Maple & Ash Opens Wood-Fired Steakhouse in Boston Seaport

Maple & Ash opens its Boston doors on April 30 in the Seaport District, bringing wood-fired steaks and fire-roasted seafood towers to a neighborhood already crowded with out-of-town chophouses.

Restaurateur Danny Grant doesn’t want you to call it a steakhouse. “Wood-fired restaurant that happens to serve steak,” he told Boston Magazine, is the framing he prefers. It’s a distinction that shapes everything from the menu to the mood: think elegant candelabras, sheer black curtains dropping from ceiling to floor, white tablecloths, and a fire-roasted seafood tower loaded with king crab, oysters, scallops, and more, finished in garlic butter and chili oil. Special occasion energy with a low-key vampire aesthetic.

Grant and business partner Jim Lasky opened the first Maple & Ash in Chicago back in 2015, right around the corner from Gibsons, the city’s beloved steakhouse institution. It was a gutsy location. People questioned it. Grant’s response was to lean into what made his concept different: “We opened with the mindset of [operating] a restaurant geared towards foodies and women,” he said, a deliberate departure from old-school houses where, as he put it, “they bring this giant meat out to your table, slap it, yell at it, and upsell you.” Grant is quick to add he loves a classic steakhouse. But Maple & Ash runs through a different filter, one built on seasonal, wood-fired technique.

That approach has legs. The Chicago original held its ground against Gibsons, and the concept has since grown to Miami and Scottsdale, Arizona. The Boston location is the fourth. Maple Hospitality Group, their parent company, also runs wood-fired Italian restaurant Monarch in Dallas and the Amalfi Coast-inspired Marisella in Santa Barbara, California.

Grant grew up on Long Island. Boston showed up early in his life mostly as a destination for “sporting events and history,” he said, standard East Coast kid stuff. The city started meaning something more when he was running Ria, the Chicago restaurant he led to two Michelin stars in 2011 and 2012. He also picked up a Food & Wine Best New Chef nod in 2012.

Half his kitchen at Ria turned out to be from Boston. One hire, he said, brought in six or seven others. “I was like, ‘Man, Boston people know how to cook.’”

That impression stuck. Grant and Lasky started scouting Boston for expansion five years ago.

The Seaport space reflects the full Maple & Ash treatment. An open kitchen gives diners in what the restaurant calls “the atrium” a direct sightline to the fire. The dining room wraps around that central area, with black curtains creating atmosphere and division between sections. It’s a room designed to feel theatrical without being loud about it.

The Seaport District has absorbed a wave of national restaurant concepts over the past decade, and the competition for expense-account dinners and celebration-night reservations is serious. Grant’s pitch is that Maple & Ash isn’t just another steakhouse collecting rent on the waterfront. The wood fire runs through every course, and the kitchen’s seafood work gets as much attention as the beef. Boston diners who’ve been eating well their whole lives, Grant seems to believe, will notice the difference.

Maple & Ash opens to the public on April 30 at its Seaport District location. Reservations are available through Resy.