Elevate Grill by PointElevate.com. Dual cooking surfaces
Those of you who have seen me on TV and at barbecue contests know that I’m picky about my BBQ equipment. As a grand champion pitmaster, the equipment I choose to cook on is very important to me. I love to grill outdoors and have tried many portable grills. I’ve found that not many can cook food well and be easily transported. So when Dan Flynn, Marketing VP of PointElevate, dropped off a new demo unit of their Elevate Grill, I was eager to check out this new gadget. It was engineered from the ground-up by RKS Design and PointElevate to solve a problem: design a grill that’s portable and yet big enough to cook for a big group at a game day tailgate, potluck party, beachside BBQ, or a rugged campsite.
Burners well designed to provide excellent sear during use
I think they succeeded as the new Elevate Grill is unique and impressive. It’s sexy and portable. Most importantly, in my use of it, it can really grill and create sear marks. Since it’s also the largest portable grill in the world, feeding a party is not a problem.
Super compact and friendly to transport
You can read their product description on the PointElevate.com. Here’s what I thought was cool about it:
- Two cooking surfaces, each about a 12-inch square, with two flame control knobs. You can cook your meat on one and veggies on the other without cross-contaminating. One tank runs about 1.5 hours so plenty of cooking run time
- Ignition is automatic so no worries if you forgot to bring your lighter
- Super-hot burners will get a nice sear and char on your proteins
- The propane canister stores within the unit so you don’t need to lug it separately. Genius!
- The oil from cooking is retained in cleverly designed drip pans that have a lip to prevent the oil from leaking when the unit is folded. Genius!
- The drip pans are dishwasher safe, which makes for easy cleanup for lazy pitmasters like me
- The unit comes with a handy grate removal tool that makes it easy to remove the sturdy cast iron grates. I used it a lot while cooking and it really shows the engineering TLC that went into the product
- It folds up into a neat package with a small footprint in your vehicle. It’s supposed to be lightweight. I prefer to call it sturdy and professional grade. It’s over 20 pounds so it’ll be a bicep workout when you move it around.
Worked fantastic during my field trials of the grill
Here’s what I thought could be improved for future models:
- The cast iron grates would benefit from a deeper and more 3D shape to have more pronounced grill marks
- The rigid metal hose that connects the propane canister to the grill might benefit from a flexible hose option to allow the canister to sit more conveniently on the tabletop
- Consider using aluminum grates which will be less weighty
- Include a small pilot light hole on the grate in case the ignitor battery is dead and you have to manually light the burners
- Black is sexy and other colors options like red, lime green, and yellow would really give it a boost!
Easy to remove and clean drip pans. Genius!
So the big question is what I think? Well, I like it so much, I’m taking it with me to my next tailgate game. Mmm. . . burgers and dogs on one side and toasted buns on the other. The boys and girls at PointElevate hit it out of the ballpark with their new innovative grill. It’s friendly to use, portable, and cooks a perfect ribeye.
Checkout their current Kickstarter campaign where you can purchase the grill for almost 50% off until the end of April 2015. You can also follow them on Facebook for their latest updates on where they are with the campaign, and other great grilling news.