Caernarfon-born chef Chris 'Flamebaster' Roberts is a man of many talents. Since discovering his love for whipping up a feast over fire, his cookery career has seen him run a food festival, pop-ups and kitchen takeovers, travel the world with his fire cooking, present two of his own food travel shows (on BBC and S4C with a new series in the works), star in a Celebrity special and Welsh version of Gogglebox - Gogglebocs - and, best of all, bring people together via good food. All while doing a day job of being a carer for adults with disabilities and being a father of three young kids. I'm exhausted just writing it.
Chris, who is bilingual, has always had a keen interest in food - his website explains how when his friends were watching Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles as kids, he'd watch food-travel shows and chefs like Keith Floyd, Rick Stein and Two Fat Ladies - and was surrounded by "amazing home cooks" made up of his north Walian mam, dad, two grandmothers and uncle.
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While his glowing reputation in the food industry - especially in Wales - stems mostly from his open-fire speciality (and no doubt his infectiously friendly energy), his love for this particular style of cooking only really took off in his twenties and was sparked following the death of his father ten years ago.
His dad, he explains, frequently travelled to Patagonia - a region shared by Argentina and Chile which speaks Welsh - and there he'd go fishing and camping with the 'Gauchos' "living the 'Asado' life". While his dad would return and regale stories of his travels, as a teen Chris "didn't think that stuff was cool at all" and so didn't appreciate it until after his father passed.
"When my dad passed away, I saw a Chef's Table episode with Francis Mallmann [an Argentine celebrity chef], and when I saw his Chef's Table episode, all my dad's stories came flooding back and hit me hard."
After that, he set about teaching himself the way of the Asado with a grill and two bricks - the term used to describe a traditional Argentinian barbecue, although it's so much more than the BBQs we know and love here in the UK. Never with gas but wood and charcoal - and fell in love with it.
"As soon as I saw [the Chef's table clip in 2016], I said: 'Okay, I'm gonna make my own food festival in Caernarfon'. I just wanted to make a little feast for like 60/70 people; have a little field and have my own little food festival. But the hype for that went crazy. I had like 4000 people trying to enter. It snowballed from then."
He added: "For me here it's just celebrating about it and shouting about it. Fire just brings people together. Fire doesn't care which social class you are, where you're from, who you are. You're all drawn to the fire. Booze, loud DJs, that's my vibe. So it snowballed from that. It's been a bit crazy for me."
Since then, he has taken this style to a new level by cooking the likes of a whole cow over flames - feeding 500 people in his home town - and has even cooked for some of his heroes. One of which was the man who catapulted his desire to cook on fire in the first place: Francis Mallman.
"I met Francis Mallman last year when I was filming in New York [for a cooking show] so that was cool to be able to say 'Diolch, thank you' to him. Without watching his programme I probably wouldn't be here cooking now.
"He said 'the fire path brings us together once again', so hopefully in the future it'll be something we can do together."
Although it's not something he has "mastered" yet, he says. "Once you think you have mastered the fire, the fire has a way of showing you... it's not mastered. There's a lot of variables cooking outside."
When we speak to the 38-year-old, he had recently returned back from the shores of the Jurassic Coast in Dorset where he hosted Britain's most remote restaurant for one day only in partnership with outdoor pizza oven, Gozney - although it was way more than just pizza he was cooking.
"It was amazing," he tells me, "I was so excited when I was approached to do this 'Britain's most remote restaurant' pop-up for one day only. It was such a beautiful day to and using the Gozney Roccboxes, the portable pizza ovens, cooking up a feast. I wanted to cook something different to pizza to show the versatility of the Roccbox. It was beautiful. Showcasing the best local produce. We had mackerel caught from the local bay, burnt leeks with local goat's cheese with brown butter... Lamb chops. Loads of pickles, salsas, flatbreads... good fun."
Recalling the reaction he received from diners he cooked for, he added: "They couldn't believe that all this food was cooked on two Roccboxes [outside], but it was cool. Life is fast nowadays. It nice to have a meal outside, in the middle of nowhere, with a bit of fire. Brings people together."
When he's not whisking up a storm for keen foodies around the country, Chris's "day job" is one he has been doing for 17 years and is what he credits as being a massive part of his love affair with cooking.
"My day job is working with people with learning disabilities that live in Caernarfon. And I support them to be as independent as they can. I've been doing that for 17 years now. I haven't got much time nowadays! But the person I support is like family, I've been with him for 17 years, so I can never stop doing that job, really.
"When I started that job, it was a lot of people that were in supportive housing [and they] weren't eating very well. It was easy to eat microwave meals. But if I asked the person I was working with what they would like to eat, I'd make an ingredients list for them and go to the fishermonger, the butchers, the supermarket... the person you support will learn new life skills. It's amazing how that increases their self esteem.
