Is the Grilla Grills outdoor kitchen the best modular outdoor kitchen for your budget?

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Over the past several years, we’ve shown you several different ways to build an outdoor kitchen:

The cheapest route, where you build it from scratch all by yourself to save on labor cost, but pay for it in the long run with the wear and tear on your body.

The simple pre-fabricated outdoor kitchen that requires zero assembly; all you need is a few friends to help carry it to your backyard.

The premium modular outdoor kitchen, where you create the layout you want online, test it in virtual reality, assemble the modular components in a day, but pay a higher price for the ease and quality.

But what about outdoor kitchen ideas for those with a more modest budget who don’t have the bandwidth to DIY their dream patio setup? That’s where the Grilla outdoor kitchen comes in to play.

Grilla Grills outdoor kitchen ideas

Modular Outdoor Kitchen: Delivery and Unboxing

When you purchase a modular outdoor kitchen from Grilla Grills, each piece will come flat packed in its own box. The boxes will be stacked on a pallet and will be delivered on a semi truck with a liftgate. If you’re nice to the delivery driver, he’ll often pallet jack your order right to where you need it, which makes things easy.

grilla modular outdoor kitchen delivery

We assembled this extra large Grilla outdoor kitchen for our church in two evenings with a group of volunteers, and many hands does truly make light work.

Here’s a few things we learned as we unboxed and assembled this kitchen. Many of the pieces already had the core assembled, which was great. There are a few pieces like the 31″ and 19″ cabinets that you need to assemble every piece, but after you’ve done one, it’s an easily repeatable process.

The instructions did leave quite a bit to be desired. In my experience, there aren’t many fantastic instruction books in the grill world, but these instruction sheets take some interpretation as you’re building. We had multiple pieces that we assembled and unassembled a couple of times. Chalk that up to building with a volunteer team or vague instructions, but instructions could be better.

Leveling, Positioning, and Installing our modular outdoor kitchen

As things started to come together, we began setting each piece in place. This is where we learned that we didn’t know what we didn’t know.

Before you position an outdoor kitchen up against a wall, it’s important to know the clearance required behind each item. I positioned things with about a 4 inch gap, and that wasn’t enough for the kamado grill lid and handle to swing to the open position. There’s also a good amount of heat coming off the back of the Primate griddle and grill, and I wanted that to have ample space as well. We decided on about 8 inches of space between each item and the wall of the building, but the positioning battle wasn’t over.

All 4 feet on each piece screw in and out to raise and lower each corner of each piece, and since most concrete is sloped to help water run away from buildings, that meant breaking out the level and getting friends to help.

The last step is simply aligning the countertops so they’re flush, and then using the included adhesive to secure the tops to the kitchen. After two evenings of assembly and a morning of finishing touches, I proudly present to you the Grilla Grills outdoor kitchen.

grilla modular outdoor kitchen ideas

Grilla Grills Modular Outdoor Kitchen

Grilla primate built in with griddle storage

Primate Gas Grill and Griddle

The first piece is a Grilla Primate gas grill and griddle combo. We put this in because of its versatility, since we cook for the (very large) youth group once a month, and we cook all kinds of things that can use both configurations. We’ve done garlic bread grilled cheese sandwiches, smash burgers, quesadillas, 1/3 pound thick burgers, tacos, grilled chicken sandwiches and a whole lot more.

For years, I would borrow a trailer from a friend, load up whatever grills or griddles we had reviewed on the channel and take them over to cook, but residential backyard grills weren’t designed for a life on the road, and the gear didn’t survive long. The Primate was the perfect solution, so much the perfect solution that we put in 2 of them.

Then we have our second Primate. The plan is to leave one a grill and the other a griddle and just change them as we need them.

One thing I just have to point out is that the entire griddle top stores in the cabinet just below the Primate unit. I love this design and the thought behind it. In most of the combo units we test here at The Lab, the griddle has no place to go, and is abandoned to the garage where it’s always in the way. Kudos for this design choice.

4-piece outdoor kitchen for Primate from Grilla Grills

Outdoor Kitchen Cabinets

Between our two Primates, we have a 31 and a half inch storage cabinet to give us a countertop to set trays of food and store grill tools.

Continuing down the line, next I put a 19 and a half inch storage unit to make sure we had tray placement space for each grill. This is a mistake that we made with our backyard outdoor kitchen design. There’s no place to set a tray for the griddle, or the power burner or the gas grill. There’s really no place to set a tray on either side of the kamado or the pellet grill. It’s a rookie mistake that I didn’t think of in the design, and now Melissa has to follow me around holding a camera and a tray, which is unfortunate.

