THE ART OF TRAVEL
If you want to understand a different culture, just look at what they do with food and fire,
Fire feasting.
Iwas fresh off a flight from London and had rolled up to Sandy Bay, a little north of Auckland, in my converted Toyota Lucida camper. And I’d just spotted the public beach barbecues that Aussies and Kiwis blithely take for granted. “Are these, like, free barbecues? For just anyone to use? Communal grills? Right here on the beach?” With these words, I realised New Zealand is one of the most civilised nations on the planet.
By “civilised”, I mean “evolved in a manner that our ancestors would approve of”. And if
I were a hominid, I’d have certainly hoped that by 2021, my descendants would have made it significantly simpler to grill a load of meat for the tribe. Because cooking over fire has been a human priority from the day we discovered it. And to the eyes of a British traveller like myself, New Zealand’s 21st-century public beach barbecues were the very height of class, sophistication and progressiveness, the sort of technological and sociological innovation that would have any sensible Neanderthal nodding in approval.
I loved what these public grills said about the Kiwi spirit, gleaming (if occasionally grimy) monuments to generosity, community-mindedness, hospitality… and gluttony. It was during my time in New Zealand, witnessing Saturday barbecues elevated to an art form and experiencing an unforgettable hangi, that it struck me how much you can learn about a culture by examining its relationship with fire and food. Because fire makes a meal a feast.
In São Paulo, a street artist I interviewed took me to his favourite simple churrascaria, where waiters rove around the restaurant slicing meat directly on to customers’ plates with melodramatic flourish. In Johannesburg, two cookbook writers, Nikki Werner and Brandon de Kock, took me shopping in the market before talking me through a traditional lamb braai.
Turkey is also a superpower on the international barbecue scene, where a terrifyingly enthusiastic ocakbasi chef taught me the ‘five-count rule’: stick your hand five inches above the grill and try to count to five. If you whip your hand away after a second, this is the optimum temperature for quick-chargrilling vegetables; a two-count is great for crispy fish; while a three-four count is perfect for red meat. Trust me: you never forget a lesson you learn with your hand held above a flame.
Any nomadic society will have perfected its fire-cooking game, too, and the Mongolian Khorkhog is a fabulously carnivorous and celebratory meal: cooking mutton with hot stones. Then, of course, there is American barbecue.
I’ve made pilgrimages all across Texas in search of the sweetest and stickiest ribs in the West (I still think la Barbecue in Austin wins.) And in Sweden, fire cooking has gone seriously high-end thanks to chefs like Niklas Ekstedt and Magnus Nilsson, the latter of whom’s hugely influential Fäviken regularly topped World’s Best Restaurants lists.
It was Ekstedt who told me that food “stopped evolving” when electricity came into play in Sweden in the 1930s. He wanted to start evolving again, crafting inventive dishes by controlling a simple fire. Cooking over fire is pleasingly primitive and pioneering; eating food cooked over an open fire is satisfyingly feral and fancy.
As I travelled, salivating and socialising around international fire pits, it saddened me that I come from a damp corner of the planet where cooking has largely retreated indoors. In Ireland, barbecues were considered a bit of a joke, amounting to a few burnt sausages in a disposable cardboard carton and a tub of coleslaw, more a science experiment than a meal. Across the UK, we’re actively discouraged from barbecuing or building fires in parks or on beaches; having a barbecue on the beach or in the forest is a birthright in many countries, but not mine. And a country which loses its connection to cooking with fire, well, that country loses its soul.
Fortunately, things are changing in the UK: in part owing to wildly popular fire-centric London restaurants such as Neil Rankin’s Temper. But driven more by a year of lockdowns and social distancing measures. Last summer, with restaurants closed and all social gatherings shoved outdoors, my local beach was dotted with small fires, as families and friends cooked in small tribal gatherings. It didn’t feel like Britain – it felt like Australia or New Zealand. And that sight was wonderfully reassuring to me, the most visible sign that perhaps things were going to be okay. Because for 12,000 years, as long as humans have had food, and fire, family and friends, we have been okay
Cooking food over fire is pleasingly primitive and pioneering; eating food cooked over an open fire is satisfyingly feral and fancy.