Marcus Chen, Executive Chef

Marcus spent 14 years in professional kitchens — starting as a line cook at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Chicago, moving through positions at farm-to-table restaurants in the midwest, and eventually running the kitchen at a celebrated New American spot in Evanston before it closed during the pandemic.

When his daughter was born in 2021, he started thinking differently about food. Not the food he cooked at work — the food he cooked at home on his days off, for his family. He noticed that what made those dinners good wasn't the techniques he'd spent years learning. It was the prep he'd done in the morning: the thing marinating in the fridge, the sauce he'd started before nap time.

Hearth is his answer to a problem he watched his neighbors struggle with every night: they're not bad at cooking. They just don't have time for the part that makes it good.

The philosophy

Marcus sources proteins weekly from a regional food-service distributor and produce from a local farm cooperative. The menu changes every week. No recipe repeats in a quarter. The sauces — the harissa, the miso glaze, the cilantro crema — are made from scratch, every batch.

"I'm not trying to replace the family dinner," Marcus says. "I'm trying to protect it. The goal is that you're still the one who put dinner on the table. I just handled the part that would have stopped you from doing it."

The kitchen

Hearth operates out of a licensed shared commercial kitchen. Every prep cook is food-safety certified. The kitchen is inspected quarterly. Your box is packed cold and sealed before it ever leaves the building.