Cooked outside on the grill, by chefs rather than by an uncle. A crown roast of pork with orange, sage and garlic is not a burger, and a wedding barbecue in East Anglia in July is one of the best meals we serve all year.

From the fire

• Crown Roast Pork with Orange, Sage and Garlic (gf)
• Lamb Koftas with Mint Raita
• Teriyaki Salmon (gf)
• Sea Bass with Lemon Herb Dressing
• Portabello Mushroom and Blue Cheese (gf)

Accompaniments

• Courgettes and Green Beans with Chilli Relish (gf)
• English Summer Garden Salad (gf)
• Beetroot and Butternut Squash, Toasted Cumin (gf)
• Sweet Moroccan Spiced Cous Cous (gf)

The honest part

A barbecue is weather-dependent, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling. So every barbecue booking gets a written wet-weather version agreed in advance — normally the same proteins finished in the field kitchen and served as a sharing menu, with the decision taken on the morning rather than at six o’clock the night before.

That plan is not a downgrade. It is the same food and the same chefs; it just does not happen in front of your guests.

What it needs

Firing space downwind of the marquee and away from the seating. We bring the equipment, the fuel and the extinguishers, and the fire is manned from the moment it is lit until it is out.

Allergens

All fourteen declared allergens are listed against each dish on request, and we ask for every dietary requirement in writing before the tasting. Our kitchen handles nuts, gluten, dairy, egg, fish, shellfish, soya, celery, mustard, sesame, lupin, molluscs and sulphites, so we cannot guarantee any dish is free from traces. (gf) gluten free · (gfo) gluten free on request · (v) vegetarian · (ve) vegan · (vo) vegetarian on request Reeves Events holds a 5-star food hygiene rating.

A wedding barbecue is not a barbecue

It is worth saying plainly, because the word puts some people off and misleads others. This is not burgers handed over a kettle grill. It is a full menu cooked outside on commercial grills, served properly, to the same standard as anything else we do — whole cuts, slow cooking that started hours before anyone arrived, and sides that were not made in a bowl that morning.

What it borrows from a domestic barbecue is the informality and the smell. What it does not borrow is the queueing, the burnt outside and raw inside, or the host cooking their own party.

Why it suits a field

Cooking outdoors in a marquee wedding is not a compromise, it is the natural thing to do. The kitchen is already outside. The fire is visible, which people like far more than they expect to. And it removes the single biggest constraint on a field wedding, which is oven capacity — see marquee wedding catering.

It also scales unusually well. A barbecue for two hundred is a bigger fire and more hands, not a fundamentally harder problem the way two hundred plated courses is.

The weather question, answered honestly

Everybody asks it and the answer is straightforward: we cook under cover, and we plan the service two ways.

The cooking is not the problem — fire works in the rain under a shelter. The problem is whether guests will stand outside with a plate. So we agree a wet-weather version in advance: the same food, served under the marquee, with the queue arranged differently. We decide on the morning, not at four o’clock with everybody watching.

What we will not do is pretend the forecast is fine and improvise. That is how a barbecue wedding becomes the thing people politely never mention again.

Timing

Barbecue menus run later and looser than a plated wedding breakfast, which is usually the point. But the meat sets the clock, not the schedule — slow-cooked shoulder is ready when it is ready. Tell us the speeches and we will work back from them.

Related: sharing and feasting menus, festival style weddings, and evening and street food for later on.

We cook on gas, and why

Worth saying plainly, because people assume otherwise. We cook on commercial gas equipment rather than charcoal. That is not a preference — a professional kitchen operating at this scale is required to, and open charcoal is not something we are permitted to run.

In practice it is also the better tool for the job. Gas holds a temperature, which is what matters when two hundred portions have to come off at the same standard as the first twenty. Charcoal is wonderful for eight people in a garden and unforgiving at scale: hot spots, flare-ups, and meat that is charred outside and underdone in the middle. At a wedding that is not a risk worth taking with somebody’s main course.

What you get is the food a barbecue should produce — whole cuts, slow cooking that started hours earlier, proper crust and rest — cooked to a temperature we can actually stand behind. The informality is the point of a barbecue. The fire itself is not.

Where the kitchen goes

Cooking happens under cover, close enough to the marquee that people can see it and far enough that nobody is eating in it. On a recce we site it with the prevailing wind in mind, along with vehicle access and the gas and power runs.

Because we are not running open charcoal there is very little smoke to manage, which makes siting considerably easier than people expect — and it removes the conversation with a venue or a neighbour about smoke drifting somewhere it should not.