When outdoor cooking offers a new culinary experience
Cooking outdoors means returning to our origins while opening up to new horizons. Instinctive and refined, outdoor cooking is now conquering gourmet tables and taking center stage. This article explores the trends in outdoor cooking and reveals why the wood-fired oven is becoming the ideal tool for chefs.
In the world of hotels and restaurants, outdoor events are on a roll. Nowadays, guests expect not just a meal, but an experience in its own right: sharing, savoring and escaping in a natural or unusual setting. Cooking and gathering outside for a meal means rediscovering the sincerity of gestures, the emotion of moments, and also reconnecting with a more sustainable approach, respectful of seasons and resources.
Outdoor cooking is becoming a major trend: it’s becoming more theatrical, claiming a return to basics and anchoring itself in a more responsible approach.
- The dramatization of cooking: outdoor cooking becomes an experience in its own right. Popularized by Argentine chef Francis Malmann(Château La Coste and Restaurante Garzon) and his sublime wood-fired dinners, outdoor cooking transforms every meal into a sensory ritual. Bright flames, glowing embers, fragrant smoke: the spectacle is as much visual as it is olfactory, and it brings people together around a shared emotion. In Marseilles and throughout the Bouches-du-Rhône department, chef Emmanuel Perrodin organizes Dîners Insolites every summer in July, a large table featuring a 4-hand menu, with local chefs and producers. Recently, he collaborated on the Ardent dinner, the very 1st gastronomic dinner in a wood-fired oven, held in the workshops of the Ephrem factory. The program included dinner under the stars, Occitan a cappella songs and a Saint John’s bonfire.
- Back to basics and instinctive cooking: outdoor cuisine is all about sharing, valuing the “handmade”, local produce and traditional know-how. Diners seek this direct, almost raw, link to the product and tradition. The example of chef
Tetsuro Hoshino
with his restaurant
Txipsa
is a perfect illustration of this trend: his Basque cuisine combines fire and local produce to create a sincere and memorable experience. In Menorca,
Casa Humo Menorca
3. Sustainability and local roots: outdoor meals are part of a more respectful approach, while bringing diners together in a convivial atmosphere. By giving priority to local produce and short supply chains, some restaurants are strengthening their sense of responsibility and their ties to the region. In this vein, chef Nadia Sammut head of the restaurant La Fenière in Provence, illustrates this return to origins with a cuisine rooted in the terroir, sincere and deeply committed.
In this context, the wood fire is one of the most emblematic expressions of these trends: it combines visual and sensory spectacle, artisan sincerity and sustainable conviviality. This is why it has become a major asset for hotel-restaurateurs who want to stand out from the crowd.
The wood-fired oven: the new playground for chefs
A wood-fired oven is not just a cooking method: it becomes a signature tool, capable of transforming the experience of guests, marking the identity of a place and opening up new culinary perspectives.
Spectacle & hospitality: the flame captivates and reenchants the art of entertaining. For chefs, it’s not just a decoration, but a living, demanding raw material. Cooking over a wood fire means reconnecting with the original cooking method, one that has spanned the millennia and shaped the gestures of all the world’s cuisines. In a restaurant, the ember is not just a tool: it becomes the symbol of rediscovered authenticity, embodied hospitality and a memorable experience for the guest. With Woodend installed in the heart of the Maroma Hotel in Mexico, chef Curtis Stone has transformed this age-old memory into a contemporary signature. Here, everything is born of fire: meats grilled with precision, vegetables seared in the embers, fish caressed by smoke. The experience is total, multi-sensorial, conceived as a journey that links the plate to the elements.
This approach is more than just technical prowess: it’s a commitment. Recognized by the Michelin Guide, the chef’s approach is rooted in dialogue with local farmers and fishermen, whose products are enhanced by wood-fired cooking.
Authenticity & taste: wood-fired gastronomy is enjoying a new lease of life. While pizza and barbecue have long been the embodiment of this convivial and universal cooking method, chefs now see it as a much wider creative field, enabling them to explore this primitive cooking method with contemporary technicality. Francis Mallmann laid the foundations with his spectacular banquets in Patagonia; Lennox Hastie in Sydney ( Firedoor ), has built an entire restaurant where every dish, from delicately seared fish to gently smoked vegetables, is born exclusively from the flame. In Spain, Victor Arguinzoniz ( Asador Etxebarri ) has elevated the grill to the rank of culinary art, developing an absolute mastery of embers to sublimate raw products, from caviar to seasonal vegetables.
Today, these new approaches show that fire is not just an ancestral cooking method: it is a creative tool, a raw material that demands precision and know-how, and opens up a unique sensory field.
