Everything at the Ladle is cooked over oak, which raises a fair question: where does a small restaurant get a year-round supply of good oak without being part of a problem? The answer is the valley itself — orchard removals, storm fall, and prunings from the fruit growers whose trees feed us in the other seasons.
When an orchard block is retired, the wood has to go somewhere. Ours comes to the yard behind the restaurant, where it is split and stacked to season for a year before it touches the fire. Green oak smokes and sulks; year-old oak burns clean and hot, which is the whole character of the cooking here.
The arrangement suits everyone at the table, literally. The growers clear their ground without a burn pile, we get fuel with a story we can verify by walking out back, and the valley’s old trees end as heat for one more harvest’s worth of dinners.
Guests sometimes ask whether the fire is a gimmick. Cook a short rib over gas and one over seasoned oak and set them side by side — we have, for a skeptical friend of the house. The fire is not the marketing. The fire is the recipe.
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