A garage, a fire pit and twelve chairs
How Sunday dinners turned into an eighteen-seat restaurant on Ferry Street.
Ines Varga grew up two streets from here. Her grandfather cooked over a fire pit behind the house every summer, and she never quite got over it.
After ten years cooking in other people's kitchens, she started Sunday dinners in a friend's garage. Twelve chairs, one long table, a grill made from an old oil drum. People paid what they wanted. Most weeks it covered the food.
The menu worked like it does now. She'd call three farms on Thursday, find out what they had, and write the dinner around it. Anything that didn't taste better near the fire didn't make it.
- 2019
First Sunday dinner in the garage on Mill Lane.
- 2021
The waiting list passes four hundred names. Ines starts looking for a room.
- 2023
She signs the lease on the old ferry ticket office and builds the hearth by hand with two masons.
- 2024
Cindermoor opens with eighteen seats and the same rule: no gas in the kitchen.
The room
Ten seats at the counter face the hearth. Two tables of four sit by the window. Every table gets the same heat on their face by the end of the night.
