Hearth bread
Sourdough baked in the falling coals, butter smoked over cherry wood, salt scraped from the pan.
Fino sherry, chilled
A chef's tasting room
Twelve seats. One fire. One seating a night.
40 Stave Street, in the old tannery · Wednesday to Sunday, 7:30
The idea
Twelve chairs around one fire
We light the hearth at two in the afternoon and cook the whole menu over it. No gas line, no flat top. Alder and cherry, burned down to coals, and a cast iron rail we crank up and down by hand. What the fire gives us that day decides how long everything takes.
The twelve seats face the hearth, so you watch every course cooked a few feet away. Dinner runs about three hours. We pour slowly, we explain each plate, and nobody will ever rush you out the door. Come hungry and come curious.
- Twelve seats
- Seven courses
- Five nights a week
- One wood fire
The room
Firelight, oak, and quiet
The building tanned leather until 1962. We kept the brick, the fir beams, and the scorch marks, and added one long oak counter. No tables, no music louder than the fire, candles down the length of the counter.
The chef
Mara Voss
Mara grew up on a hazelnut farm outside Chilliwack, where dinner came off a wood stove ten months of the year. She cooked nine years in other kitchens, the last three running the fire at the Arbutus Room, before taking over the tannery lease in 2021 and building the hearth herself, brick by brick.
Braise is the restaurant she wanted to eat at. Small enough to know every guest by name before the bread course, and slow enough to cook everything the hard way.
The fire decides half the menu. My job is to listen to it. Mara Voss, chef and owner
Reservations
One seating. 7:30, Wednesday to Sunday.
We release the next month's seats on the first, at noon. Email us your date and party size and we answer the same day. Twelve chairs go quickly, most weeks within the hour.
- $145 a seat, charged when you book
- Full refund up to 72 hours before dinner
- Corkage $35, two bottle limit