There’s a myth about car camping, often seen in TV ads, that goes something like this: The family sitting around the campfire under a full moon with cocoa and marshmallows, wearing perfectly pressed L.L. Bean flannel shirts, having finished a dinner of beef Wellington miraculously cooked on a 2-burner Coleman liquid fuel stove.
The reality is more like this: In a light drizzle, trying to figure out how to cook a burger directly over the burner since somebody forgot the frying pan AND the spatula, the 4-year old howling because there’s no ketchup and he hates mustard, and the 8-year old is chasing the 6-year old around the campsite, pelting her with the marshmallows.
Car camping SOUNDS easy, but it’s actually more confusing than you might expect. Backpacking, you have all the special light gear in one place to grab when you want to go. Car camping…it’s 4:00 Friday afternoon, you’re scrambling to get everything/everyone in the car so you can get to the campsite before dark, grabbing some gear from the backpacking stash, some from the picnic basket, and rummaging around in the kitchen drawers for the rest. We’ve managed to forget every single flashlight (saved by a lousy emergency light in the car), plates, pots, pillows…but at least never the corkscrew.
If we could come up with a solution for the cooking part of it, we’d have more brain cells for the REST of the gear. Since cooking/eating requires more component parts than the rest of the gear combined, an integrated solution would be huge. We searched high and low, but there’s simply nothing out there that does it all.
But wait…light at the end of the tunnel? GSI Outdoors, the masters of nesting gear engineering (like our beloved Dualist), has two kits. The GSI Outdoors Destination Kitchen Set (24-Piece)
The answer is yes, no, and yes. Let’s get the “no” out of the way with quickly; as complete as the GSI Destination Kitchen Set 24 & Infinity 4 Person Deluxe Tableset are, there are no pots and pans included. Back “in the day”, there were companies making a variety of integrated nonstick pot/kettle/frypan solutions, but they appear to have gone the way of the dinosaur; we couldn’t find a single one out there (GSI, are you listening?). We still have several hanging around from years back, so we added those into our bin of car camping stuff…another problem solved, for now.
But with the GSI Destination Kitchen Set 24 & Infinity 4 Person Deluxe Tableset combined…there’s almost a bizarre synergy. The kitchen kit has eating utensils, but no storage bowls; the eating kit has the bowls but no knife/fork/spoon. Yes, we can envision ourselves eating with our fingers, having forgotten those in the rush, but not with this setup! Still, just having things doesn’t mean much, if they don’t work, so out to the field.
And here’s where the “yesses” come into play. First, the Destination Kitchen Set. It has virtually every tool we’d want in our camp kitchen, and a few we wouldn’t expect. Want to make an omelet? There’s a retractable whisk, and it actually WORKS. Flip a burger? Folding spatula. Slice tomatoes for the burgers? Remakably sharp knife and cutting board. Keep the 4-year old happy? Little containers to fill with ketchup and mustard. Keep thinking of what you need, and there’s probably a solution in here. One glaring omission: A large fork for flipping food on the grille or in the pan. Sure, you can use a regular fork or try the spatula, but we’d trade the cheese grater for a good fork.
And quality? Everything works, and works well. Don’t plan on flipping a brontosaurus steak with the spatula; the kit IS designed to be lightweight and compact, so there are some limits to abusability. But, we haven’t been able to break anything yet, and it’s a joy to just grab the kit and go, without having to think “did we bring a serving spoon?”
And then there’s the Infinity Tableset. GSI’s eating solutions have been favorites of ours, from the Dualist to the Pinnacle Camper. Plates, cups, and bowls are consistently well designed and functional, making the best of the “small and light” needed for backpacking. But, with this set, they didn’t have to worry as much about size. So…bigger, better plates, with deep lips to keep kids from spilling as they carry stuff from the table. Nesting coffee cups/drinking glasses that are round and easy to use. Big, deep bowls with snap-on lids; as useful for storing leftovers as they are for cereal and soup. And, a custom shaped mesh bag to carry it all nested together. Compared to grabbing stuff from the kitchen, it’s not only smaller, lighter, and more organized so that you don’t give up all the space in your car to it, it’s also BETTER. You aren’t giving up anything in function; you’re gaining, period. The only weakness, as mentioned before, is the lack of eating utensils, but since the Destination Kitchen Set has knives, forks, and spoons for 4, you’re totally covered.
Countless omelets, pancakes, steaks, burgers, and dogs later, we only have one significant complaint; we only have one set, and everybody fights over it. Christmas presents, anyone?
Few years later, and GSI Outdoors HAS indeed come up with a set that has both kettleware as well as plates, cups and bowls. 🙂
http://www.gsioutdoors.com/pinnacle-camper.html
Bjorn, we hate to tell you this, but we reviewed the Pinnacle Camper set two years BEFORE this article (http://easternslopes.com/2011/04/26/gear-review-msrs-flex-4-gsis-pinnacle-camper-4-person-backpacking-kitchens/). It’s a great set, with the limitations in the article, but in our opinion it’s more a backpacking set than a car camping set; things are smaller, the pots aren’t heavy duty enough to survive the general car camping abuse…although the frypan DOES work a lot better on a large stove!