Our food
We use responsibly-sourced produce and authentic flavours to create New Orleans soul food with a British twist. Our in-house tree surgeon provides us with local fruit wood and hardwoods for our smoker so our food gets a great smoky flavour. We have a strong sustainability policy and serve good-quality, delicious food at reasonable prices.
Our Story
The story of Vudu is a story of love and magic. It’s about a love for food, the magic of festivals, and the magic of love. Jamie and I met at uni and have always shared a passion for great food. Our very first summer was spent festival-hopping across the UK and Europe, working for a variety of festival food traders. And every summer after that we couldn’t wait to work hard and play hard across the festival scene, learning vital skills from every place we worked.
It wasn’t long before we had gained enough experience to go it alone. In 2014, we were sat around a campfire, chatting about our ideas for the future. We started bouncing ideas off each other about how we could run an amazing street food stall, serving the best barbecue food, all made from scratch. We talked and talked, getting more excited with each new idea that sparked between us. Eventually, we could no longer ignore the pull to follow our dreams and so we created Vudu Food there and then.
We nabbed Jamie’s brother, Tom, now an internationally renowned chef, to help us devise the perfect menu and teach us how to cook it. The rest, as they say, is history.
Our Name
In the beginning our goal was to create something simple, yet bold and adventurous. Cooking with fire is a very primal experience and something we were naturally drawn to when considering our menu. It is the oldest and purest way of cooking, yet the Cajun/Creole style keeps it exciting. There are many cultures that cook with smoke and flame, but it seems the Creole way has a natural vibrance that is just so tempting. Creole culture was born in Belize in Central America, when African slaves were brought over by the Dutch, the French and the British. All these cultures collided and eventually merged together to create the Creole people. Today, Belize is almost entirely made-up of Creole people, who also have a stronghold in Louisiana. Food is such a massive part of any culture, and especially for Creoles in Louisiana as it is an expression of their history and individuality within the USA. It is simple, yet creative. And bold yet comforting. This style of cooking allows us to experiment with smoking meats in our smoker and grilling on our barbecue. It represents healthy, home-cooked food with tonnes of flavour. Voodoo also came over with the African slaves and over the years it too morphed into its own Creole-style, made famous by iconography to come out of central America and the Deep South of North America. And so the name Vudu Food felt like a natural leap. Vudu Food represents our take on the Creole style, mixed in with a bit of flare from the Deep South of the USA, as well as a little British twist.
Our Ethos
At its heart, Vudu Food is about cooking up good food and serving it at honest prices and from happy people. We are hippies at heart and so while we cook with meat, we try and make sure it is always sourced responsibly, from local, independent farms. When we caster festivals and events further afield than the south east of England (where we use our own supplier), we track down abattoirs, farm shops and butcheries local to the event, in an attempt to reduce CO2 emissions from food miles. All our serving dishes are compostable and made from recycled materials and we only ever use wooden cutlery. Almost everything is made from scratch to our own recipes. We always keep an eye on food intolerances and make sure there is something for everyone on the menu at all times.
Vudu and You
With our combined wealth of experience across the catering, hospitality and customer service industries and with ample experience being customers ourselves, we are in the perfect position to understand what you want from your event. We built Vudu Food with customer experience at the absolute heart and everything we do strives to make your experience the beginning, middle and end to our story. When it comes to organising your private hire catering, we don’t just hit you with a bunch of set menus and fixed options for you to choose from. We work with you to design the perfect day, giving suggestions when needed and being flexible to your needs always. We have some tried-and-tested menus with some tried-and-tested flavour combinations, but the Vudu chefs are always chomping at the bit to let their creative juices flow and design a personal menu that fits with the theme of your day. Our pride and joy is our four-and-a-half-meter-long barbecue smoker and we love being able to really open her up. In the past we have barbecued lobsters for a summer wedding; we’ve smoked the brisket from a farmer’s very own cow for his birthday party (don’t worry, he did ask us to) and we’ve smoked the lambs from the mother-of-the-bride’s farm for a beautiful spring wedding. We love using our smoker, but our passion is food in general- If you don’t want meat or any other animal products, we got you covered too. Creole cooking is very flexible- Cajun flavours lend themselves beautifully to almost unlimited possibilities.
Get in touch to discuss your event and get a quote.