Young Guns - Grill for it

A whole rack of young barbecue chefs exploded on to the scene during lockdown, fuelled by social media. Caspar Barnes reports.

In the first year of the pandemic, the number of barbecues hosted in British households grew by 40% from the previous 12 months, according to National BBQ Week. This explosion was almost entirely precipitated by the shutting down of public life; forced to stay at home, people make their own fun.

That was all the time needed for many young people in the UK to catch the barbecue bug. Once caught, the love of BBQ tends to stick with you, like the glaze on your fingers after eating ribs. Now it is estimated nearly a quarter of 18-24 year olds attend between six and 10 barbecues a year.

Because young people are less likely to eat meat and are exposed to a diversity of cuisines, they are driving new culinary trends in outdoor cooking. “Sounds boring but a grilled lettuce on a BBQ is delicious. Quarter it, cover it in olive oil, stick it on. Yum,” Flo Dill tells listeners to her morning show on popular east London radio station, NTS.

Dill doesn’t eat meat, but she would never be so unimaginative as to bring burgers and sausages to a BBQ party. Instead, she’ll bring a head of lettuce, fish, plantain, beetroot, and “probably some cheap wine”.

Young people are stretching what BBQ means more than any generation before them but there’s still room to grow into, says James Doyan, founder of House of Charcoal: “Engaging with things like tandoors and curries, whether it’s Indian or Asian, there’s so much flavour to pull through.”

Brands desperate to find an audience beyond the hobbyist dad, are throwing everything they have at the feet of young grillers. However, “the lack of affordable options is a big constraint for young customers,” says Mark Milligan, marketing manager at Grillstream. But with Generation Z – those born between 1997 and 2012 – projected to become the wealthiest generation ever, many brands are hoping to attract a future customer.

Technology seems to be one way to bring in young punters, but they are mainly drawn to products that they’ve seen celebrities using, according to Charles Ramseyer, owner of Southampton-based BBQ store, Socal. “David Beckham has got a Big Green Egg. People come in because they’ve seen him use one.” In fact, the sight of Golden Balls polishing his grill in the ‘Beckham’ Netflix documentary dramatically increased sales of the model at Socal.

Griddle specialist Blackstone has been investing heavily into showing up where young people hang out and invariably that means on TikTok, where it has amassed nearly 400,000 followers. That investment is already looking like it’s paying off, with half of the attendees at the opening of the company’s cooking school aged under 30, with Blackstone focused on educating, informing and engaging young grillers, building awareness of cooking outdoors, not to mention the ‘pester power’ to influence parents. Blackstone has created an entry-level cookbook – Feeding 4 for £20 – and works with Ian Bursnall, The Skint Cook, and author of The Skint Cook – Over 80 easy, tasty recipes that won’t break the bank.

Young people are naturally extremely aware of the power of social media. And the most savvy of new lockdown cookout converts have been stoking their fires with more than just your usual combustibles of gas, wood or charcoal. Instead, they have turned to the rocket fuel of socials to launch careers in the industry in next to no time. I went to meet some of these new faces of barbecue.

Ruben Dawnay, 23

@rubens.reubens

On a warm July evening, as the sun sets over south London, I sunk my teeth into pork ribs and brisket under a railway arch in Peckham. It was a humbling experience, watching 23-year-old chef Ruben Dawnay, founder of Ruben’s Reubens, lead his band of merry men into the Friday night rush, orders shooting in as quickly as the plates flew out. Ruben’s Reubens is a BBQ joint that morphs into a pastrami restaurant during the colder months.

One person had described Dawnay to me as the ‘prince of BBQ’, and his was the name that cropped up most in conversation with other BBQ heads. I’d first encountered Dawnay just as the shackles of lockdown were breaking. It was at his first solo residency in the hustle and bustle of Brixton market. “Residencies are always quite challenging to get off the ground. In Brixton market, we lost all our kitchen power on the opening night with a full restaurant and queue of people outside.”

At the time, Dawnay had just finished his A-Levels. Then, in 2023, he spent all the money he’d ever earned on a huge smoker so he could strike out on his own. Clearly, the urge to empty your bank account on BBQ equipment can sometimes be a little overpowering. But, as a result, he was able to transform that railway arch in Peckham into his own BBQ restaurant for the duration of the summer.