"Mixing with people, not just buying the produce, but [hearing] the stories of these shops. It's the people you talk with. Then cooking the food, [they're] learning key skills. I realised the power of food. So that's where my love of cooking really started. [It's] making a positive impact in somebody's life. To see people maybe that would have been institutionalised or have been institutionalised now [be] successful parts of communities.... Food is a powerful thing."
Something Chris keeps returning to, throughout our chat, is food being an amazing tool for bringing people together and he reflects on the time he cooked several whole lambs serving council estates "where I used to live" in Caernarfon. He says: "It doesn't matter who you are, where you're from... It's accessible when we do it and where we do it."
If you've not tried Chris' food for yourself - at one of his popups, or even Chrisfest in 2017 - you may recognise the chef, whose nickname Flamebaster comes from a tool he uses called the Flambé Dwr to add (baste) fat into dishes like Menai oysters, from one of his television shows which S4C and BBC aired: Bwyd Epic Chris and Chris a'r Afal Mawr.
But how did he go from cooking over fire for the people of Caernarfon, to hosting food shows - in Welsh - across Wales and then the Big Apple, for which he has won awards?
"Back in 2016 one of my best mates approached me just to do some videos for Facebook. So videos of recipes and I had my little barbeque in random, beautiful places in Snowdonia without having any permissions," he laughs. "And they kind of went - locally, in Wales - viral. They were all in Welsh. So from that I was approached by S4C digital [for a series] and they were just blowing up.
"And then I got a series in 2018: Bwyd Epic Chris - all cooking around Caernarfon and the surrounding area. Then lockdown happened, so we did two series in the first lockdown. That was crazy. And then it was like 'I've got nowhere else to cook. I've cooked everywhere in Caernarfon, everywhere in north Wales, I need to go abroad'."
With this in mind, Chris pitched the idea of doing a series in New York to S4C and it was a hit. "I pitched an hour episode and they said 'can we do three hours there?' But when we [Chris and fellow chef and friend Tomos Parry] were there we could have done 10 hours in New York, I fell in love with it."
His television appearances led to him being awarded with two BAFTA Cymru awards and best presenter at the RTS Cymru Awards last year - something he never thought could happen as someone hosting a cooking programme. "I don't see myself as a presenter. I am a guy who cooks and eats and just wings it - whatever I want to say, I say it. It's a bit bonkers! I'm just a boy from Caernarfon who likes cooking and eating."
His reputation for brilliant cooking and presenting saw him appearing on the Welsh Christmas special episode of Gogglebox - Gogglebocs, on which he starred with his mam - who he reveals he chose to appear with rather than any celebrity pals.
"It was a lot of fun," he recalls, "Very surreal. I was out of my comfort zone. My mam kept it real so it was cool. She loved it." Reflecting on being recognised in the street after appearing on this, he say: "It's very weird, very weird but very cool."
Alongside his deep love of food and cheffing, Chris is a keen golfer and, before leaning into his love of cooking, he got hooked on the sport after an injury playing rugby forced him to take a year out. At 18, he took a tour around Europe competing in various long drive tours and attended the Las Vegas world championship - which opened his eyes to different food cultures "without really realising."
Now, he's not as serious about golfing ("hitting the ball as far as I can") due to various injuries but still takes part in a '+2 handicap'. Another hobby of his - one which saw him meeting his now partner "wonder woman" Amy - is foraging, which he enjoys doing with his kids and his dogs.
He reveals the pair first met when Chris moved next door and after noticing her foraging in the woods nearby with a wicker basket, he tried to impress her by explaining how he'd picked Lion's Mane Mushroom - however, this backfired, he laughs, when she "put me in my place" by explaining how this species is protected. Rather than eating it, he should have reported it to the correct body.
It's safe to say it didn't become an issues as after several years together, they now have three kids - all of which, he says, love his fire cooking.
"The kids are four and two and ten weeks old. The four and two-year-old can already identify mushrooms. Foraging is a way of unwinding too. And [it's] free food. There's nothing better than free food. At the moment, I'm into coastal foraging." He's particularly enjoying wild garlic, samphire and seaweed, which he loves combining with salt marsh lamb. "We've got amazing seaweed, there's some amazing people in Wales farming seaweed."
Chris is clearly passionate about Welsh produce and rejoices over the fact that Wales has "the best seafood in the world". And while that may be so (in his and our opinion), he can't believe there aren't that many seafood restaurants or bistros on the coast of north Wales - like they do in Europe. "We need to teach the young generations from scratch what produce we have and get them to eat it!"
I suggest: Why doesn't he start up his own and get the ball rolling? "I don't want to miss what's going on. It's too much hard work. Keep the balance of having kids. I like picking and choosing where I do my pop ups or taking over dead spaces. Every day... it's not for me at the moment."
Keep your eyes peeled for the latest cookery series Chris is currently working on - he reveals it should be released on S4C later this year.
To learn more about Chris 'Flamebaster' Roberts, see his website. To watch his cooking shows, see here.
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