chretiensucks's Full Review: Weber-Stephen Products Charcoal Go-Anywhere 121020...
Ah, summer. A beautiful time to enjoy the outdoors, use the patio, get mosquito bites and barbeque! After ignoring our paranoia of possibility of getting some sort of gastric-intestinal cancer from eating too many grilled foods, my wife and I figured it’d be okay to barbeque once in a while since summers in our area are very short in duration. Since the Weber Gas Go-Anywhere Grill was given to us as a gift, we thought we’d use it until we were ready to move up to a full size grill.
Assembly
The rather unattractive but utilitarian rectangular suitcase shaped metal body comes in a glossy black finish. There is one large handle on each side for carrying the entire unit and a large handle on the top of the lid.
Assembly was fairly simple and necessary to the operation is the additional purchase requirements of portable liquid propane tanks. We purchased ours from Home Depot for about 3 dollars. The propane tank very easily screws onto the valve. A push button igniter with a hardwire is used to create a spark in front of a line of perforated holes on the side of a gas tube running horizontally along the bottom of the grill. For this reason, the end of the hardwire has to be very close to the holes of the tube. Unfortunately, due to the angle of the valve, the weight of the propane tank tends to rotate the tube so that the holes are not close enough to the igniter for the spark to start the fire. I have to hold the propane tank in one hand at the appropriate angle and push the igniter with the other hand in order to start it properly (maybe it's the length of my propane tank?) I've seen 4 year old models of this barbequer and they had the same problem so it's an easy design flaw that should have been fied by now. The valve usually has to be open to the maximum setting for there to be enough gas to start the flame properly. Once started, I can let go of the propane tank and let it rest on the floor or table. (note: do not start any gas barbeque with the lid closed – not that I ever tried this) The Flavorbar, which is basically a tent-shaped pan which fits over top of the gas tube. Total setup time for me was about 7 minutes.
Cooking practicality
The Flavorbar more distributes the heat more evenly to the entire surface of the grill but you lose a lot of the barbeque flavor on your foods because there’s no longer any direct flame contact with any of the food. You can alternatively omit using the flavorbar like I did but then all of the heat is concentrated along the center of the grill where the flames exit the narrow gas tube. With very little heat at the edges you have to rotate the food around more frequently. You'll also want to put something underneath the barbequer if you do this because oils tend to drip through one of the large holes in the bottom.
It’s a tight squeeze but the 160 square inches of cooking area allowed me to fit 4 hamburger patties and 4 halves of buns. However, because the flames run along a narrow tube, the best cooking area is pretty much limited to the middle lengthwise portion of that 160 square inches. That leaves the chef having to constantly rotate as well as flip their food in order to get a consistent cook on their items. Otherwise, if you only flip the food you will get half of your patty that was close to the middle of the grill well-done, and the other half close to the perimeter of the grill practically rare. A possible solution may be to have had the gas tube formed into the shape of a U instead of just a straight tube.
Cleaning
Cleaning the grill and the bottom half of the unit is relatively easy due to the dense and smooth material. However, the flavorbar is another story. The brushed surface makes it very gross (think fingernails down a chalkboard) and difficult to clean.
Portability
With one handle on each side of the grill, it’s light, easy to pickup and move around and it’s compact size allow you to easily put it in the trunk of a car for camping purposes.
Conclusion
The slight problem with ignition earns this item 4 stars, otherwise it’s a very good portable grill that’s good for camping or grilling for fewer than 4 people.
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