Close Connections: Sam and Shauna – we left our careers for our love of food

Samantha says, “Neither of us had experience in the food business but we had the passion. American barbecue was really taking off and we were really into it.” The pair travelled the west coast of the US, before sweeping across the Deep South. “It wasn’t until we went through North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana that we hit that magical trifecta with barbecue culture.”

The pair shared incredible meals at competition cookouts and family ones, welcomed by strangers everywhere they went, tasting crawfish broils, briskets and ribs. Samantha adds, “Other people joined the cookouts with beer, music, kids, grandmas, uncles and cousins all thrown in. Communities gathered around hunks of meat, each bringing side dishes of corn, slaw and marshmallow-covered sweet potatoes.”

The culture of barbecue food brought a vibe that felt innately inclusive for Samantha, 45, and Shauna, 43. “That was it for us. I said, ‘Let’s take barbecue back to Wales!’ It can be a secretive world because of long-kept secret family recipes of special blend spices and sauces, but locals shared it all with us. You could taste the love from century-old pulled pork recipes passed down through families.”

The pair were inspired by Franklin Barbecue in Austin, Texas, which opens at 11am and sees queues of 100 people outside by 8am. Inside, traditional post-oak fuelled smokers are used to barbecue the best organic beef. Samantha says, “You’d be lucky to be licking the grease off the floor by 1pm. There were no empty seats and it was a real experience with pit masters in the thick of it, relatives on the till, grandpas and babies crammed in next to one another and, of course, the sublime food – brisket so tender and full of flavour.

“That’s what we wanted to bring back to Wales, and we created that with our restaurant, Hang Fire. There were early nights, late finishes, endless food prep, but we built it and the customers came. We had queues around the block and were selling out every night. There was an amazing moment when we realised we’d done it – just like Franklin.”

The duo then took up guest spots in street-food markets, winning Best Street Food at the BBC Food and Farming awards, as well as the prestigious Observer Food Monthly Best Restaurant award, before being offered a chance to bring their cooking to TV with a series taking barbecue to volunteer community groups – Samantha and Shauna’s Big Cook-Out for the BBC.

Every episode, Samantha and Shauna designed a specialist fire-cooking method unique to that group or area, including a duck rotisserie pedal bike, to teach the community what they cook. There was a special needs riding school, volunteer fire services and mountain rescuers, a paddler’s club teaching young, disenfranchised kids to be sporty, even a community gardening club on a decommissioned football ground.

“It was joyous, bringing us full circle to those moments when we’d been in people’s backyards in the States where someone would have a guitar, another would be dishing out pork. That’s community.”

Last year, Samantha and Shauna appeared on BBC One’s Saturday Kitchen during lockdown.‘‘We were supposed to get married that month and 150 of our friends and family had planned to fly in to celebrate with us. But that all went to the wall, and so we went on the show the day that would have been our wedding.”

Covid brought other change, with the pair permanently closing their successful restaurant, Hang Fire, due to the strains of Brexit and the pandemic causing an exodus of kitchen staff. Samantha says, “Our team had become family after nearly seven years and it was hard to decide to close the doors for good. I’m not sure what’s next in our journey, but there is a sense of freedom. Hang Fire taught us adaptability, adversity, and not being afraid to stop something if you don’t want to do it anymore. We have no regrets.”

Make Sam and Shauna’s pork and halloumi burger.

This feature originally appeared in Good Food Magazine, March 2022.