It should be Easy

Anyone that has ever met David is probably well aware the he absolutely loves outdoor cooking. In fact, right before we left the US, we retired the old smoker, bought a new one, and brought it with us so we could guarantee that David's awesome Smoked Pork Ribs would be able to follow us to Chile.

David's smoker doubles as a grill and in the past, he's settled for that. However, it became clear that with the excellent weather, frequency of parties, and number of attendees we needed more grilling area. Also, I couldn't really wait until our shipment decided to arrive to have David start grilling some of the fantastic Argentinian beef. It became clear we were going to have to make a move and buy a separate grill. David is very against gas and so we were faced with finding a straight-up charcoal grill in Chile. Given the Chilean love of charred meat, we thought this would be easy, but (as almost everything else since we arrived) it turned out to be a bit of an ordeal. We discovered that while grilling is very common in Chile, most charcoal grills are very low quality; mostly ranging from very thin half-drum models to flimsy hibachi style grills.

Finally, we decided to take a trip to Easy, the local Lowe's-type store. We honestly think it's a little strange that they've used an English word to name the store (for instance, the place could be called "Facil") but it seems very typical to use English words to try to make a place more "high class". Think about the way we throw in random French or Spanish words into restaurant or shop names; you get the picture.

On this particular trip we were able to find a really nice (US-made) charcoal grill called the Char-Griller "Super Pro". David was practically apoplectic. Two things we've sort of realized in Chile 1) when you finally find what you want after weeks of looking discussion of price is mostly worthless because you aren't going to find a better deal anywhere 2) if you wait to buy whatever it is, prepared for it to be gone. So although my bargain hunting brain was a bit horrified by paying (a rather hefty) full price for it - we brought home the Super Pro that day.

A few days went by before David had a chance to put it together. When I came home from work, I met a mostly horrified David. Apparently, after putting the entire grill together, he realized the grates were missing from the box. All four of them. In the US this would have been a minor problem but we had NO IDEA how to fix this problem here in Chile. And we'd heard from friends that any kind of return or complaint was very hard to manage.

We went back to the Easy and tried explaining in broken Spanish the situation. I was getting a little panicked as no one seemed willing to help or listen. What could we do with an expensive grill with no grilling surface!? Finally after standing around waiting, I found someone from the correct department. In desperation, I simply stated. "Tengo una parilla sin parillas!" (I have a grill with no grills!). For some reason this struck the associate as absolutely hilarious. He began calling all over the store repeating my quip. Sooner than later we ended up in the correct "returns department" and in 15 minutes had four grilling grates in hand.

Another disaster avoided. And of course - here are pictures of the grill.