Rule number 1: Never touch another man’s grill. The backyard grill is a territory only big enough for one person to sear, season, flip and brush with a cold beverage in hand. Sure, there’s room for others to approach the grill to keep your gracious grill master/host company and chat saucy details of the love employed in preparing the marinades, skewers and rubs hours, if not days before you arrived. But while you’re told not to venture too close to another man’s grill because it’s his territory and you risk bringing his grilling prowess into question, it’s not always the testosterone smoke screen you perceive it to be. Having recently laid the foundations of my backyard grilling traditions, I’ve come to realise it’s an invisible perimeter whose materials come from a deeper place. You stay away from my grill because I’ve been so excited to cook this food that I’ve lovingly prepared for you, and you’re going to relax, be my guest, and let me show you great hospitality. Moments we’re all currently longing to experience again in a backyard near you.

Ever so slightly protective of my space behind our inherited charcoal grill

As a young man growing up in North America it’s a rite of passage for a father to spend time bonding with his son over the grill. It’s where first sips of beer are shared, and nuggets of grilling wisdom are passed down one generation to the next. My first memories of grilling with dad were over a charcoal “hibachi” model, revered for its low price and ability to be tossed atop the garbage at the end of the driveway once grilling season elapsed. Lump charcoal was stacked high into the bowl that sat loosely riveted to the spindly tripod legs, before being doused with lashings of lighter fluid. We waited for a few minutes to allow the fluid to penetrate the coals (grilling wisdom nugget), and then one last squirt of the noxious accelerant was added for “good luck” before striking the match and tossing it in from afar. The fire, which the neighbours may at first suspect contain scrap rubber given the plumes of black smoke billowing above the fence, would subside and once the coals had mellowed to a gentle glow I would cast a watchful gaze for any flare-ups to combat with my Batman water pistol as the thick, fatty ribeye steaks sizzled just above.

Years later my mom won our family’s first gas grill at a raffle which my dad and I assembled in the middle of our living room one Sunday afternoon in a mess of nuts and bolts, The Who playing in the background. The grill lasted for years which came as a surprise given the amount of “spare parts” that never made their way into its assembly. We were now a proud propane gas family capable of grilling at a moment’s notice and even keeping a side dish warm on the “high-tech” side burner (I only remember lighting this once, by accident, and melting a plastic tray to burner cover as it reached high temperature). However, cooking with gas is not without its drawbacks. I’ve been sent to bang on many a neighbour’s door at 7pm to beg for their propane cylinder as ours had run dry leaving dinner hanging in the balance, the cooling grill yielding fewer and fewer “sizzles” as each moment elapsed.

Despite the freedom of gas grilling, we are a proud charcoal family today

In Canada you may suspect grilling to be a uniquely summer affair given the average snowfall in southwestern Ontario but the gas grill knows no season, eh! Grilling in the winter required only a few extra minutes of preparation to put on boots, shovel a path through the waist-deep snow from the back door to the grill and the snow brush from the car to locate the grill somewhere beneath its powdery white blanket. Fingers would freeze as I struck the heads off no-name BBQ matches one after another. Finally I’d coax one that survived the gusts of wind into the hole near the burner, igniting the cloud of gas that had since formed with a startling BOOM! If you didn’t detect the smell of burnt hair lingering in the air everything was OK. It’s also handy to have a flashlight in the winter as it gets dark early, but I was able to illuminate the grill by flailing my outstretched arms, tongs in hand, to trip the yard’s motion sensor light when gauging the doneness of dinner.

Since leaving home, Scott and I have been keen to begin grilling traditions of our very own. Our first five years in the big city were spent in our half of the ground floor of a crumbling Hammersmith row house we rented from Mr. Patel (for real). Our attempts to “entertain” were comically genuine, enticing friends to pull a folding chair up to the tiny table in the middle of our bedroom/living room/dining room. Washroom trips required 10 minute intervals between to allow the tank to refill and the power would often cut mid-soirée as the balance on our coin operated electrical supply ran low and required topping up. Glasses rattled in the cupboards every 5 minutes as the District and Piccadilly line trains crossed the tracks a few meters from our back window. A genuine London experience. At dinner parties we paired ample Tesco Selection vintages to induce a hangover crippling enough to erase memory of our cramped and ill-equipped venue.

