Review - Cadac Safari Chef 2
Need a camping stove or outdoor cooking facility whilst away in your van? No-one wants the van to smell of cooking for days after camping. Heres our review of our recently purchased Safari Chef 2, pros and cons.
So, we decided that we were already fed up of the van smelling of cooking food whilst we we away, after all, you need to sleep and live in the van so who wants it to always smell of food.
It's also a shame when the weather is so good, to have to get into the van to make your meal when everyone around you is outside in the sun and enjoying the weather.
So it was time to purchase a cooking station for outside. Believe me, a lot of thought went into this purchase. What size unit did we want? Single or double unit? Did we want electric or gas? If gas, did we want one that we could utilise our existing gas cylinder in the van or one that utilised disposable gas canisters?
I looked at a number of options but very quickly settled on a Cadac system. We had been lucky enough to have a Safari Chef in the van we had hired in the Summer of 2018 and had found it to be fantastic!
I spent a long time whilst at Camperjam this year just standing in the Cadac tent and exploring all of the options available to us. It came down to two options, the Safari Chef 2 or the 2-Cook 2.
The 2-Cook 2 seemed a viable option for us but I was concerned with space. Although it wasn't particularly big, it would be another item, along with our table set, the awning, pushchairs, car seats and luggage that would have to be stored in the van. There was no sensible place that could fit the 2-Cook 2. Although the benefits of two burners when cooking for a family were obvious, the space issue became the big deciding point for us.
We knew, having hired the van in Summer 2018, that we could fit a Safari Chef inside the storage of the bench seat in the front of the van. This made our decision. The space saving was a trade off against the extra burner for us and we felt the space was more important in the long run.
We decided on the Cadac Safari Chef 2. We started looking at prices and found that they were averaging around £90 in most stores. We searched for a number of weeks before we noticed a 20% off sale in Go-Outdoors. That coupled with a further 10% off that I managed to get through a voucher in work meant that we were making a significant saving on the £90 price tag.
As soon as we saw the deal, we reserved one online at the store and went straight down to pick it up.
Upon getting it home, I opened the box and put it together to find that the version we had bought was the version which included the Flat griddle, BBQ griddle, Dome Pot and Lid and the pot stand.
The Safari Chef 2 fits together in a modular system so it neatly packs together into a small bag. If, put back in the bag correctly, the different accessories fit inside one another and over the BBQ itself. The BBQ itself has legs which fold neatly inside the unit when stowed away.
The bag itself also has two zipped sections in the lid to hold the cooking plates which second nicely as a hard lid for the bag when put away.
Best of all for us, the bag fits perfectly in the storage of the front bench seat of a T6 so it can be left in the van all year round and always be available for use wherever we are.
We took the Safari Chef on our trip to Cornwall this summer and found it to be excellent. It has a fat drip tray so the BBQ itself stays clean and you just need to wash the accessories before putting the whole unit away in the bag later in the evening. We also found it to be very economical and cooks meals very quickly. We found that we used the inside cooker in the van to cook the least offensive smelling foods and then used the Safari Chef outside to cook meats and foods we felt had smells that might linger if cooked in the van.
Food was cooked brilliantly on the Safari Chef, we had no issues with anything burning or cooking too quickly or too slowly and it was very easy to operate. A twist of the gas valve and an electric spark ignition system tonight the flame.
It is also very easy to see when the flame is lit and it lights first time which is great having previously used gas BBQs that need an incessant clicking of the switch for a minute or two to ignite!
The Safari Chef 2 can also be used with the Camping-Gaz canisters that the majority of camper vans utilise so you can either buy a second dedicated bottle (which also fits under the bench seat) or can use the existing bottle from the van.
I can't recommend this bit of kit enough for anyone looking to get a small, versatile BBQ/Stove for use with their van. Its made a big difference to our trips allowing us to cook as a family sitting outside together and enjoying the sun!
*Disclosure: Some of the Links we have placed in our Blog Posts are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, we may earn a very small commission if you click through and make a purchase. We only ever share products that we have bought ourselves and would personally recommend as being quality products and at very competitive price. We are not sponsored to sell any products and self generate all of our recommendations based on products we have already purchased and want to share with you.
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