The Art Of… Fire Feasting

If you want to understand a different culture, just look at what they do with food and fire

- Anna Hart

I was 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.