He seems to be doing something new each week – launching pop-ups, winning awards and working with Michelin-starred chefs. He was recently recognised as ‘The One to Watch’ in Conde Nast Traveller’s UK’s Top New Restaurant Awards. That award was a massive milestone in his career so far. “It’s the first award I’ve ever won and first ceremony I’ve ever been to. Made smoking in the garden feel like a long time ago.”

Admittedly, I already know this, I was one of those hungry people in the queue, towards the back I might add. And I’m pretty sure that there was no “we” – it was just Dawnay running everything himself. Somehow, he managed to make it work and stretched the food out so that everyone got a taste. I remember the first bite of his shredded beef tacos made me instantly regret inviting two friends along, who I then needed to share it with. Here was real talent in the flesh.

Three years later and tonight he’s got a team of three people working for him, so he can afford to be a little more hands off. The crew are still flying high from the previous weekend when they had been crowned by the public as pitmasters of the year at Fume, a BBQ festival curated by Instagram foodie Toby Inskip, or, Eating with Tod, as he’s better known to his 1.1 million followers. Sporting a freshly trimmed mohawk, Liam Green, one of Ruben’s lieutenants, tells me that most of the other teams at Fume had been working in barbecue for a long time. “It felt good for the young guys to show them how it’s done,” Green says.

Lockdown was also the main reason Dawnay got into smoking and outdoor cooking. “I was lucky enough to have a small garden and back then we all had plenty of time to kill,” he says. Soon he was smoking more meat and fish that he could stomach, so he started selling it to fellow south Londoners. Ruben’s Reubens was born.

Alfie King, 15

@alfiekbbqs

By the time Alfie King celebrated his 11th birthday he had saved up enough money to buy himself his first barbecue – a Weber Go-Anywhere. From that point on, “it was a passion that spiralled out of control,” King tells me down the line from his home in Devon. Fast-forward four years, and the 15-year-old is steadily climbing the rungs of the barbecue world.

King has over 3,000 followers on Instagram. When we spoke, he was travelling around the country for one of the brands he represents, Grillstream, teaching adults how to cook on coals as part of a seven-week roadshow. Even though he is yet to sit his GCSEs, King has already cooked on stage in front of hundreds of people at festivals including Smoke and Fire and Sizzlefest; he’s an ambassador for multiple brands, including Grillstream and Pit Barrel, and he even runs his own private catering for weddings and events.

The young barbecue king had always thought he would become a farmer. It wasn’t until he started spending more of his time sweating over coals that he realised it could be a career. At least, “as soon as I’m old enough,” he adds. But such is his commitment to the cause, his parents allowed him to switch to homeschooling so he could focus on the burgeoning career that had sprung up around his culinary passion. Being homeschooled doesn’t seem to impact his social life because he can lean on his grilling skills to bring friends together. “I go and have barbecues with my friends, and hang out with them doing what I love.”

Judging from his trajectory so far, King does not seem like the type of lad who’s happy to wait around for life to happen to him. Meeting new people at roadshows and festivals have been key to his success. But the real highlights have been getting to see the country. It helps that his dad, Dave, is a fellow BBQ enthusiast and will happily ferry his son around on the road. Now, King’s main focus is trying to grow his following across social media to try to reach a wider audience of “normal people”, particularly, more young people like him. To do that King is investing in video equipment to launch his own channels on YouTube and TikTok. Long-form content is his new priority.

Aston Prideaux, 17

@smokin_maple_meats

Another teenager barbecue king, in everything but name, is Aston Prideaux. The 17-year-old prodigy from Bristol has performed at food festivals across the UK, cooking in front of thousands on live fire stages. His grilling skills have drawn in more than 7,500 followers on Instagram. Aged 13 when the pandemic started, lockdown was also the catalyst that got Prideaux fired up about BBQ. He’d only been barbecuing properly for a year when he got his first big job, doing a demonstration live on-stage at Pub in the Park, as part of the Kamado Joe fire squad. There he caught the eye of chef Tom Kerridge, who invited Prideaux on to an apprenticeship at his two Michelin star pub The Hand & Flowers in Marlow.

