Star Grazing
While traditional camping in tents under the stars remains a core ingredient, it’s the amazing food at Woodfire that lured RUPERT BATES to the site one summer’s evening
Whisper it under cover of the crackle of fire, but I think I may just have found BBQ’s holy grail. The knights of Arthurian legend forgot to check the South Downs in July. Not only would they have dined like kings; they could have camped overnight. Even Lunchalot, estranged cousin of Sir Lancelot, would have been sated at this feast.
It helped that this summer’s evening was glorious of weather and hue. But the concept of Woodfire Camping on the Westerlands Estate near Petworth in West Sussex is as inspired as the food cooked over fire.
Woodfire, with sustainability running through every aspect of the camp, is the creation of husband-and-wife team Mark ‘Griff’ Griffiths and Stella Gurney. They love camping – boy, do they love camping – and it was this mutual love that brought them together in the first place… oh, and food, cooked over open fire.
They are fine cooks themselves but why not ennoble the camp kitchen formula? On this particular summer’s evening, chefs Neil Campbell and Andy Frantzeskos dropped in from Ottolenghi’s ROVI restaurant in London and, alongside Sussex’s Laura Sylvester of Boca Loco, fired up dinner for 100 guests on a long rectangular, not round, table.
Everything about the evening was pitch perfect. When I first met Griff and Stella they spoke of their desire, from trips to Umbria and Tuscany, to replicate the Italian movement of Agriturismo, stemming the flight to the cities, investing in rural farms, with food and hospitality drawing in tourists to feed on local produce and embrace the wisdom and tradition of Italian grandmothers cooking over fire. Consider it replicated and, with apologies to Nonna, probably amplified, at a Sussex campsite – tent pegs still firmly rooted in the soil, with cooking gods disguised as shepherds.
“Our hearty food has earned us a reputation as the country’s first-ever gastro campsite. Using local, seasonal and top-quality ingredients from the high-welfare farms, kitchen gardens, woods and fields surrounding us, we are proud to show the fantastic produce that Sussex and the South Downs has to offer,” says Griff. “All our food is freshly prepared, cooked over fire and shared at trestle tables with wonderful views.”
The first thing you notice in the kitchen (make that loose arrangement of fires) is the atmosphere and the laughter. I know the best at anything make what they do look easy, but Neil and Andy floated like dancers in the smoke, at one, not at odds, with the flames – no obvious choreography but a natural sense of what to do when – a grilled cucumber turned here, a labneh smoked over cherrywood there. All the while Griff was in his happy place tending the giant fire with Westerlands lamb on a cross, while Stella and the Woodfire team were bringing all the evening’s elements together.
“Let the produce talk,” said Andy Frantzeskos. In which case, the baby carrot escabeche was especially chatty, while I could not shut the tomato salad up. How routine does tomato salad sound? Not when the tomatoes are from ROVI’s Wolves Lane urban kitchen garden in north London and strawberries and mint added. Simple genius from fork to fire.
Andy grew up in Melbourne, Australia, with his cooking informed by his Greek heritage and working in his father’s restaurants. He has a passion for wood-fired cooking and as ROVI’s head chef builds on restaurant founder Yotam Ottolenghi’s plant-forward, root-to-tip ethos – fire, vegetables and regenerative produce. Neil Campbell is ROVI’s executive head chef, with its menu specialising in fermented and pickled dishes. From the Kyle of Lochalsh, the gateway to the Isle of Skye and Scotland north-west coast, one of Campbell’s earliest food memories is his fisherman father chasing him through the house with freshly caught langoustines. Clearly not scarred, he mentions langoustines roasted in their shell with garlic butter as a food favourite.
“There is nothing quite like campfire cooking, with the flames flickering.” There is nothing quite like campfire cooking in the hands and pans of the likes of Neil and Andy. Even Yotam Ottolenghi himself professed to ‘camping envy’ when he saw the feast his chefs had served up at Woodfire. Forget Arthurian knights, this was enough to even get the sulking Greek warrior Achilles out of his tent.
One would hope any chefs derive pleasure from the enjoyment they are giving their guests. But while remaining consummate professionals, this is not the white heat of the internal kitchen, but the open fire of the field – and that must be good for mental health and wellbeing in a profession of such intensity and pressure at the top level.
We started with baby carrot escabeche, grilled peas with charred lemon salsa and parmesan, and cherrywood smoked labneh with beetroot molasses, with the cherrywood for the fires provided by Black Dog Forestry from Sussex.
Next up were grilled red peppers, with golden raisins, nasturtiums and smoked almonds, grilled cucumber with black sesame and peanut crunch, and that tomato salad.
The low-and-slow-cooked Westerlands lamb – food ‘miles’, 50 yards – came with Wildfarmed pita, cucumber and nigella seed salad, green tahini with fermented chilli and tomato sauce, and pickled hibiscus red onions.
If that wasn’t enough, the meal was rounded off with Cranachan – burnt honey and whiskey, cardamon filo shards, oat and macerated raspberries, and whiskey and oat crème caramel with raspberries. Star gazing before heading to your tent and then up the next morning for a walk in the woods, a forage, or even a workout in the ‘Wildfit green gym’ with boxfit, yoga and a sauna.
The overwhelming sense is one of a bucolic parish picnic, but with a side of understated rustic theatre. You half expect a few hobbits from the shire to arrive with their rucksacks and an ‘any food for a weary traveller?’ plea to the chefs. They would have obliged – lords of the smoke rings.
Woodfire Camping has an equally compelling site in Firle, near Lewes in East Sussex, under the beacon painted by the artist Eric Ravilious, my great-uncle, nearly 100 years ago. Light the beacon; I’m on my way.
Images: Ian Greenland
