A Deeply Rooted Companion for the Fire-Curious Cook
If you’ve ever stood over glowing coals at 11 PM, convinced you could coax just a little more magic from tired embers, Justin Smillie’s Slow Fires will feel like finding your people. This isn’t another cookbook promising to revolutionize your weeknight routine—thank God. It’s a quiet manifesto for those of us stubborn enough to believe that good things still take time.
Smillie, the chef behind Upland and Il Buco Alimentari, writes like someone who’s made peace with the fact that the best meals can’t be rushed, scheduled, or optimized. His approach to braising, roasting, and grilling reads less like instruction and more like invitation—to slow down, pay attention, and remember that cooking is still, fundamentally, a conversation between you and fire.
The Revolutionary Act of Patience
In a world obsessed with efficiency, Slow Fires commits the revolutionary act of asking you to wait. To watch bubbles form. To smell the moment sugar turns to caramel. To trust your instincts over your timer. This is cooking as meditation, fire as teacher—the kind of approach that feels almost rebellious in our hurried moment.
The book organizes itself around three elemental techniques, each treated with the reverence of an old craftsman showing an apprentice the ropes. But these aren’t your grandmother’s pot roasts (though she’d approve). Smillie layers in bright acids, unexpected spices, and global influences that feel earned rather than forced. His lamb shoulder with turmeric and honey isn’t fusion food—it’s evolution. And it is just plain delicious.
What Fire Teaches
The grilling section speaks to me most directly. Here’s a chef who understands that live fire isn’t a gimmick, the latest food trend, or a weekend hobby—it’s an ancient technology for transformation. His approach is elemental, respectful, and completely uninterested in the performative aspects of “grilling culture.” Just you, the flame, and whatever needs cooking.
His vegetable work particularly shines. Blistered escarole (exceptional), fire-roasted carrots with charmoula, grilled broccoli elevated with anchovy breadcrumbs—this is produce-forward cooking that doesn’t apologize for bold flavors or honest char. Even his meat dishes seem designed around the vegetables that anchor them, a California sensibility that transcends geography.
The Beautiful Burden of Complexity
Slow Fires won’t make your life easier. Some recipes nest inside other recipes, demanding the kind of commitment that separates cooking from mere food preparation. This level of detail will frustrate those seeking shortcuts. But if you’re already the type who makes your own stock and keeps a sourdough starter alive, you’ll find the complexity rewarding rather than burdensome.
The book asks you to cook with your senses rather than your smartphone timer. To develop the kind of intuition that comes only from repetition, attention, and the occasional spectacular failure. In our increasingly automated world, this feels like a small act of resistance.
A Working Document
Visually, the book avoids the sterile perfection of most food photography. The images feel lived-in, honest—smoke and char and coarse salt allowed to be beautifully imperfect. It all feels like being brought into a working kitchen, not a studio set.
For those of us building menus around California’s micro-seasons, cooking for people who understand the difference between a meal and an experience, Slow Fires functions less as a cookbook than a field guide. It won’t teach you tricks. It will, if you let it, teach you patience.
Your copy should end up stained and smoky, with a spine cracked from use. That’s not carelessness—that’s honor.
You can buy a copy of Slow Fires at this link.
The Wrong Seat at the Right Table: Cooking, Chaos, and Always Being Able to Find Our Place will be available in October 2025. In the meantime, I’m hosting intimate storytelling dinner experiences throughout Los Angeles. Because some conversations can only happen over a long meal, properly tended fire, and the kind of time that feels increasingly radical to claim.