Macon, Georgia
It started at his grandmother's elbow
Before Marcus Webb ever heard the word “mise en place,” he knew the sound of a cast-iron skillet hitting a hot stove. Saturday mornings in his grandmother's Macon kitchen meant biscuits from memory, greens that simmered all afternoon, and one non-negotiable rule: you taste as you go.
She measured nothing and missed nothing. Most of what Ember & Salt serves can be traced, one way or another, back to her table.
The fine-dining years
Then the discipline of the line
Culinary school led to a decade in fine-dining kitchens, where Marcus learned what heat and patience can really do — and what a plate looks like when nothing on it is an accident.
But somewhere between the tweezers and the tasting menus, he kept thinking about that skillet. The food he wanted to cook had soul first, technique second. He came home to Atlanta to build a kitchen around both.
The Ember & Salt philosophy
“Ember is the patience — the low fire that turns tough into tender. Salt is the honesty — seasoning that tells the truth about good ingredients. Everything we serve needs both.”
— Chef Marcus Webb
Wood-fired, always
The hearth is the heart of the kitchen. If it can be touched by smoke or flame, it will be.
Georgia first
Peaches, pecans, shrimp from the coast, produce from farms a day's drive away. The menu follows the state's seasons.
A full room, a live band
Supper in the South was never quiet. Jazz on Friday and Saturday nights keeps the room the way it should be.
On Auburn Avenue, on purpose
Ember & Salt sits in Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward, on a street with more history per block than most cities manage in a century. We're honored to cook here.
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