The last time UK tentmaker Cinch and Chinese global gear manufacturer Wild Land teamed up, they brought the world a push-button inflatable rooftop tent with serious starry night views. A year later and they're back, this time with a product that can perfectly complement that tent in creating a more complete base camp.
The new Kitchen Cruiser is a nomadic camp kitchen that packs neatly and flips up at camp into an RV-like kitchen block with stove, worktop and sink. Throw it in the trunk of a roof tent-topped car, and you have yourself a deconstructed RV ready to explore and camp the world.
The Kitchen Cruiser packs down quite similarly to the iKamper AIOKS but with a touch more volume at 22.2 x 15.9 x 18.7 in (56.5 x 40.5 x 47.5 cm, W x L x H), when all closed up and packed for transport. It doesn't have wheels or an extendable pull handle like the AIOKS, which we kind of prefer because it will load flat and stable.
Unlike the AIOKS, which unfurls only width-wise, the Kitchen Cruiser also grows in height at camp via four folding legs. Users can also set it flat on the ground while sitting, without the legs extended. Either way, the two side shelves fold upward, and one takes on the role of worktop while the other holds the collapsible sink. The included lithium battery-powered tap pipes into a water canister or bottle (not included) to supply water for washing, drinking and cooking.
The top of the Kitchen Cruiser lifts up and rearward to serve as a shelf or extra worktop, exposing the 2.2-kW LPG stove that's included with the kit. Cinch also notes that campers could use a second single-burner stove on one of the worktops to create the two-burner setup familiar to many campers.
The design also includes several drawers for storing cutting boards, knives, cooking tools and more. This makes the Kitchen Cruiser a nice, neat grab-and-go cooking solution that campers can leave stocked to streamline the always-daunting task of packing the car up for a trip into the wilderness. The unit includes several top carry handles and weighs in at a base (cabinet unit, stove and sink) of 43 lb (19.5 kg).
Ever since buying a pickup truck, I've become quite obsessive about keeping all my camping gear and bins as square and vertically walled as possible so it all fits together like a puzzle in the square-cornered truck bed for optimal space usage. Gear like WaterBricks and Front Runner Wolf Packs are great in this regard, and it's always good to see the market welcome another neatly squared piece of kit, especially when it rolls several functions into one easy-packing design.
Come to think of it, a couple of WaterBricks stacked neatly against the Kitchen Cruiser would be a really nice space-optimized fresh water solution for hooking up to the faucet. The Kitchen Cruiser sides aren't quite flush because of the shelves, but the face and back panels appear to be, ready for puzzle-piece packing.
Cinch is hosting a Kickstarter campaign right now to raise money for a Kitchen Cruiser launch. Early bird pricing starts at US$449, which feels crazy-high to us, but nearly 150 campaign backers seem to disagree. The campaign has screeched past its goal six times over, with just over a week left to go.
Have a closer look at the Kitchen Cruiser in the promo below.
Source: Kickstarter
