A whole weekend around the fire. Extraordinary food. Extraordinary cooks. Just 170 guests.
Set in the beautiful North Devon countryside near Atherington, Smoke on the Waters is the May Bank Holiday Feast of Fire gathering — an intimate weekend of live-fire cooking, restaurant-quality food, demonstrations, music and time spent alongside some exceptional chefs and pitmasters. The venue sits in the Devon countryside rather than a conventional festival site, which is exactly how Feast of Fire is meant to feel.
This is not a food festival where your ticket simply gets you through the gate and you then spend the weekend queuing and paying again for small samples.
Your ticket buys the Feast of Fire experience.
Across the weekend, our chefs create a succession of dishes specifically for the guests attending. Internationally experienced pitmasters, chefs travelling in from overseas, TV chefs, barbecue specialists and personalities come together not simply to demonstrate what they do, but to spend the weekend with you.
They will be around the fires developing and preparing the dishes with the wider Feast of Fire team, explaining techniques, demonstrating cooks, answering questions and then serving you the food you have watched come together.
There is no distant backstage VIP area. The whole event is the VIP area
WHAT WILL I EAT?
A lot. The Feast of Fire format is built around a full weekend of scheduled dishes.
FRIDAY to SUNDAY
After an arrival Cocktail Experience the schedule provides for Friday evening food at 18:30 and 21:00 alongside the opening cocktail experience. Then Saturday sees seven separate food moments spread throughout the day, giving you time to eat, watch demonstrations, explore different fires and cooking equipment, talk to the cooks, enjoy the music and relax before the next dish arrives. Sunday then offers another breakfast before the grand finale lunch to see out the weekend.
NOT FESTIVAL FOOD. PROPER FOOD.
These are not token tasting portions designed to get thousands of people through a queue. Feast of Fire is limited to a tiny audience so that our cooks can create proper, restaurant-quality dishes for the people who have come to spend the weekend with them. The food will draw on flavours, techniques and traditions from around the world. Some cooks will be working with pits and smokers. Others with grills, open fires, hanging systems, planchas, cages, rotisseries and equipment you may never have seen before. Every Feast of Fire also introduces a different showpiece cooking machine, fire installation or technique, so even returning guests see something new.
MEET THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE FOOD
One of the most valuable things your ticket buys cannot really be put on a plate. At an ordinary food event you might see a famous chef give a 30-minute demonstration and disappear. At Feast of Fire, the chefs are part of the weekend. Watch them prepare. Stand around the fires. Ask questions. Talk about equipment, ingredients, techniques and barbecue. See what happens when experienced cooks from different backgrounds start exchanging ideas with each other. Then later, have a drink and find yourself chatting to the same people whose food you were eating that afternoon. For a weekend, you get a glimpse into the life of a live-fire chef or pitmaster rather than simply watching one from the audience.
WHAT ELSE IS INCLUDED?
Your Feast of Fire ticket includes:
- the complete scheduled weekend food programme;
- the opening cocktail experience;
- live cooking and demonstrations;
- access to the participating chefs, pitmasters and fire cooks;
- live music;
- included entertainment across the weekend;
- camping on site for those who want it;
- access to the Feast of Fire site throughout the event;
- the opportunity to experience the different fires, pits, grills and showpiece cooking equipment.
A licensed bar will operate throughout the event. Your drinks are the only thing you purchase separately.
WHY ONLY 170 TICKETS?
Because Feast of Fire is not trying to become bigger. It is trying to become better. Tickets are strictly limited to approximately 170 guests because the intimacy is the point. At that size, the chefs can talk to you. Guests recognise one another. People sit together, eat together and naturally start conversations. By Sunday, it can feel less like attending an event and more like having spent a weekend as part of a very unusual extended family. We want Feast of Fire to develop into a community of returning guests, cooks and friends — not an event that eventually becomes thousands of people standing in queues.
ALWAYS CHANGING, ALWAYS NEW
The Feast of Fire format remains. Everything inside it changes. Different chefs. Different dishes. Different influences. Different cooking techniques. Different equipment. Different showpiece fire cook. That means Smoke on the Waters should never simply repeat the previous year. And if you also join us at our Wexford event later in the summer, you won’t simply be attending the Devon weekend again in another country. It will be another Feast entirely.
CAMP, EAT, DRINK, LEARN — AND SLOW DOWN
Camping is included for guests who want to stay on site. That matters because Feast of Fire isn’t something we want you rushing away from after dinner. Stay. Have another drink. Listen to the music. Walk back towards the fires. Talk to someone you met over lunch. Wake up in the Devon countryside and do it all again.
ONE TICKET. THE WEEKEND IS YOURS.
Restaurant-quality fire-cooked food throughout the weekend. International chefs and pitmasters. Demonstrations. Camping. Music. Entertainment. Cocktail experience. Extraordinary equipment. A licensed bar. And only around 170 people there to experience it.
There isn’t another tier of ticket that gets you closer to the chefs. There isn’t a VIP enclosure. This is Feast of Fire. Everyone with a ticket is already inside.
YOUR PLACE AROUND THE FIRE
Smoke on the Waters takes place over the May Bank Holiday weekend in North Devon. Places will remain deliberately limited regardless of demand. Returning Feast of Fire guests are given preferential opportunities to secure future tickets before general release, helping us gradually build the community around these events. If this sounds like your kind of weekend, don’t wait for Feast of Fire to become bigger. It won’t.