Differentiation & culinary storytelling: in Corsica,
A Cucina di Providenza
combines agriculture, culinary creation and artistic expression for one summer. Part farm, part chef and artist residency, this singular place tells a story. Here, the wood-fired oven becomes the guiding thread for experiences where terroir, innovation and sharing meet to redraw the contours of a very contemporary gastronomy.
Eneko Atxa (
Azurmendi
3 Michelin stars, Basque Country) is renowned for his culinary storytelling: each dish tells a story about his territory, its producers and Basque memory. For him, fire (grilling, smoking, embers) is used not only as a technique, but as a metaphor for transmission. He takes diners on a journey that begins in his restaurant’s vegetable gardens, even before they sit down to eat.
The wood-fired oven is much more than a tool: it’s a scene, an identity and an experience. Its strength: it adapts to each location and reveals incomparable value for those who bring it to life.
The Flambeur Pro: the revival of the traditional wood-fired oven
To combine immersive experience and culinary signature, Ephrem has imagined Le Flambeur Proa professional wood-fired oven that’s more than just a tool. With its sculptural lines and contemporary aesthetic,
- Culinary versatility: available in 90 Pro or 120 Pro versions, Le Flambeur is ideal for a wide range of uses. Its generous cooking chamber makes it easy to serve quick pizzas for festive evenings, while offering the precision needed to compose gourmet menus: meats seared at high temperature, fish smoked gently, vegetables confit slowly in the embers. A true creative tool, it allows you to grill, roast, simmer, candy or smoke with the same mastery.
- Visual experience and design: conceived as a veritable design object, Le Flambeur puts the flame on show. Its sleek design, sculptural lines and noble materials make it a focal point at any event, capable of attracting the eye and sublimating the culinary act…
- Professional reliability: designed with high-performance refractory materials, including chamotte, it is engineered to withstand intensive throughput without loss of performance. A true mass furnace, it ensures even, homogeneous firing, and retains its heat for up to 48 hours, guaranteeing uncompromising continuity of service.
- Durability: handcrafted in France, Le Flambeur embodies robustness designed to last. The use of natural materials and its raison d’être – wood-fired cooking – are part of a sustainable approach that respects products and meets the expectations of today’s chefs and diners.
👉 Discover Le Flambeur 90 Pro: product sheet
👉 Discover Le Flambeur 120 Pro: product sheet
Diner Ardent: three chefs for a unique menu and wood-fired cooking
Emmanuel Perrodin, Julien Diaz and Manu Barthélémy. Three chefs, one challenge: to imagine a five-part menu, entirely designed around the wood-fired oven. More than an exercise in style, it’s a technical and artistic performance in which each firing becomes a language.
From crusty bread to seared meats, from candied vegetables to smoked desserts, everything went through the wood-fired oven. Local and seasonal products served as the guiding thread, enhanced by precise, precise cooking, always as close as possible to the flame. In the half-light, embers danced and flames crackled. Woody aromas, smoky textures, bold flavors: a total sensory experience, where the power of fire met its poetry.
“Fire isn’t just a means of cooking, it’s a raw material: it sculpts taste, shapes textures and creates the moment.
Manu Barthélémy, Lo Pichotome, Forcalquier
📖 Read the full story of this event on our blog post.
▶️ Also discover the immersive video of the Dîner Ardent on Instagram.
Mastering wood-fired cooking: from challenges to best practices
While a wood fire brings authenticity and emotion, it also requires a certain amount of preparation to reveal its full potential. A few best practices will help you get the most out of it:
- Provide the right space and setting: think carefully about how to integrate the oven into the terrace, rooftop or garden, so that it becomes a real rallying point.
- Train your teams: mastering heating, cooking times and safety is essential to guarantee regularity and peace of mind in service.
- Choosing the right wood: each species brings distinct flavors and contributes to culinary storytelling.
- Anticipating sustainability: favouring responsible sourcing and high-performance equipment that limits emissions.
With these precautions, fire remains a powerful ally: it enhances the customer experience without weighing down logistics, and transforms every service into a unique moment.
The wood-fired oven: a powerful tool for differentiation
From culinary spectacle to strategic differentiation, the wood-fired oven ticks all the boxes of today’s hospitality expectations. It combines gustatory pleasure, culinary signature and hospitality, while transforming cooking into a memorable, sensory experience.
👉 At Ephrem, we design and manufacture professional wood-fired ovens to suit your projects and your indoor and outdoor spaces. Discover our models and solutions to make your events a real success: Discover our professional wood-fired ovens.
