Name the producer
Every course says where it came from. If we cannot say, we do not serve it.
A room built around what the province actually grows
Fireweed & Ash opened in 2017 with twenty-eight seats and one argument: that a your region menu should be limited by your region, and that this is a feature.
Ellery Vasko cooked in Toronto and Copenhagen for eleven years and came home in 2016 with a specific irritation — that the best restaurants she had worked in were built entirely from what was near them, and that nobody was doing that here, in a province with fish, bison, wheat and a four-month growing season worth planning around.
The first winter nearly ended it. A menu that refuses to import in January is a menu of roots, preserves and whatever was frozen in August, and the room was half empty until February. The kitchen learned to ferment properly rather than apologise, and the January menu is now the one regulars book first.
Nine years in, we buy from forty-one producers, most of them within a day's drive, and several of whom now grow specific things because we asked. The menu still changes every Monday. The seat count has never moved.
How the room got here
2016
Ellery comes home from Copenhagen and spends a year driving to farms.
2017
Twenty-eight seats open on Bannatyne with a five-course menu.
2019
The menu goes to seven courses and one seating a night.
2022
The cellar programme starts; the reserve pairing follows.
2026
Forty-one producers, several growing to order for the kitchen.
28
Seats in the room
7
Courses on the menu
41
your region producers we buy from
9
Years in the Old Town
What the room is built on
The table is yours
One seating a night means nobody is ever asked to leave so the room can be turned.
Cook what arrived
The menu follows the delivery, not the other way around. That is the whole idea.
Who is here most nights
A kitchen of five and a floor of four. The same people are here most nights, which is unusual in this business and deliberate.
Ellery Vasko
Chef and owner
Eleven years in Toronto and Copenhagen. Writes the menu every Monday around what the deliveries actually brought.
Tomas Bergeron
Head of the floor
Runs the room and the reservation book. The person who will find you a Tuesday when Saturday is gone.
Ingrid Salonen
Pastry and ferments
Keeps the starter, the cultures and the cold room. Responsible for the January menu being any good at all.
If a course does not land, tell us that night
Cooking this specifically means occasionally missing. If a course is not right for you, say so while it is in front of you — we will replace it or take it off the bill, that evening, without a discussion about it. What we cannot fix is a complaint that first appears in a review a week later.
Reviews
What people write afterwards
4.9 from 720 reviews · nine years in the Exchange
“We went for an anniversary and stayed three hours. The pickerel course was the best thing I have eaten in this city, and nobody once made us feel hurried or under-dressed.”
“I told them four days ahead about a shellfish allergy and they rebuilt two courses rather than just removing something. My wife's plate and mine arrived at the same time and looked equally considered.”
“Expensive, and worth it once or twice a year rather than monthly. The wine pairing is where it gets steep — the food alone with a bottle from the list is the better arithmetic.”
Twenty-eight seats, one seating, sixty days of notice.
We take the whole room at 6:30 and cook one menu. That is why the kitchen can be this small and the produce this specific — and why a Saturday in December needs booking in October.