms become official season-long partnerships.
2016
The Cellar Grows
A proper wine cellar is dug beneath the dining room; the list grows from three bottles to thirty.
2021
The Dining Room Expands
We take over the storefront next door, doubling seating and adding the hearth-side chef’s table.
2026
Ten Years at the Hearth
Same oven, same corner of Foundry Row, and a kitchen still built around one fire.
Meet the Team
Farms We Know by Name
We don’t buy from a distributor catalog. Every farm on our list is one Marguerite has walked personally — most more than once a season.
That means the menu changes when the fields do. A hard frost, a late harvest, or an early one all show up on the menu within the week.
