The travel design, and why it matters
The single best feature is the legs. They swing up and over the lid, where they clamp it to the body. That does three things at once: the lid cannot come off in transit, the grate and any leftover ash stay inside, and the whole grill becomes a flat-ish package with a handle. There is no bag to lose and no catch to break.
The rectangular shape earns its place too. A 160-square-inch rectangle fits food differently from a 160-square-inch circle: long items — sausages, hot dogs, skewers, corn, a couple of trout — lie across the bars end to end with no wasted corners. On a small round grill the outer inch of the circle is effectively unusable because the lid curves down into it.
The material is the reason this grill outlives most travel grills. Porcelain enamel is glass fused to steel: it does not blister off like paint, and it does not need re-seasoning. Travel grills live in car boots and garages, get rained on, and get packed away dirty more often than anyone admits. Enamel survives that; painted steel does not.
What 160 square inches really means
It means two people eat well and four people eat in two rounds. In practical terms: four burgers with room to move them, or two good steaks with a genuine gap between them, or a rack of sausages and some vegetables.
The gap matters more than the raw number. Crowded food steams itself, because the moisture coming off it has nowhere to go. This grill is at its best when you cook fewer things properly and use the lid between turns, rather than covering every square inch. If you routinely feed more than two people, the honest recommendation is a bigger bowl — our under-$100 picks include 18-inch options at similar money.
How it cooks
Hot and fast, extremely well. The body is shallow, so a modest bed of coals sits close to the grate. That is the same geometry that makes searing work on much more expensive grills: heat density beats grill size for crust. Half a compact chimney is plenty, and the food is close enough to the fire to brown properly rather than just cook through.
Two-zone, just about. You can bank coals to one end and keep the other clear, which gives you somewhere to move a sausage that is browning too fast. The zones are small and the cool side is warm rather than cold, so treat it as a rescue area rather than a genuine indirect oven.
Low-and-slow, no.A shallow body holds a small fire, and a small fire cannot run for hours without refueling. Anything over about an hour means adding coals mid-cook, which on a grill this size means lifting the grate with food on it. If smoking is your goal, this is the wrong tool — a bullet smoker or the snake method on a full-size kettle is the answer.
Fuel use is genuinely low. A small grate needs a small fire, and you will get several cooks per bag rather than several per box. For camping and tailgating, where you are carrying the fuel too, that adds up quickly.
Living with it
Lighting.Use a compact chimney rather than a full-size one — a full chimney lights roughly twice as much charcoal as this grill can use, and the surplus just burns away in the bowl. Our chimney picks include the small version for exactly this reason.
Height. The folding legs put the grill at low table height rather than standing height. On a picnic table it is perfect. On the ground you will be crouching, and on a camping trip that is worth knowing before you are three hours from home.
Ash.There is no one-touch sweep system here — you let it cool and tip it out. Do it every time. Ash holds moisture against the steel, and moisture is the only thing that meaningfully shortens the life of an enameled grill. The same logic as our cleaning routine, scaled down.
Cooling and packing. The one genuine friction point of a travel grill: charcoal takes a long time to become safe to pack. Plan for it, or carry a metal tin for the coals. Our guide to putting a fire out safely covers what to do when you need to leave in twenty minutes.
Go-Anywhere or Smokey Joe?
These two are the same money and they are not the same grill.
The Smokey Joeis a miniature kettle: round, deeper, with a domed lid. The depth and the dome make it better at anything with the lid down — a chicken piece cooked through, a thicker chop — because there is room for hot air to circulate over the food. It also has an ash catcher, which the Go-Anywhere does without.
The Go-Anywhere is better at traveling and better at long, thin food. The locking legs are a genuinely better transport solution than a lid clip, the flat shape packs more neatly, and the rectangle suits sausages and skewers.
Our rule of thumb: if it lives in the car, buy the Go-Anywhere; if it lives on a balcony, buy the Smokey Joe. Both are covered in the portable roundup.
Who should skip it
Anyone cooking for a family every weekend — the size will frustrate you within a month, and a 22-inch kettle costs surprisingly little more. Anyone who wants to smoke. And anyone who wants a grill to stand at, since the low legs make this a table-top or crouching proposition.
Everyone else — campers, tailgaters, people with tiny balconies, anyone who wants a second grill to throw in the car — is buying the right thing. It is the most grill you can carry in one hand, and it is built like the grills that cost five times as much.