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Aside from a good tent, I was always of the belief that you don't need to spend a ton of extra money on hype camping gear. The Snow Peak Takibi changed that for me. It took me a while to come around to this purchase, because spending money on a fire pit was something I had to square away with myself. It felt like burning money. But now that I've taken the plunge, I'll talk about this until the day I die. It's safe, versatile, and durable, and, most importantly, it looks cool.
From beaches to parking lots to my Brooklyn rooftop, the Takibi lets me pop up a fire anywhere. I find myself just looking for reasons to use it.
Fire etiquette 101: Don't be that guy.
I lived in the southeast U.S. for 22 years, and it wasn't until I moved to New York that I realized that fire making was the biggest privilege I had down there. There are rarely fire worries, and they don't enforce many rules where I grew up. Once I got to New York, I noticed every wildlife area was heavily visited, and starting a fire anywhere that's not an established pit will really mess things up. When I was camping on the California coast near Big Sur, the rules were for fire season, a whole other level of careful.
If you want to start making your own fires on a regular basis, you need to learn how to maintain it and leave no trace on your own—the parks departments can't govern everything. But having an aboveground fire pit is the most responsible thing you can do.
You can set up anywhere without ruining the ground beneath you. Get to a campsite and don't like the placement of the existing fire pit? Pop out your own. At a backcountry campsite with no proper fire pit? You've got one, and you're not going to feel like a dickhead leaving behind scorched earth.
Plus this keeps your fires to a manageable size. We've all gotten a little overzealous with a fire—and that's where mistakes happen. A big fire is harder to manage, harder to put out, and more likely to be left smoldering at the end of the night. The Snow Peak Takibi keeps fires contained and reasonably sized. When it's time to put it out, it's a funnel. Pour water on top and it falls across the whole fire and every coal. It's dealt with in seconds.
It's versatile as hell.
The other benefit of having a pop-up fire pit is that everywhere now becomes a campsite. And with the grill attachment, it's a flat-packing camp kitchen. If you show up to a campsite that has a fire pit with no grill, the Takibi will likely fit within the pit. Slide it in, put the grill on, and start cooking. If you're tailgating in a parking lot, we've popped it up outside sporting events and even ski slopes. It's a quick, safe way to add ambience with a cooking surface. We've used it for beach camping on North Carolina's Outer Banks. We use it in our Brooklyn backyard. It's our traveling fire pit.
As with anything Snow Peak makes, there are a ton of attachments that change the Takibi's functionality. The carrying case comes included. We added the Fireplace Coal Bed for cooking over coals. You can also get the Field Oven and cook a campsite pizza, or you can use a Dutch oven on the grill grates. The Floga helps disperse the smoke. The Jikaro Table turns the grill into a barbecue table, and the Garden Table is an even sturdier barbecue table. Don't get me wrong: When I was a kid, hot dogs and silver turtles were cool. But as an adult, this is the only way I want to do campsite living.
It's easy to take care of.
If you read around about the Takibi Grill, there's a common complaint about the grill grates being chrome-coated steel. I will say it is strange that Snow Peak didn't go fully stainless on this thing, but it's not as big of an issue as the people on Reddit make it out to be. Here's how I care for the grill grates. Cook on them, and when you're done, remove the ladder that it sits on. Let your grates sit in the fire or close to the coals for a few minutes, pull it off, and scrape it with a natural-bristle grill brush. You can stop there, and it'll honestly be fine, or you can let it cool, then hit it with soap and water. There's no reason to baby the grates. As for the fire pit itself, it's stainless steel, and you're not cooking on it—who cares? Over the years, it even gets a nice patina from the burns.
All told, the Snow Peak Takibi is the one luxury camping accessory I'd actually say is worth the money. There's nothing wrong with roughing it, but once I got my first real paycheck, I was kind of over that. I want something functional and durable that I can cook on and that won't ruin a campsite. As with every camp tool, Snow Peak found the solution. Pound for pound, this is my most useful camp gadget.
Photographs by Joe Lingeman. Prop styling by Heather Greene.
