Chicago, Illinois
A warehouse.
A hearth. An idea.
Cinder & Grove began with a decommissioned warehouse on Orleans Street and a question that had been circling the kitchen for years: what happens when you remove every piece of modern cooking equipment and build the menu around open fire alone?
The answer took eighteen months of construction, sourcing and testing to arrive at. The hearth — a custom-built, seven-foot-wide iron structure designed by a Chicago blacksmith — was the first thing installed. Everything else was built around it.
We opened in October 2019 with 28 seats, a tasting menu of eight courses and a wine list of 40 bottles chosen for their affinity with smoke and char. The kitchen has not changed its fundamental philosophy since.
"The hearth is not a feature of the restaurant.
It is the restaurant."
Wood, smoke,
patience.
Every service begins at 3:00 pm when the first logs — always white oak — are laid in the hearth and lit. By the time the first guests arrive, the fire has settled into a deep, even bed of coals that will hold its temperature for the next six hours.
We work with three species of wood: white oak for its clean, long-burning heat; applewood for the gentle sweetness it imparts to pork, poultry and root vegetables; and cherry for the subtle fruity smoke that lifts fish and shellfish without overwhelming them.
The height of the grate above the coals, the angle of the cast-iron doors, the speed at which a log is added — these are not decisions made by algorithm. They are made by the cooks who have spent years learning the language of the fire.
White Oak Logs
The Grate
Over the Flame
The Finish
Grown close.
Chosen carefully.
We source from a network of eleven farms and producers within 300 miles of Chicago. This is not a marketing decision. It is a practical one: ingredients that arrive the morning of service taste better than ingredients that arrive three days before it.
Our produce comes from Maple Ridge Farm in Wisconsin, our poultry from Clearwater in Michigan, our beef from a single Angus herd in southern Illinois. Our fish arrives from the Great Lakes and the Gulf twice weekly. The honey in our desserts is harvested by Prairie Bloom Apiary in Iowa.
The people
behind the fire.
Cinder & Grove is run by a small, close-knit team of eighteen — cooks, servers, sommeliers and support staff who share a belief that hospitality is not a transaction. It is a form of care.
We do not publish the names of our team here. We prefer that you meet them at the table, where introductions mean something.
