RiverGrille Tailgate Gas Grill Review

RiverGrille Tailgate Gas Grill Review

May 31, 2015 0 By Admiral BigGun

Polar Plunge for Special Olympics MN TAILGATEMASTER.COM Admiral BigGun

Portable tailgating grills have become quite popular over the past few years, and there are a lot of great choices out there. How do get the best tailgating grill for the money? Research is your friend, my friend. Today we look at portable 20,000 BTU Tailgate Gas Grill made by RiverGrille*. For this review, we purchased our RiverGrille grill from "The Man's Mall".  You might know it as it's more common name: Mill's Fleet Farm*. The first thing that caught my attention was the price. And that's not because I'm cheap... well... maybe it's because I'm cheap... but let's not get off the subject. At the…
Pretty darn good for the money. Would purchase again.

RATING: RiverGrille

WORKS AS ADVERTISED
PRICE VS EPICNESS
GREAT FOR TAILGATING
THIS VS COMPETITION
VOLUME OF BACON
BEERS CONSUMED

Nice Grill!!

Pretty darn good for the money. Would purchase again.

User Rating: 4.26 ( 4 votes)

Portable tailgating grills have become quite popular over the past few years, and there are a lot of great choices out there. How do get the best tailgating grill for the money? Research is your friend, my friend.

Today we look at portable 20,000 BTU Tailgate Gas Grill made by RiverGrille*.

For this review, we purchased our RiverGrille grill from “The Man’s Mall”.  You might know it as it’s more common name: Mill’s Fleet Farm*.

The first thing that caught my attention was the price. And that’s not because I’m cheap… well… maybe it’s because I’m cheap… but let’s not get off the subject.

At the time of purchase this grill was a good $30 cheaper than the similar off-brand portable tailgating grills, and almost $100 less than some other “name brands” in the same BTU range… so we immediately started comparing features and the RiverGrille stacked up quite well.

Let’s hit the grill’s basics first :

Online Item #: 0000000219954 SKU: 100542589 Model: SC2000301-RG-00

  • Dimensions 40.5 inches Length x 22.4 inches Width x 33.8 inches Height
  • Dual stainless steel burner system (separate front and back burners)
  • 20,000 BTU (10,000 BTU each burner)
  • 325 sq. in. cooking surface
  • Push button ignition
  • Porcelain coated cooking grates
  • Lid lock
  • Folding legs with 6 in. rubber wheels
  • Fits 1 lb. disposable propane bottle (sold separately)
  • Weight: Approximately: 42.9 pounds

Like nearly all portable grills, some assembly was required… but the good news is that all the gas related parts are pre-assembled, so you shouldn’t need to worry about gas leaks.  It took us about a half hour to put this grill together from opening the box to firing up the burners. All you need is an adjustable (small crescent) wrench and a long Phillips screwdriver (and we do mean long… one of those short ratchet types with the exchangeable bits, are too fat to fit when attaching the tire assembly).

tailgating grill at the stadium

Seriously good grill for the money.

As long as we are talking about the tires, we were pleased to find out they were not cheap hollow plastic ones… instead they are of good quality solid rubber and even had nice shiny hub caps…. but we’re not here to talk about “bling”, amirite? Let’s get to the stuff that matters…like SIZE!

SIZE: Over 300 square inches of cooking surface means that you can cook a quite a lot of meat at once. The front of the grill is bowed out toward you, to maximize surface space. The lid is quite compact… which is great when you go to store it, but backfires a bit when trying to cook something taller like canned beans. Unfortunately when cooking veggies in the can, the lid doesn’t quite close.

rivergrille is pretty cool

Can doesn’t quite fit… so keep that in mind

HEAT: We tested the burners in about a 10-15 mile an hour wind. With the lid down and the burners at full power, there was no issue. The grill performed flawlessly and stayed lit and burned evenly. When we turned the burners down to less than half power, we noticed that it was prone to getting blown out in wind gusts. Not that that is really all that unusual in a portable grill, but we need to be honest. Leaving one burner lit (full) and the other off, worked great! Having two separate burners so you can regulate which part of your grill has full heat (direct vs indirect) is a feature we really like!

QUALITY: Overall construction seams quite solid. Fairly thick metal on the grill bottom as well as the lid are solid, but it is not over thick… which of course, helps keeps it light. That along with the porcelain coated cooking grates pretty much guarantees that you will get more than a couple tailgating seasons out of this baby. The parts that are plastic are of decent thickness so it should survive normal wear and tear quite nicely. Ignition works great and is already assembled, so you can literally fire up the grill with the push of a button.

tailgating grill photo works pretty nice

portable gas grill from RiverGrille folds up nicely

PORTABLE: When looking at a portable grill, one of the features you look for is of course portability. Yeah… I know you some of you are now calling me “Captain Obvious”, but truth be told… I outrank him. 😉

The RiverGrille grill folds up easily much like an ironing board, and locks into place for transport. Even the cover has a lid lock which you will find out is surprisingly important. The solid rubber wheels make wheeling it around (like a two-wheel cart) pretty effortless. Even if you have to pick the entire thing up, it is less than 50 pounds so that makes it easy to put in the bed of the truck. The left side shelf also folds up and locks, so it has that going for it… which is nice.

Note: There is no “lock” when the legs are extended down in “grilling mode”, so be aware of that when trying to pick it up without folding it down first.

WE LIKE BECAUSE:

Price
Portability
Multiple Burners

BUMMERS:

Maybe Too Compact
No Temp Gauge

BOTTOM LINE: Even without the price discount, this grill is of solid design and really functions much like a non-portable grill. We had a hard time pointing out negatives. It’s biggest failing may be that it is missing a temperature gauge, but over all…It really is a good value. When you factor in the portability and price… you would be hard pressed to find an equal… name brand or not.

Is it as big and beautiful as your back yard grill? NO.

Is it a decent quality game day grill? Heck Yeah it is.

 

 

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