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A few years ago we rented a nice villa in Portugal with a nice pre-fab masonry Italian style BBQ, with a good layout and a little chimney to put any smoke slightly higher above head height, I liked it.
We've now got the space in our current garden and TBH they look less faff to put together than building a crappy little brick alcove Thing, shopping about it looks like I could get a reasonable one dumped on my drive for around £350ish and I have the time at present to put it together.
So whose lived with one and what wisdom do you have to share?
No experience, but interested as was thinking of building a crappy brick one - you got a link?
I've been looking at a few these are the sort of things I've been finding:
https://www.gardengrills.co.uk/products/manhattan?variant=12131942039619
TBH if I'm going to get a decade or so use out of it I reckon it's worth a bit of spend, possibly a bit more.
When we holidayed in Portugal a few years ago the villa had a great one with space for BBQing, a preparation surface, sink and running water. I'd love something like that but I can't imagine we'd ever get enough use of it in the UK. Saying that, I am about to spark up the BBQ for dinner tonight 🙂
Liking the look of those - had our first BBQ of the season at the weekend, and Jnr suggested building a permanent one in a disused corner of the garden, so a prefab like these might be easier than building from scratch
That's really my thought process, whatever you do you'll need a stable base of some sort to build on, but then even a basic brick BBQ is going to need 80-100 odd bricks, which you'll have to lay, so the job will still take up most of a weekend...
Given the time spent and material costs I think I'd rather have the fancier barbie...
My only comment on a masonry BBQ would be that it's good for direct cooking (i.e. charring and searing) and not much cop at indirect, slower cooking and smoking. This is only a problem if you are more into BBQ cooking than just doing the occasional steak, burger or sausage on a grill though.
Given that the grill grate is the thing that is going to give out first, is it easy to get replacements at that size, or to adapt to a different sized replacement grill?
Bought one for a holiday let we run this year, built up well, not had a chance to go round and cook on it yet due to lockdown but would recommend suppliers as they were good and good price. Qubox.com, bought the cheapest one but looks good built up and came with all you needed, use adhesive cement sparingly and paint up first coat before instal are my tips.
My dad got one a few years back of the type in the links above. Wasn't cheap but he figures it'll be there for decades. One thing to bear in mind is they are HEAVY. like really really heavy. It was delivered to my dads house on the back of a flatbed and craned in sections off the back of the lorry on pallets. then left my dad to move them round the back and assemble. It was a major logistical exercise just moving the things round the back without a proper pallet truck or something like that, then trying to build the thing - basically properly heavy sections that just stack vertically on top of each other, lifting each heavy section getting higher each time. He managed it...just. Ideally you'd want a pallet truck and some sort of jib crane or frame with block and tackle - unless you know a few burly mates from down the pub to come and give you a hand lifting the things.
Then the idea of having the work surface is nice...but in the UK doesn't work quite as well as in Portugal. Collects moss and general growing stuff, attracts slugs and other insects who see these things as nice homes wit all the corners, cracks and crevices. Unless you're using it every day...like you might in sunnier climes where things like these are their daily kitchens, then they become a faff to maintain. Also some of the materials are not UK weather proof as these kits often are sourced form other countries with nicer climates, and my dad's has developed big freeze-thaw cracks in the work surface part. Sure the company were great and sent him a new replacement plinth no questions asked (they all do that sir)...but would require the dismantling of the BBQ to replace it so clearly that is not going to happen given the efforts invested to build the thing. So now my dad uses it as an overflow BBQ to back up his conventional gas BBQ for times when he has alot of people round and needs the additional cooking space. The rest of the time it's a nice garden ornament.
These things are nice and romantic especially coming off a sunny holiday...but the reality in the UK is that they don't really work well.
I guess it depends which one you go for and maybe my dad just got the wrong type, but do your homework on the weight and robustness in UK climate.
Looking at the links above, they aren't very nice, are they?
The only one I'd consider not totally grotesque is £609. I'm out