BBQ Catering in Cumbria

Smoke BBQ Events provides charcoal BBQ street food and is a pop-up and event catering business based in the Lake District. They supply local, sustainable, seasonal and foraged ingredients put together with imagination and flair! Read on for some in great in-depth advice they share based on the passion they have for their business.

What do you need to know from an organiser in order to provide a comprehensive quote?

For us, the most important thing to know is the type of food the organiser is looking to arrange. Street food, in particular, has changed dramatically in the past 10 years; it's no longer just a case of burgers and chips or a hot dog, there are no end of amazing vendors out there producing as good - if not better - food than you will find in many restaurants. That's the kind of food we serve, and so we make sure that the organiser is aware of our background and our style of food before going any further. If we're a good match, we then need to know a few fundamentals such as the proposed venue and date, numbers to be fed, whether the venue has adequate space for our grills (so size and layout), and any dietary requirements. We tailor our service on an individual basis so if you have a rough idea of your budget we will be able to produce a quote to meet your requirements.

What advice would you give to a customer looking to hire a provider in your area of work?

Everyone is different. The most important thing when choosing a supplier is to have a clear idea of what you're looking for: do you want a street food vendor or an outside caterer? If street food, what kind of space do you have? Indoor or outdoor? Is it hard or soft ground? Are you looking for simple food, something more refined, a basic menu to feed a lot of people quickly or a menu that can be served over a longer period of time at your guests' leisure? Even if you're unsure of the type of food you'd like and are looking for suggestions, by having a clear idea of your guests' tastes and budget you will be able to narrow down your search much more quickly.

Once you have this basis you can begin to look more closely at each supplier. Ask questions - ask LOTS of questions! There is no such thing as a silly question. Ask to see menus, ask for testimonials, ask about the company background, why they're doing what they're doing, are they knowledgeable about their products and ingredients, who are their suppliers, can they cater for specific dietary requirements, do they have food production qualifications, a hygiene rating, are they adequately insured? It may all seem a bit laborious but, trust me, you will thank yourself for asking these questions in the long run.

Please tell us a little bit about how and why you started the business.

After 20 years in professional kitchens, I began to question what I was doing. I'd spent years of my life producing high-end food for a handful of people who could afford it, and I just thought 'why?' - good food should be available to everyone, at an affordable price. So I began to look at ways to make that happen, and that's when Smoke was born.

The ethos of Smoke is to take the same high-quality ingredients, locally sourced and in season, and turn them into delicious street food. To me, the only way to cook meat is over charcoal, so that's what we do; charcoal imparts so much flavour into meats, fish, shellfish and vegetables that it really was a no-brainer. As for how to serve the food, we found the answer in traditional Greek Cypriot BBQ - the foukou. This is an open charcoal grill over which meats, fish and vegetables are cooked on rotating skewers, taking on the flavour of the smoke whilst retaining the perfect texture. And like Greek gyros, we serve our meats in filled flatbreads garnished with a whole host of exciting seasonal foraged produce. For us, seasonality and sustainability are behind everything we do, so we spend a lot of time foraging, preserving, pickling and fermenting in order to showcase the very best of wild UK food.

Quality. Locality. Seasonality. Sustainability.
These are the four keywords that inform everything we do as a business.

Please tell us about a booking you've had through Add to Event, how did it go? Would you recommend us to others?

We recently catered a private dining event in the Western Lakes (Lake District) for a lovely group of young professionals. They'd hired a house on the west Cumbrian coast with a view to climbing Scafell Pike over the weekend and wanted to kick off their stay with a meal cooked in their own kitchen. As we specialise in wild, foraged and seasonal foods the brief was to create a menu that would incorporate the very best of the late summer season and to make use of ingredients that many of the guests may not have tried before.

We produced a three-course meal involving foraged fruits and berries, wild herbs, seasonal game and locally-sourced produce which went down very well indeed. The great thing about private chef events is that it allows us to interact with our guests, telling them all about the produce, where it comes from, how it was turned into a dish. All of this adds to the experience as much for us as for our guests. We gained excellent feedback and wouldn't hesitate to take on other such work through Add to Event.