I got this to do Japanese yakitori as my wife was missing it and we don't have a good yakitori place near where we live. I had apprehensions about this grill since some of the reviews indicated some negative themes. But, it was very affordable and we thought it would be a "fun" experience even if only once or twice and we can later invest more into something more substantial. Keeping in mind the things I learned from some of the negative reviews, I made sure to keep the clay dry and to be gentle with it. We used lump charcoal from the local home improvement store which was only $14 for 20 lbs. I did use the grill on top at first, but after trying it once, I realized for Yakitori, it's easier to just rest the skewers on the edges of the clay grill itself and that saves us from having to clean the grill top. If you're cooking something other than yakitori, like some fish or slices of meats, then you will certainly have to use the grill top. However, it's not hard to clean and most burnt on stuff just chips off when it is dried. As far as cleaning the clay grill, since I knew not to get it wet, i simply dump the ashes out (it's small, so this is easy) and used a hard bristle brush to clean out any remaining ashes. As with any barbecue event, drips of our marinade (we were doing tare-yaki style yakitori instead of shio-yaki) did drip onto the clay and various other places, but I just left it as-is and considered it "seasoning" the clay. I didn't let it bother me, after all, it's where the charcoal burns, not where it would make contact with our food. There are many ways to start a charcoal fire, the user instructions suggested lighter fluid. But since there's an air gap under where the charcoal sits, you'd probably have fluid dripping to the bottom and out the air intake doors. In which case, you may be better off starting your charcoal in a metal can with the lighter fluid first and then transferring them over when they are burning. I decided to just use some newspaper to start the fire and stacked my charcoals into a mound around it which worked fine but took a little longer to get started. The depth of the grill isn't very high so you can't really stack the charcoals really high. After the charcoal started burning, I rearranged them into a lower mound before I started cooking. Overall, our yakitori experience was a great success! I couldn't give this a full five star rating because I felt like some of the complaints are legitimate. The clay appears to be unfired and so indeed it would probably not hold up to any cleaning under water. I think the manufacturer could have raised the cost by just a little bit and glazed and fired the clay to make it more durable and possibly easier to clean with a smooth glaze. Overall, if you keep in mind some of the drawbacks and workaround them, it still works and provides plenty of value for the price. If you decide to get something more substantial, there are certainly those options, but the most affordable one I could find was at least 5x the price of this. This is a very small and reasonable investment to enjoy some yakitori cooked over charcoal with family and friends.
