About

ABOUT OPEN FIRE CO

Open Fire Co is a purveyor of live fire suspension BBQ with an emphasis on immersive, cinematic guest experiences. We specialize in outdoor events that bring in the guest to a magically primitive world where all food is cooked with coals, fire and ash without the use of electricity.

Our favorite events are intimate private gatherings - think long lunches or dinners - where we can work with the client to prepare a bespoke, multi-course menu that unfolds over several hours. In this way, we produce a theater of food on the innovative fire cage that fire chef Mark Stevens Roncoli designed and developed over nearly a decade years of fire cooking.

The "Hang," Open Fire Co's main attraction, is a curated, live cooking performance based on the lost art of human connection. When folks sit around a fire, pretenses fall away, and so does the rest of the world. Mark's cooking ethos leans into that with a focus on sustainability, using offcuts and eschewing conventional methods.

We are well equipped for adventurous weddings, corporate events, food festivals, birthday gatherings, bachelor/bachelorette functions, and restaurant pop-ups and collaborations. No matter the occasion or weather, we can adapt. Everyone who circles through our BBQs has one thing in common: love of discovery and adventure.

ABOUT MARK

Mark Stevens Roncoli is a New Orleans based open fire chef, cookbook author, and world traveler - having visited all seven continents and 50 US States. He grew up campfire cooking with his can-cook-anything Italian mother and American father, an avid fisherman. Open Fire Co is a culmination of a lifetime of cooking in the elements, to be able to provide that same connection to nature for others.

Mark has been featured in the New York Times, written two travel cookbooks and was a featured demo chef at the Smoke & Fire Festival in Maldon, UK.

MY PHILOSOPHY

Open fire cooking for me is a way to connect to other people. I came by it organically. As a kid, our family vacations would be camping. My dad and older brother would fish - I’d tag along and be annoying - and I’d help my mom cook over the campfire (and our old Coleman propane stove).

Later in life I rediscovered my love of campfire cooking. And as I became more proficient at it, I began to become even more addicted to people’s reactions to my fire cooking exploits that I’d practice between film jobs.

I’ve been in the film industry for over 20 years… the last decade as a First Assistant Director on TV shows and movies. You can see my IMDb here. With the Covid shutdown, the actor/writer strikes and media industry contraction, I pivoted to fire cooking full time.

This however, more than anything, explains how my cooking style became so cinematic. I approach a Hang the same way I break down a scene in a script. The questions are only slightly different.

How will the guests see and smell the food for the first time? How they will interact and move around the setup? How will the event flow through the space?

Each detail of experience is carefully considered to build layers of memories.

My philosophy is thus baked in to the experiential aspect of creating an event. The food has to be amazing. But each layer of experience creates a stronger memory, just the same as layering flavor into food.

-Mark Stevens Roncoli