Prideaux had been a national karate champion, but when social distancing made competing impossible, he decided to swap karate chopping, for the chopping board. He started recording his progress on Instagram. “To keep a record more than anything,” he tells me. Soon collaborations started, but being able to crowdsource tips and tricks from his followers was the real pay out.

Getting scouted by Kerridge was a real pinch-me moment. Now he’s learning how to use a knife and how to properly dice an onion. When we start talking about onions, Prideaux’s voice goes up an octave in excitement, as he goes off into a reverie about different cuts and juliennes. But the challenge with cooking under Kerridge is that he had to leave his Bristol home and go and live alone near the restaurant in Marlow. His mother Becky nearly didn’t let him go. “His older brother, who is 24, had only just moved out the week before!” Becky says.

Coming of age during the pandemic, Prideaux had never even taken public transport until he moved away from home. “It was a really big shock at first. Even just starting to do my own washing and cooking for myself all the time.” Most teenagers his age would happily while away their weekends sleeping in, but no such luck for Prideaux, who has to be up early in the kitchen, sometimes not getting out of work until 11pm if he’s on a 15-hour shift. As such, he’s had to grow up pretty quickly. Now, he takes trains and regional buses every day to get to work. He hopes to learn to drive as soon as possible.

Despite these somewhat gruelling conditions, Prideaux absolutely loves it. He’s grown extremely close to everyone on the restaurant staff, regardless of age. “We’re all a little family,” he says. And all this hard work looks to be paying dividends when it comes to the quality of his cooking. But all roads lead back to BBQ for Prideaux. His ultimate goal is to incorporate traditional cooking into cooking over wood and charcoal. And what form might that take? “Obviously, in the future, I might want to open my own restaurant,” he answers, with an incredible self-assuredness for someone his age. Prideaux is so matter of fact when he speaks, he makes opening a restaurant sound like the most natural thing in the world. For him, it probably would be.

Ana Da Costa, 34

@_lotsofbutter

Sino-Portuguese chef Ana Da Costa has loved barbecue for as long as she can remember. As a teenager growing up in Macau, she would often have barbecues on the beach with her friends from school. “We’d have honey and soy chicken wings, frankfurters, fishballs, and shiitake mushrooms,” she says. Then, she moved to the UK when she was 19, swapping tropical beaches for paved patios and back gardens. Despite the change of surroundings, she has hosted many barbecues on these slightly milder shores.

By day, Da Costa develops recipes, specialising in the cuisines of her parents; her mother is Chinese and her father Portuguese. Her Portuguese roots influence the way she cooks on open flame, especially when it comes to seafood, often opting for simple seasoning – olive oil, salt, and lemon – to avoid masking the flavours of the fire. But she didn’t really get into barbecuing professionally until Meatopia called her up in 2022. When she landed the Meatopia gig, she was over the moon. Now, she could see hundreds of people trying her recipes in real time: “I absolutely loved the thrill of cooking for over 800 people in that environment.”

For her, barbecues are a fantastic reason to gather people together. Whenever the weather permits, she cooks with her family on their Big Green Egg. Her mother loves sardines, so they always keep them stocked in the freezer and grill them on the BBQ for dinner. “It’s not just a means of cooking a meal; it also brings us together,” she says. When Da Costa and her partner host BBQs for their friends they transform the back garden into a party venue with benches, sun loungers, and picnic blankets.

“There’s a shop called Shop Brazil in Lewisham that offers the best Brazilian-cured fresh sausages for BBQ, and we always get a picanha from them too.” Picanha is a popular cut of beef in Brazil and Portugal, that’s found on the rear of a cow along with a juicy layer of fat. It’s known in the UK as the rump cap. Also on the menu were sea breams, squids, and prawns from Rockpool in Blackheath.

Da Costa believes that if the produce is fresh and high-quality, you don’t really need to do much to it. “The air was filled with the delicious aroma of grilled foods and laughter,” she says. Bringing her favourite people together in the summer for a day of good food fun is hard to beat.

It struck me that all of the prestigious talents featured don’t seem to switch off when they get home. They all told me about their social occasions where they cook on a fire and chat with friends, almost as if life was a never-ending camping trip.

For all these people, barbecue is serious. It is a thread that runs through everything they do. And, they are making BBQ more diverse, more dynamic, more international, and more exciting. Unlike the generations who came before them, BBQ has always been way more than just a hobby.