Head of pasta
Dani Okafor
Runs the pasta room from 7 am. Responsible for every shape on the menu and the Sunday ragù.
Our story
A kitchen built around a single fire.
Lume began as backyard supper clubs cooked on one grill. The fire is bigger now, but the idea hasn't changed.
How it started
From a borrowed backyard to the old print works.
In 2017, Marco and a few friends started cooking Sunday suppers over an open fire for whoever turned up. Bread was baked in the embers, pasta was rolled on a kitchen table and the wine came from growers they'd met on the road.
Two years later the suppers moved indoors, into a print works with high ceilings, brick walls and just enough room for a hearth. We kept the long tables and the habit of cooking whatever was best that week.
2017
Supper clubs in a borrowed backyard, cooked on a single grill.
2019
Lume opens in a former print works with 40 seats and one fire.
2022
The pasta room and Cellar Room open next door.
Today
80 seats, a team of 34 and the same fire, lit every day at noon.
How we cook
Four rules we don't bend.
Fire, not gas
Almond wood and oak are lit at noon and tended all night. Every grilled, roasted and baked dish passes through the hearth.
Flour from one mill
Our pasta and bread use stone-milled flour from a single mill in the valley. Six pasta shapes are rolled by hand each morning.
Farms we can visit
Most vegetables come from three farms within sixty miles. When their harvest changes, so does the menu.
Wine from people we know
A list of around 120 bottles from small growers who farm organically and make wine with as little intervention as possible.
Chef & co-founder
Marco Bellandi
Trained in Bologna and Lyon, then spent six years cooking over open fire in the Basque Country before opening Lume.
“I want every plate to taste a little of smoke and a lot of the farm it came from.”
Bar & wine
Iris & Theo
Build the aperitivo list and buy from around forty small growers, most of whom they've visited.
Where it comes from
Short supply lines, long relationships.
We buy whole, buy local where we can, and build the menu around what arrives — not the other way round.
- Vegetables & herbs
- Three family farms in the valley, 25 – 60 miles away
- Flour & grains
- A stone mill grinding regional wheat and farro
- Fish
- Day-boat catch from the coast, delivered each morning
- Meat
- Whole animals from two pasture-based ranches
- Wine
- Around forty small growers, most farming organically
Come and see the fire
Pull up a chair at the hearth.
Book online in a minute. For groups larger than eight, our events team will look after you.
Or call us on +1 (503) 555-0148