Est. Bermondsey 2019
The Story of Ember
“A restaurant built around one question: what does fire do to this ingredient?”
Ember began as a simple premise. Not a concept, not a brand — just a question that Rosa Caldwell had been turning over since she first cooked over hardwood embers in the Alentejo at twenty-three. What happens when you take a pristine piece of fish, a bundle of garden herbs, a root pulled from the ground that morning, and put it near fire?
The answer, it turned out, was different every time. Different wood, different heat, different distance from the coals. The same piece of pork behaves entirely differently depending on whether the fire is oak or cherry. That variability — that need for constant attention and intuition — is what drew Rosa to the hearth as a cooking method, and ultimately to opening Ember.
The restaurant opened in the spring of 2019, tucked into a railway arch on Tanner Street with forty covers, bare oak tables, and a single wood-burning hearth at the heart of the room. Nothing has changed structurally. Everything else changes weekly.
The Kitchen
One hearth. Everything else follows.
The hearth at Ember burns through roughly four cords of hardwood a week. We use primarily oak for long, even heat; cherry and apple for finishing and smoking; occasionally birch for a faster, cleaner burn. The wood comes from a supplier in the Weald of Kent, three hours from Bermondsey.
Everything that goes on the menu must pass through or near the fire. That's the rule. Some dishes live right in the coals — buried heritage vegetables, whole fish wrapped in damp paper. Others hang on the grill above, catching smoke and indirect heat. A few are finished with a single pass over the embers, just enough to mark the surface.
There is no gas. There is no induction. There is only the fire, and the skill of the cooks who read it.
Head Chef & Founder
Rosa Caldwell
Rosa grew up in Frome, Somerset, twenty minutes from a working farm. Her first job in a kitchen was at sixteen, washing dishes in a pub that cooked everything in a range oven. The proximity to real cooking — and the distance from fine dining — shaped her instincts early.
She trained formally for two years in Bristol before leaving to travel. Portugal first, then the Basque Country, then a long period in rural Galicia helping a retired cook restore a wood-fired stone oven that had been cold for thirty years. That restoration became an education in fire itself — its physics, its moods, its demands.
Rosa returned to London in 2017 with the intention of finding a kitchen with a proper hearth. She found instead that she would have to build one. The search for a space took two years. Ember opened on a Tuesday in April 2019 and was fully booked within three weeks.
She has turned down several opportunities to expand. The forty-cover format is deliberate — small enough that Rosa can cook every service, know every dish, and maintain the direct supply chains that make the menu possible.
Sourcing
Everything comes from somewhere specific.
We don't use a central wholesaler. Every main ingredient on our menu has a named source — a farm, a boat, a forager, a small producer we've visited and spent time with. That relationship is what makes the menu honest.
Our fish comes from a day-boat fleet based in Newlyn, Cornwall. Our lamb and heritage vegetables come from two farms in Herefordshire that Rosa has worked with since 2020. Dairy comes from a single herd in Suffolk. When a supplier can't deliver, that dish comes off the menu. There is no fallback option.
This approach makes planning difficult. It means the menu is genuinely different each week, and it means we sometimes disappoint guests who return for a specific dish. We think that's the right trade-off.
