Our story
From Copenhagen,
back to the coast.
Elias Thorne · Chef & Owner
Elias grew up forty miles south of where Hearth & Forage now stands, in a family of clammers and fishermen. He left at nineteen for culinary school in San Francisco, then spent a decade in Copenhagen — first at Relæ, then at Geranium — learning the discipline of restraint and the long, slow rhythms of fermentation.
He returned to Oregon in 2020. The pandemic delayed the opening twice, but it also gave time: time to build the wood-fire hearth by hand, time to find the foragers and the fishermen, time to plant the first ferments in cedar barrels in the cellar.
Hearth & Forage opened on a quiet Thursday in October 2021. The first dish served was a single salt-cured anchovy on a crust of toasted rye. It is still on the menu, in one form or another, every night we are open.
—Our philosophy
Three commitments we make to every plate.
01 · Fire
Cooked with wood.
We don't use a gas range. Every dish is touched by the ember and flame of locally milled white oak and madrona. The wood is the first ingredient.
02 · Ferment
Patient flavor.
Our cellar holds cedar barrels of fermenting koji, miso, garum, and stone fruit — some in their fourth year. Patience is a seasoning.
03 · Forage
Of this place.
We partner with three local foragers and a network of small farms within sixty miles. If it can't be grown, gathered, or caught here, it likely won't appear on the menu.
