Ember & Oak

Our Story

A table my grandmother would recognize

Ember & Oak began the way most good things in our family do — around a table, past midnight, arguing gently about how long to rest a steak.

We’re Mara and Theo Calloway, and this restaurant is our grandmother Josephine’s kitchen, grown up. She cooked over a wood hearth in the Lowcountry her whole life and never once turned on an overhead light at dinner — candles only, she said, because “food tastes better when you have to lean in to see it.” We opened these doors in 2014, inside a restored 1890s carriage house two blocks from the harbor, and we've kept her rule.

Everything that leaves our hearth starts within fifty miles of it. Our produce comes from three family farms we've worked with since year one, our fish from day boats out of Shem Creek, and our bread is proofed overnight in our own kitchen. No walk-in freezer, no shortcuts — just a wood fire, good neighbors, and a lot of patience.

• 2014Opened, family-run since
• 50miSourcing radius, farm to hearth
• 3Generations of recipes on the menu