Words by Richard Cornish Images Supplied
Across Victoria, there is a vast and ever-increasing demand for events in beautiful remote places. The biggest problem doing events outdoors is catering. How do you feed 100 people on the sandy bank of a slow-flowing river or in the middle of a rainforest clearing?
Well, the answer comes towed behind a four-wheel drive. The Roving Kitchen is a fully functioning catering service kitchen housed inside a converted Topline horse float. With turbo fan oven, 36 square metres of sheltered space under lift-up awnings, double sink, hot water, 120 litres of water storage and sullage, stainless shelving, and 200-litre fridge, The Roving Kitchen is the brainchild of Daylesford Caterer Gary Thomas from Spade to Blade.
“During COVID I realised that more and more people would want to eat outdoors,” he says. “And that market was not going to go away. There is a huge demand for events outdoors but no way of feeding people,” he says.
People want to party in remote, beautiful places. So chef Andrew Dennis and I developed this business.
The Roving Kitchen mobile kitchen can be upgraded with a portable fridge, generator, induction cooktops, and other add-ons depending on the dining format. It is now available for hire, so regional chefs and other caterers can use it to cater on farms and remote places in regional Victoria.
Gary has already test-driven the former horse float putting it through its paces and over hurdles at several events held around central Victoria. He and Andrew have a strictly local produce ethos and only use produce from the region. “The Roving Kitchen is ideal for telling the local food story,” says Gary. “We did a wedding on a potato farm in that rich, deep, chocolate brown soil and served a meal with potatoes from the farm and lamb from a neighbouring farm,” he says. “It makes such a difference cooking with local food.
People respond to it quite emotionally.” Gary passed on a recent menu that included English White beef sausage rolls from a farm in nearby Blampied, foraged wood bluet mushrooms, pork from a local farm, slow-cooked lamb, and even locally made tofu. The Roving Kitchen also works as a mobile bar.
THE DETAILS
WHAT: The Roving Kitchen
WHERE: Available throughout Victoria
MORE INFO: The Roving Kitchen or if you’d like Gary to cater for you visit Spade to Blade
We wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land and to pay our respects to their Elders, past and present.
