There’s something almost stupidly simple about eating outside with other people. We’ve been doing it for as long as we’ve had food and fire, and yet somewhere along the way, meals became another thing we got efficient at. We eat in trucks, over sinks, at desks, or while looking at the tiny computers we carry everywhere.
Trail Feast is not efficient.
I spent a September weekend at XOVERLAND Ranch near Three Forks for the Montana stop of Chef Chad White’s traveling live-fire dinner series. Over 3 days, we ate a 10-course dinner, Indigenous corn pancakes, oysters with sparkling wine, a whole lamb cooked over fire, and Cowboy Congee.
We sat outside for hours. We talked to people we didn’t know. There was no cell service, so after a while, nobody seemed terribly concerned about whatever was happening anywhere else.
I expected to leave talking about the food. And I absolutely have some things to say about the food.
What surprised me was how much I appreciated everything happening around it.
Note: Trail Feast is a 3-day event that includes a primitive campsite, a lot of food, including a 10-course meal, breakfasts, and some very nice merch (including, this year, a Benchmade Bugout). There is one more event in 2026 in Washington state starting Oct. 9. The location is secret, but you’ll need a 4×4 to get there.
Chef Chad White Takes It Outside
White has spent more than 20 years cooking professionally. He served in the U.S. Navy, competed on Season 13 of Bravo’s Top Chef, opened multiple restaurants, and earned two James Beard Award semifinalist nods for Best Chef: Northwest & Pacific.
He launched Trail Feast in 2024 after stepping away from traditional restaurant kitchens. The events move around, and so do the menus, but the general idea stays the same. White and his crew take over an outdoor space for a few days and feed people very well, often over live fire and almost always within view of the guests.
The kitchen doesn’t disappear behind a wall. We watched fires being managed, food being prepped, plates being built, drinks being poured, and the whole thing reset for whatever meal came next. At times, there was something almost theatrical about watching it all happen, except nobody was pretending. There were simply a lot of people doing a lot of work so the rest of us could sit around and eat.
That’s a job I am happy to let someone else have for a change.
Trail Feast Lands at XOVERLAND Ranch
The Montana event took place at XOVERLAND Ranch, a 500-acre property built around overlanding, outdoor training, events, and recreation. The crowd fit the venue. Trucks, trailers, campers, and rooftop tents were lined up around the event, with most attendees sleeping in their rigs for the weekend.
My partner and I stayed in one of the ranch cabins, which was a welcome change from our usual hunting camp this time of year. Between meals, people could fish, shoot, explore the property, or hang around camp. There were things to do, but there wasn’t a frantic effort to keep everyone entertained every minute of the day.
We also got out on some of the ranch’s overlanding trails, and that portion of the weekend was decidedly not for the faint of heart. XOVERLAND is built for people who actually want to use these rigs, and some of the terrain made that very clear. There were steep climbs, technical sections, and enough moments where I was very aware of exactly how much vehicle was underneath me.
That trail time gave the ranch a little more purpose in the story. This wasn’t an overlanding backdrop with a bunch of nice trucks parked around for decoration. People were actually out driving them.
The ranch also had no cell service, and I loved that more than I can say. Phones still appeared when something worth photographing landed on a plate, but they weren’t much good for anything else. I love nothing more than when my phone stops becoming an access portal for the world to find me and instead reverts back to nothing more than a camera.
There’s a noticeable difference between sitting with people while everyone has a phone within reach and sitting with people when those phones are basically useless. Conversations run longer. Silences don’t immediately get filled with scrolling. You pay more attention to who’s sitting next to you.
For an event built around eating together, losing service is almost a necessity.
A 10-Course Dinner in Camp Chairs
Before the first night’s dinner, we were told to bring our camp chairs. So we did.
We carried them over, found our places at the modest camp tables, grabbed drinks, and settled in for a 10-course dinner cooked over live fire. There was something wonderfully unpretentious about eating food that required this much work while sitting in the same chair I’d normally drag to a campsite or a backyard barbecue.
The dinner took hours, as a 10-course dinner should. Food came out, people talked, drinks got refilled, and White and his crew kept working around the fire. There wasn’t another thing waiting for us when dinner ended, so nobody seemed particularly concerned with getting to the end of it.
That pace became one of my favorite things about the weekend.
There’s very little in my normal life that I do for several hours without thinking about the next thing. I suspect that’s true for most people. Trail Feast gave us permission to sit there and eat, and then keep sitting there after we’d eaten. By the end of the first night, the people in the chairs around us already felt less like strangers.
I feel like I could write full stories on each individual course, but I’ll spare you my dribbling. Just know that my favorite plate was a simple dish of green beans.
