The editors at Robb Report jump at the opportunity for an office feast. Late last month at our headquarters in Malibu, Calif.—where winter months often see more sun than summer months—the team from Lynx Grills, based an hour or so away, made the journey up the Pacific Coast Highway to demonstrate the capabilities of the new Lynx SmartGrill. As it turns out, we had been hoarding some samples of new gourmet mustards from Sir Kensington’s—our favorite purveyor of connoisseur condiments, whose delectable ketchup and mouthwatering mayos have already impressed our palates—and could not pass up the opportunity to sample it with some bratwursts, which we procured from the Santa Monica butcher shop A Cut Above.
After arriving and setting up, the Lynx team gave us a demonstration of the SmartGrill, which has an onboard operating system and syncs with the company’s app (available for iOS and Android devices). The app has hundreds of preinstalled recipes (which users can easily add to) that enable it to inform users of the proper grilling time for a wide variety of meats and vegetables. Combining the recipes and the user’s own preparation preferences, the system uses Siri-style voice commands and prompts sent to a smartphone or tablet to tells the user when to flip the food and take it off the grill for perfectly cooked food every time.
The SmartGrill—available in 30-, 36-, and 42-inch widths and priced from $6,000—uses either propane or natural gas (sorry, grill masters: no charcoal or wood) to power infrared burners that allow for quick changes of radiant heat. It also features stainless-steel grates for high retention of surface heat, which a built-in thermometer measures right at the grate rather than checking the overall temperature within the hood like with traditional grills. And while the prompts are certainly useful for those without much grilling experience and those who prefer to host and focus on their guests rather than their grill, veteran cooks who find joy in the art of grilling may not have much use for the prompts. Of course, the prompts can easily be turned off so that users can decide for themselves when the food is ready.
The Robb Report editors found the bratwursts—as well as the vegetables and shish kebabs that the Lynx chef Andrés Dangond prepared—to be perfectly cooked on the SmartGrill. And Sir Kensington’s amazing new Dijon and spicy brown mustards deliciously completed the feast. (smart.lynxgrills.com)