Grilla outdoor sink and fridge

Outdoor Kitchen Sink and fridge

Next up is the sink and fridge unit. If you’ve never had an outdoor sink to use while you’re grilling, once you have one you’ll never want to go back. The same goes for an outdoor fridge.

Keeping ingredients, meats, drinks and more cold where you are spending time is the way to go, and I know we’ll put it to use here during our events.

Grilla Kong built in kamado

Grilla Kong Kamado

Next up, I put in a Grilla Kong ceramic kamado grill. The base is their universal base that works with the Silverbac, Chimp and Kong, and I’ll admit that it’s really wide for a Kong that isn’t very wide. I did want a charcoal grill in the build, and since this grill is 24″ in width, it’s big enough to feed a crowd. The fact that it comes standard with an upper rack is also a selling point for me. It’s versatility that I know we’re going to love here for future events.

To the right of the Kong, I put another 31 and a half inch cabinet for countertop space and storing all the things we need out here, and to the right of that, we built in the Silverbac XL 2.0 Pellet Grill.

Silverbac 2.0 XL

Silverbac XL 2.0 Pellet Grill

With a total cooking area of 1,644 square inches, there’s lots of space to cook for a crowd on this new XL version of the Silverbac pellet grill.

I’ve read your comments here on the channel asking for more coverage on this particular model, and now there’s one locally that I get to work with and put to the test. I’m excited to get more time with the XL, but that’s going to be in a future video. The last piece of the kitchen is 1 more 19 and a half inch storage cabinet, making sure there’s space around each grill for everything we need to get the job done while cooking for our community.

Torture Testing our new outdoor cooking space

The day after we finished the outdoor kitchen build, we fired up the grills for the first time and cooked for 200 teenagers. The goal was to have Chipotle or Qdoba style burrito bowls for the teens and volunteers totaling about 250 people. First thing in the morning, we put two pork butts on the Silverbac XL to smoke all day. I cut the butts into about 4 inch pieces to get more smoke coverage and seasoning covering more of the meat. I loaded it up with 30 pounds of pellets and let it do its thing all day.

cooking peppers and onions on the Primate griddle

We’re using 1 Primate as a grill to tackle adobo marinated boneless chicken thighs and the other Primate as a griddle to handle peppers and onions.

grilling chicken on the primate gas grill

There’s no way I could tackle this kind of an event without my incredible team of volunteers, so leave them some encouragement down in the comments below for taking time out of their schedule to invest in the next generation around the grill.

Rice was cooked in the prep kitchen, black beans and pinto beans were warmed in warmers, and before long, we had a full burrito bowl buffet ready to serve a BUNCH of hungry kids. What I loved about this is I didn’t have to trailer 3 or 4 grills from our storage units to church, worry about if they all had fuel, were clean and not even to mention that I didn’t have to load them back up while they were still really hot and dirty, cleaning them days later at the storage unit where I have no access to water.

This outdoor kitchen was a game changer for me personally, and for our team of volunteers. There will be a whole lot more coming to the channel as we use this space in the future, and I’m excited to answer the questions you ask below in the comments in future videos, so head on down there and fire away.

grilla grills modular outdoor kitchen ideas

Modular Outdoor Kitchen on a Budget

To come up with a price for this outdoor kitchen, I first need to lay out the bundles we included to make it possible. The first addition was the Primate 4 Piece Outdoor Kitchen. That’s a Primate, 31 inch and 19 inch cabinet and the sink and fridge combo that currently retails for $5504.95. I’ll show you actual price in a second, but let’s get through all of the pieces and retail prices first.

The second addition was a 3 Piece Outdoor Kitchen. That’s the base for the Kong and another 31 and 19 inch storage units for $3359.97.

Third, I added the Silverbac 2.0 XL Built In. That’s the base and the XL Silverbak for $2,399.99.

Fourth, we added the Primate built in cabinet with the Primate grill for $2,624.98 and to finish things off, we needed a Kong Ceramic Grill for $999. That’s a retail price of $14889.88 for this entire build. At the time of this article, many of the pieces of this set are on sale, which brings the total price as built to $10,479.95. That’s a massive outdoor kitchen with 4 grills, griddles, charcoal and pellet, which is more than most any backyard would ever need.

Even in a community setting like this, we’re talking about a HUGE outdoor kitchen that tons of small groups, outdoor events and just fixing food for weekly gatherings will be perfect for.

If you want to get the TRUE lowest price, be sure to use the link below where you can get these same outdoor kitchen pieces for the BEST price available on the internet.

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