Story

There is one hearth in the room, built from Vermont fieldstone by a mason from two towns over. There is no gas line to the kitchen. Everything on the menu passes over, under or through the same fire.

We light it at two in the afternoon. By five it has burned down to a bed of coals about the size of a door, and the cooks work from the hot end to the cool end as the night goes on.

Maple gives steady heat. Apple sweetens anything that sits in its smoke. Oak burns long and even, which is why the trout and the pork shoulder go over it.

We burn about two cords a month, split and stacked behind the kitchen by whoever arrives first. Wet wood goes to the back of the pile until next season.

Thirty-eight seats, eight of them at a counter facing the hearth. The counter is never booked — it’s kept for whoever walks in, and it’s where you’ll feel the heat.

The menu moves with the woodpile and with what eleven farms within forty miles bring to the back door. Some nights a dish runs out. We’d rather that than keep it.