My other kitchen is outside

Currently top of the wish list for the house of dreams is an outdoor kitchen. More than just back-up for a heavy cookery schedule, it represents a new era of culinary adventuring and alternative entertaining. 

Film director Guy Ritchie has long understood the draw of taking dinner – both prep and consumption – out among the trees. “You want all the benefits of a very simple, primal life, with all the evolution and technology that we have managed to refine over the past few hundreds of years,” he says. That way, you can have “the best version of a natural life”. Ritchie’s most recent venture is selling his long-in-development WildKitchen to outdoor cooking enthusiasts – to rave reviews. 

In a country where a fitful jet stream is in charge of the weather, our desire to ramp up the quality of outdoor cooking and entertaining is no less than it is in, say, Italy, where a favourable climate has seen the outdoor kitchen become a true extension of its sleek indoor counterpart.

On these shores, it’s not just the general migration from indoor to outdoor living, bolstered by the Covid pandemic, that’s driving the shift. A growing number of wild chefs are also our role models.

Take Marcus Wareing, who is now inspiring us not from his Michelin-starred stovetop, but from his Sussex smallholding in the TV series Tales from a Kitchen Garden. Central to his outdoor setup is a grill from Fire Made, a brand founded by the Ecuadorian chef Ana Ortiz, who is a specialist in asado cooking. Handmade in Somerset, the bespoke fitted and freestanding grills are popular both with chefs and domestic cooks.

Ritchie’s WildKitchen, meanwhile, is very much wired to the needs of British outdoor cooks who don’t want the elements to cramp their style. It combines his Cashmere Caveman WildTent with the WildTable, a multifunctional copper-topped slab complete with merino wool “skirt” that retains the cooking heat.

“We made the WildTent completely retractable,” says Ritchie, who counts David and Victoria Beckham among his clients. “If the wind or rain starts, you just drop the roof and you are completely protected from the elements. And when the evenings get cooler, the table keeps you warm.”

“In California, it might be adobe or stone, but in the UK people tend to want wood,” says Caroline Burvill of Hampshire-based outdoor furniture- and kitchen-makers Gaze Burvill. Its units are expertly crafted from high-grade French oak and feature impermeable Dekton tops and a choice of grills and appliances.

“There’s something very British about the tactile texture of oak in an outdoor space,” says Burvill. “We look for something that will sympathetically combine with the natural surroundings.” 

In contrast to the Italian design ethos, the aim here is less about unifying the aesthetics of indoors and outdoors, and more about creating something high-functioning and beautiful that befits our gardens and outdoor spaces – and withstands our weather. All while bringing that sense of wild adventure to our culinary exploits.

Pictures from top: a bespoke build by WildKitchen, featuring the WildTent; cooking on a grill by Fire Made; an outdoor kitchen by Gaze Burvill; and the WildTable, which combines a copper-topped slab with a merino wool ‘skirt’