We do not innovate the steak. We respect it.
For twelve years we have cooked with one element — fire — and one wood — white oak. The discipline is not the cut. It is the patience of the coal.
See the cutsNothing else burns in our hearth. Oak gives the long, even bed of coal a steak deserves; it gives a perfume that mesquite cannot. We pay a man named Ezra in Tennessee to cut it for us.
The hearth is lit at three. By five-thirty the wood has burned down to an even rake of red. Service begins when the grill keeper says it does — not before.
Maillard, not blacken. The crust is the doorway; what is behind it must remain rare. Nothing turns twice. Nothing is moved without intent.
A steak that has not rested is a steak that has not yet finished cooking. We wait. The cooks wait. The room waits. Then it goes out.
Carved tableside on a slab of white oak; finished with smoked Maldon and a cracked-pepper jus that has not changed since opening night. The first slice is yours.
Curated by Iona Bell since 2014. The collection runs to four hundred labels, half a dozen of which we will never list — they are kept for guests who ask. Vintage pours by appointment.
All pours are 2oz. The book of bottles lives at the bar. Iona is on the floor Wednesdays through Saturdays.
A butcher, a sommelier, and a fire-keeper opened a forty-seat room above a flower shop on Glenfiddich Lane. There was no investor. There was no publicist. The hearth has not gone out since.
In the autumn of 2014 we lit a fire in the back of a small room and never put it out. The lease was a year. The plan was modest — feed forty people a night, seven nights a week, with one cut and the wine that suited it. We didn't speak to a critic for the first six months. We didn't have to.
The room got smaller as it got busier. We took the wall down to the bar in 2017 and put in the oak hearth that still runs the kitchen. The whiskey list, twenty bottles deep at opening, doubled, then doubled again, then went somewhere we did not foresee.
Twelve years on, the rules have not changed. Single ranch. White oak. Dry age in our cellar. Carve across the grain. Wait for the fire. Most of the cooks who opened with us are still with us, which is the thing we are most proud of, and the thing we have least to do with.
— H. Aldridge, F. Marin, I. Bell
The most disciplined steakhouse in the city. Not the loudest, not the prettiest — the truest. — The Times
Eat the porterhouse. Then eat it again next year. Then write a will. — Bon Appétit
A whiskey list that humbles its peers, served by a woman who knows every bottle by name. — Esquire
Four stars. Exceptional in every measure. The oak hearth alone is worth the room. — The Tribune
You will receive a quiet word if anything changes. Please dine with us at the time you have asked for, on the date you have chosen.
We hold every table for forty minutes. After that, the bar takes it. Bookings open thirty days out, on the hour, at noon.
Look for the lantern above the door. There is no sign. We do not advertise.
Twelve seats, one fire, an oak table cut from a single fallen tree in Vermont. Service is by your name, written on a card at the door. The whiskey list is the same — but Iona will pour you the bottles she does not list.
Enquire — by Letter