The Baker’s Table Restaurant was opened in 2018 by the husband-and-wife team of chef David Willocks and designer Wendy Braun.

Chef Willocks learned to cook in the farm-to-table mecca of Oakland, CA - where daily trips to the farmer’s market and weekly changing menus were standard fare. He worked in a huge variety of culinary settings - from cooking vegetarian feasts for 500 people at a Yoga & Meditation center, to scooping hundreds of pommes dauphin at a fast-casual French takeout joint. He found his true style while working at a restaurant group headed by a longtime disciple of Alice Waters - a pioneer of the local foods movement. It was there that he also dreamed of improving food culture in America by opening restaurant that could offer people a vision of what cooking in harmony with nature could be like.

Braun - a writer, teacher, and poet - was the head of Creative Writing at an arts high school in Cincinnati where she had been developing curriculum and inspiring youth for a decade. When the couple connected, it was clear that Cincinnati was the place for their future - a town full of opportunity and cheap rent. They got married and bought a house in Newport, Kentucky, where the idea to open a restaurant took shape.

After choosing a space in a neglected old restaurant space on Monmouth Street, Chef Willocks met an old baker named Jean Paul - who ran Paradiso Bakery in Anderson Township. He was growing ill, and Willocks purchased his hand-built, 25 year old baking table. To honor his tradition, Willocks decided to call the restaurant The Baker’s Table. During the buildout process, the couple put on pop-up events at their home, while family members painstakingly worked on remodels, building all the tables in the dining room by hand.

The premise of The Baker’s Table was simple: to open a restaurant that baked 100% of its own bread and only sourced its menu from local produce. Originally, the concept was to be daytime only - so Willocks could be home in the evenings with their newborn baby. Braun - not only a writer - had a keen eye for interior design and thoughtfully equipped the space with one-of-a-kind vintage pieces and artwork to tell the story of a handcrafted cuisine that stood the test of time.

The doors opened in December 2018 and the couple was fortunate enough to be named one of the Best New Restaurants in America by both EATER.com and USATODAY.com the next year. With lines out the door and a waitlist hours long, they expanded in the fall by adding on dinner service to compliment the wildly popular brunch they had become so known for.

In fall of 2020, the team was fortunate enough to convince longtime friend Chef Porter Lewis to fly out from Oakland to take the helm of the kitchen. After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in Greystone, Lewis had cut his teeth by working at some of the best kitchens in the Bay Area, learning not only to work with seasonal produce, but also the arts of pasta making and whole animal butchery. As Chef de Cuisine, Lewis continues to lead the restaurant forward, discovering new ways to embrace sustainability and creativity in the kitchen.

In 2021, the team was fortunate to meet and hire Amy Gray, a phenomenally talented bartender who was escaping the mania of New York to be closer to family in Cincinnati. Gray immediately connected to the seasonal focus and developed a cocktail program that incorporated the farm-forward ethos through infusions, syrups, shrubs, and liqueurs. In 2023, Gray took helm of the dining room as General Manager, where she drives the team forward to ever greater levels of excellence and fun.

Together, the Baker’s Table Restaurant collectively creates a new vision for the restaurant industry -one where sustainability, respect, work-life-balance and joy are at the forefront of all decision-making, instead of a tired afterthought.