I know. I wouldn’t have expected that, either.
The Lamb
Saturday night brought the meal I was most interested to see.
A whole lamb went over the fire.
As a hunter, I appreciated that immediately. I’m accustomed to knowing exactly what an animal looked like before it became meat, and I don’t find anything uncomfortable about keeping those two things connected. Watching those less familiar navigate the act of consuming an animal in its “still animal” shape was a delight.
The lamb remained visibly a lamb while it cooked. We watched the process. Everyone knew what we were eating, and the meal didn’t make any effort to erase the animal from the food.
Guests received custom Benchmade Bugout knives engraved with the coordinates of the location as part of the event and were told to bring them to dinner. For once, the branded item handed out at an event actually had something to do.
Whole-animal cooking is familiar territory for hunters, but watching someone cook an entire lamb over live fire for a crowd is still impressive. There is no thermostat to set and walk away from. Different parts of the animal cook at different rates, the fire changes, and dinner still needs to reach everyone when it is supposed to.
White and his crew made the whole thing look far less complicated than I know it was.
More importantly, the lamb gave everyone at dinner the same point of reference. We weren’t 20 people ordering 20 different meals. We were sharing one animal.
Something Happens When You Keep Eating Together
By Saturday night, the group had changed.
Nobody had gone through some grand bonding exercise. We’d simply spent enough time around one another for the awkward edges to wear off.
We ate together Friday night, and then again Saturday morning. We saw one another around the ranch, met up for oysters in the afternoon, and sat down for lamb that evening. Conversations that started during the 10-course dinner carried into breakfast. Someone you’d talked to briefly on Friday became the person you sat next to again on Saturday.
It happened quietly. That’s probably the part of Trail Feast I have thought about most since coming home.
Most events have food because people need to eat. Trail Feast puts the food at the center, which means everyone repeatedly comes back to the same place and the same people. There’s enough time between courses and meals for conversations to wander well beyond the usual introductions. Sharing food is such a beautiful way to bond.
I spend an enormous amount of time outside, but very little of that time is spent simply sitting down with a group of people and sharing food for hours. Trail Feast reminded me how much I love that.
The fire helps. The food certainly helps. Sparkling wine and oysters don’t hurt.
Mostly, though, uninterrupted time helps.
One Last Meal
By Sunday morning, my body had received the message that Trail Feast was an eating event. I was so stuffed from consuming far too many calories, almost none of which I’d burned off. Then Chad served Cowboy Congee, and I ate breakfast anyway.
We gathered for one last meal while the weekend started coming apart around us. People were packing rigs, gathering gear, emptying cabins, and getting ready to head home. Nobody had quite left yet, though, so there was still time to sit down together once more.
Eventually, people started leaving. We loaded our things and drove away from the ranch until our phones started collecting everything they had missed over the previous few days. I wasn’t particularly excited to have service back. I’m still not.
Trail Feast Isn’t Cheap, and It Shouldn’t Be
The standard ticket to the Montana event was $1,200 per person, with cabin packages costing more. That’s enough money that most people are going to think pretty hard before committing to a weekend built around eating.
I think that’s fair.
Trail Feast is a destination event. The ticket covers several days of meals and drinks, the chefs and crew, and an experience built around food from the time you arrive until you start packing up.
For someone who treats food purely as fuel, I don’t know that the math works. There are plenty of cheaper ways to spend a weekend outside, and I have survived more hunting trips than I care to admit on jerky, cheese, and whatever else I could cram into a pocket.
Trail Feast is for the times when the meal is allowed to matter.
My First Trail Feast, Not My Last
I went to Trail Feast because I wanted to see what Chad White and his team could do with food and fire. My life revolves around gathering food outdoors, so it only made sense that I jump at the opportunity to experience this.
The cooking was excellent; the lamb alone was worth watching, and I am now a firm supporter of eating oysters and drinking bubbly at an old cabin on a ranch whenever the opportunity presents itself.
But the thing I keep coming back to is the group of humans sitting outside together. We showed up not knowing anyone. By Sunday morning, we knew who we wanted to sit next to at breakfast. We knew which conversations we wanted to keep going. We’d spent enough time together that leaving felt a little abrupt.
There’s nothing revolutionary about any of that. People have been gathering around food and fire for as long as we have been people. Maybe that is why it worked so well. We don’t do it nearly enough anymore.
Trail Feast gave us very good food and enough time to enjoy it with other people. For one weekend, that was plenty. This was my first one. I really hope it won’t be my last.
If a Trail Feast lands somewhere you can get to, and you can stomach the price tag, GO.
I promise you won’t regret it.
