Story

We opened in the spring of 2024 in a former hardware store, kept the tin ceiling and the long oak counter, and put the kitchen where the register used to be. Twenty guests sit at the counter for one of two seatings. There is no dining room and no back of house to speak of; everything that happens, happens in front of you.

The menu changes four times a year with the seasons and every week in the details. Oysters and scallops come up from Barnegat Light, fluke and bluefish from Belford, vegetables from three farms in Hunterdon and Sussex counties, and the cheese from Cherry Grove in Lawrenceville. We cook over oak and with the fermented things we put up the season before.

Mara Ellison grew up in Red Bank and cooked for nine years in Copenhagen and the Hudson Valley before coming home. Heron & Salt is the restaurant she wanted to eat at in New Jersey and could not find: serious food, no ceremony, a counter where the cooks can talk to you.