I Tested a Little Electric Grill at My Neighborhood’s Biggest Party of the Year

A lifelong city-dweller, it’s only been later in life that I’ve been able to appreciate the luxury of having storage for extra options. The kind of basic luxury that is, instead of owning a certain number of towels because that’s all you have space for, you have a closet where you can keep an alternate set.

Last year, I wrote about the experience of getting and testing a big Kahuna grill, which has most certainly changed my life for the better. But of course, the flip side of a big grill, no matter how nice it is, is that it’s mostly stuck wherever you park it, despite the wheels. There are numerous other grilling situations it doesn’t work for, and in my family, there happens to be one that comes up every year—our annual block party, where all our neighbors bring out their grills to the front of their houses to cook and hang out. (There’s also two insane bounce houses and a DJ playing music louder than is probably safe for human ears, but I digress.)

Our new gas grill, parked in the back of the house, was not going to work for such a task. I’d avoided this issue last year by moving the falling-apart-but-still-works propane grill that had been left behind in our backyard to the front, cooking on it for the block party, and then leaving it there and posting on Facebook Marketplace that it was free for the taking. (It was gone within a few days, rusted out bottom and all.) But this year, I decided I’d look into a more portable solution for yes, specifically and potentially just this one event above all else, but maybe there would be other possible uses for it down the line. (Camping, which I could always get into.) Again, the privilege storage gives you.

I wanted electric, to avoid the size, space, and logistical issues of propane and charcoal, and because they are easy to put on a countertop, or, in this case, a jerry-rigged table out of sawhorses and an old slab of stone that had also been left behind for us to do what we wanted with. That’s when I happened upon Kenyon’s very literally named City Grill. It seemed as easy to use as possible, so I got in touch with the company, and they sent off a sample to me to try out. 

The Test 

Kenyon is a Connecticut-based company that got its start in making ceramic glass cooktops for boats, later moving into RVs and more residential applications. They say their patented design makes most of their grills ideal for indoor and outdoor use, because they are "flame free" and "smokeless." Per their website: "We’ve designed the bottom side of our cooking grate, and griddle to have a channel in which the heating element is concealed directly underneath the grate/griddle. This placement allows for even heat transfer from the element to the cooking surface so there is no heat loss (improves efficiency as well). Exposed heating elements are the cause of smoke and flare-ups for electric grills when food drippings hit the element so the concealed element eliminates the possibility of flare-ups and allows for smoke-free grilling." The City Grill retails for $695, which isn’t cheap, if you’re paying for it which I wasn’t, but it is the cheapest of their grill options, which come in portable and stationary. It’s also extremely easy to use; it’s literally an aluminum grate that lifts up to reveal the heating element, under which is a drip pan to catch the drippings. Once you plug in the grill, there is one knob to turn it on and adjust the temperature. That’s it!

The City Grill arrived quickly, within a few days of placing my order actually, in a very large box with a lot of styrofoam to cushion it so it wouldn’t slide around. Though it’s less than two feet long and a little shy of nine inches thick, it’s still fairly heavy at a little under 30 lbs, though not impossible to move, given the point is ease of logistics. Before the party we easily stored it on a low shelf in our kitchen. On G-Day (grill day), we simply took it outside, set it on the table, plugged it in, and that was that. We cooked up nothing more complicated on it than rounds and rounds of hot dogs and buns, but given that it can go up to 550 degrees, I’d happily have tried most anything on it. They tasted just as good—which is to say, totally normal—as any other hot dog. It was also easy to turn off and then quickly turn back on again for another round. It’s not ideal if you’re making a lot of food for a lot of people all at once—batch eating would be ideal, unless it’s just a small party—and I’d say it’s likely best for simpler things, i.e. hot dogs and hamburgers, and not, say, a whole rack of ribs (which really do best in the oven anyway, but I digress).