Ever so slightly more spacious than the Hammersmith Studio

We’d finally reached our breaking point and were searching for an upgrade with 1 box consistently checked to filter results: Garden. We wanted to have an outdoor space to enjoy, eager to create our own traditions of grilling and entertaining friends at home properly. It would also be nice to have somewhere to sit and relax that wasn’t our bed or tiny eating table for two nestled in the small footprint between our bed, dresser and slanted Ikea wardrobe. After weeks of searching we found THE place. Our new Clapham flat boasted a big back garden where we even found a charcoal grill behind a tree, in need of some TLC but most importantly, free. Our 50-something Jamaican neighbour would smoke joints day and night and sing along to the reggae rhythms of his youth while erecting abstract structures in his congested back garden from scrap (hiding from his wife?). Police would canvas the neighbourhood from time to time in search of suspects in the latest stabbing, but nobody really bothered us as we acclimatised to our new spacious surroundings and SW postcode. Weekends were spent tidying up and getting the garden into comfortably “instagrammable” condition. We planted tomatoes along the sunnier side, ordered gas “tiki torches” online to illuminate the space at night, and had oregano, basil and thyme to employ in our home cooked recipes. Plastic flamingos watched on from beneath the rose bushes.

If you were off on a Sunday and wanted somewhere to drink wine in the afternoon in the sunshine, graze on snacks and then tuck into a heavenly BBQ feast for dinner you came ‘round to ours. I would Uber home ingredients from our suppliers at work on Friday nights, benefitting from cost pricing on high quality cuts of meat, line-caught fish and farm fresh, seasonal vegetables and fruits for our BBQ extravaganzas. Prep would begin on Saturday with Scott soaking skewers and marinating cuts of chicken, lamb and pork in rich marinades. Salad ingredients were prepped and desserts were baked, leaving only smaller finishing tasks for the following day.

If time allowed there would be a signature cocktail served on arrival, however we soon learned that Margaritas were counter-productive to all guests being awake when dinner hit the table (you know who you are…). There were never enough chairs, or forks, or glasses to go around. A small gathering would sometimes turn into a dozen or more hungry guests, and a rotating “in/out” policy for beers and wine in the fridge and freezer. Red wine was drunk from flutes, and grilled meats attacked with spoons from plates rested on laps. If more guests arrived, we began setting up the furniture of our rented flat into the “lounge” outside beneath the fig trees (full refund on our deposit when we left though!). The spread was always bountiful with platters of grilled meats, stuffed whole fish, composed salads and flavourful condiments to dig into. I cooked from the heart and relished the opportunity to cook what I was inspired to cook in the moment. Everyone ate in absolute silence; the ultimate compliment to the chef. No matter how many bottles of wine and beer we started with, a trip was always made before 11pm when Sainsbury’s closed for a few unnecessary bottles of cheap New Zealand cabernet sauvignon and a pack of Marlborough Golds to keep the party going a few hours longer. As the last bottles were poured upside-down everyone was bleary-eyed and on their way home to have a few glasses of water and look in the mirror wondering how they would make it through Monday.

Hosting a BBQ after finishing the London Triathlon last year, complete with a 4kg line-caught sea bass stuffed with roasted onions, fennel and rosemary

Scott and I developed such an enthusiasm for having our friends around every summer weekend. We loved having “the place” where everyone could come and relax in the garden, have a few drinks, listen to music and relax. I relished the opportunity to cook from the heart and show our closest friends genuine hospitality. Somewhere along the way cooking became a job. Too many other factors became intertwined with my desire to make people happy with what I wanted to cook, which is fine because I wasn’t working in a restaurant with my name on the door. I now realise what I miss so much about Sunday’s at home was our ability to be that restaurateur couple team and open the doors and welcome our friends to a place we were so proud to share. Our little 12-seater restaurant on Haselrigge Road in South London. From the scented candles and fresh hand towels in the bathroom, to the manicured garden, candles, music, food prepared with love and chilled wines, we loved taking care of our guests and creating their perfect Sunday garden experience. It’s a feeling few rival, and one we are most looking forward to when we are once again permitted to bask in the glory of life with those who make it worth living.