I’ve been out barbecuing again - and it certainly is the season for it as the clouds continue to stay away and the sunshine continues, albeit in a cold kind of way.

The article I was working on is in today’s Western Morning News, but here are a few bits and pieces about what we were doing lifted from the article…

People used to have business meetings or even working lunches, now there’s team barbecues.  At least, that was the scene for me this week when I ventured out of my Exmoor valley for the first work appointment away from home in many months. And why not tweak a work commitment and make it fun, especially after the loneliness of lockdown? After all, the British barbecue season is well and truly with us now…

There really were genuine excuses for me and my colleagues to turn our meeting into a barbecue this week. For a start, one of RAW Food and Drink PR’s clients is the famous Kamado Joe BBQ brand and the company’s head of global marketing, Ben Forte, wanted to show us a totally new product in action. And is there a better way of showing off what a barbecue can do than by actually cooking on it? 

And Ben is a top expert when it comes to cooking over a live flame - so I knew were were in for a delicious working lunch the moment I saw the menu, which included a whole fish, barbecued Thai style. This would be followed by La Galbi - thinly sliced short-rib, cooked Korean style. There would also be Cochinita Pibil, a Mexican pork dish. I can’t recall when I’ve looked forward to a business meeting more…

And then, if you’ve gone to all the trouble of creating fabulous dishes in order to show off your latest model - why not get one of the best food-photographers in the UK to capture some memorable images?

This all seemed to make perfect sense as I left the motorway at Exeter to reach my colleague Harry Wilde’s garden in Topsham. Harry is a key member of the RAW team, but she also happens to be the partner of Nick Hook, who really is one of the top food photographers in Britain - as witnessed by the impressive list of clients he has across the South West.