Starting Up with Rupert Whitaker @ The Field Kitchen

The Field Kitchen Oxford is preparing for its busiest season.

In the summer it is non-stop here because it was always designed for these warm balmy evenings; to sit out under the stars, with a delicious meal in your belly and a good glass of easy-drinking wine in your hand. What is a pop-up restaurant in a field without a gorgeous sunset and a dry evening?

Having spent May staring for long periods at the clouds and testing my meteorological guesswork skills, I am delighted as yet more and more dry hot days have set in. Yet as I write this I wonder if I will elicit a strange curse, and on my first pop-up (July 10) the heavens will open, as I dared to comment on the weather in print! Oh how it is to be English! Of course, the upside of the English constitution is that we are highly capable of donning a warm fleecy blanket, sitting under a bit of white tarpaulin and enjoying ourselves just as much when the rain pours all around us.

This year The Field Kitchen has moved sites, previously based at the Hogacre eco-common we have relocated to a beautiful valley in Farmoor. It is with sadness I leave Hogacre – the secret garden oasis in the centre of Oxford – but this year we are providing the Field Kitchen Experience for eight weddings, and due to the fact that at Hogacre I have to drive my seven-and-a-half tonne van across a railway and open fields, I didn’t think it would survive repeated crossings. However we might go back for a one off, so watch our website for further pop-ups.

Some readers may be aware that as well as being a pop-up chef I am also a film producer – sounds lofty I know! Bear in mind that I make independent films, and am yet to puff cigars on a large leather Chesterfield in Hollywood. Our latest film Born Of War is hitting the screens later this year, and I am also busy organising its launch here and in the US.

This goes some way to explaining TFK’s new location – our film offices are based in Farmoor on a 10-acre field which has a stunning view named by locals as Tumbledown Hill. It did in fact feature in the closing scenes of our latest film, as our heroine returns home, driven across the verdant, green, quintessentially English, countryside, along a winding road, to be reunited with her family.

Our new base is also close to Farmoor Reservoir, where I repeatedly capsized a small dingy once. You can see the water shimmering on the horizon, and the tops of the sail boats.

Our first pop-up is going to be a party – four courses, with a Cava Sangria on arrival to kick off. This year I have been working with an inspirational chef – Bob Parkinson – at his restaurant in Cirencester, Made By Bob. He was trained by a god of all chefs – Simon Hopkinson – the Roast Chicken and Other Stories kitchen godfather and original chef at Bibendum restaurant. Bob has the world’s largest charcoal barbecue – we recently barbecued 15 fillets of wagu beef to feed 100 people. The beef has the most delicious flavour, chargrilled, smoky and melt in the mouth tender when you cut into it. So the pop-up will feature some barbecue options this year – not your run of the mill sausages and burgers but beef fillet, four-hour slow cooked lamb, sharing platters of grilled aubergine, courgette and peppers with local broad beans, chilli, feta, mint and lemon.

My mum is also back behind her stove – as she famously makes my puds. This year — don’t worry — there will be a return of the hugely popular lemon curd tart, and she has also been making her own elderflower cordial and recently suggested a lemon mousse infused with lavender and her elderflower. Not only this, but she has dug up half her garden, and is growing so many veg, that she will be providing the pop-up with some lovely produce, grown with love in the village of Tackley.

The Field Kitchen Oxford has always been a bit of a family business, right from the start. My wife manages all the weddings – as well as being a film director, she is very proficient at organising things, which us men sometimes find a bit challenging. My sister-in-law bakes wedding cakes. And my in-laws own the van, and with my mum they were the ones who backed me and believed in me to start TFK. I’ve even taken on my cousin-in-law Ben Wilkins as an apprentice – he’s learning the ropes after two long suffering seasons as the washer-upper.

So you get the picture, this is a business filled with family, and as has always been my motto – I cook from the heart. I put my love on a plate – and it is this passion which I think gives TFK that feeling of being part of a special occasion. It is a unique dining experience and I hope to share it with you this summer.

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Email invite@thefieldkitchenoxford.com or see thefieldkitchenoxford.com