Wolf and Grizzly Portable Campfire Grill Review

Hands down, the best part of camping is the food. I don’t care what your cooking; it just tastes better in the woods cooked over an open fire. Sure, you can opt for a camp stove, we do from time to time, but you can’t beat the flavor of cowboy cooking. The char on a sizzling hotdog, the flame-grilled taste of a burger, the smoky goodness infused into a chicken leg; I drool just thinking about it. But dialing in your camp kitchen setup can be a challenge.

First, you can’t cook without heat. You need a safe place for a fire, a source of fuel, and an ignition source. Circle of stones, firewood, matches; easy peasy. Next, you need a surface to cook on. This is where the challenge begins. If you are not at a campground, you’ll need a grill grate that can be positioned over a fire. Even if you are at a campground, those iron grates on the fire ring are disgusting, no matter how much dirt and crud you scrape off of them.

My current grill is a Camp Chef Lumberjack Over Fire Rack Grill. But unfortunately, it’s massive, hard to clean, and sucks to lug around.

Then I happened upon a Kickstarter for the Wolf and Grizzly Grill. It was a compact, rollable grill—a freaking genius idea if it worked. Regrettably, I didn’t have the money for it at the time but flash forward a year, and the friendly folks at Wolf and Grizzly were kind enough to send us one of their grills to review!

What does the Wolf and Grizzly Grill come with?

The grill comes with a Foldable Grill Frame, Rollable Grill Surface, Custom Grill Cleaning Tool, Grill Case, Microfibre Cloth, flint, and a striker.

Is it Portable?

The most important question I had was, “Is it portable?”. After all, if I can’t easily pack it with us when we go camping, then we would never use it.

As I mentioned earlier, my current grill is big, bulky, and heavy. I have to transport it around in a tall garbage bag because it’s always caked in soot from the fire. And if I don’t pick it up while also holding the collapsible legs, it rips through the trash bag. I don’t have a big enough collection of swear words to describe how infuriating that can be.

When the Wolf and Grizzly Grill arrived at my doorstep, the very first thing I noticed was how compact it is. The grill’s design allows it to roll into the same size as a camera tripod or a fly fishing rod case. As a result, it easily fits inside a backpack’s main compartment, in the water bottle holder, or straps neatly underneath, as is the case with my camera bag.

It also came with a heavy-duty canvas carry bag. It keeps everything together and prevents the grill from dirtying your bag or its contents after use.

Overall I give it an A+ in portability.

Easy to Setup?

Setting up the grill is surprisingly easy. It only has two parts, the grill surface and the frame. To test out the ease of setup, I did not read any of the instructions. Here is a timelapse of my first time setting it up. Setting it up took less than a minute, and it only took that long because I didn’t know what the flat metal piece was for. FYI it spans the underside of the grill surface for added stability. After the first time, it took me less than 30 seconds to get the grill ready.

The grill has three adjustable height levels. Which opens up a lot of possibilities for cooking. But, I will say, sometimes it can be a little tricky to adjust the grill. For example, you pull one corner, and another corner pops off. But I found that if you treat it like lug nuts on a tire, aka work in a star pattern or diagonals, it solves that dilemma.

Can it Handle Weight?

Your most common campfire food is cooked directly on the grill, i.e., steaks, hamburgers, hotdogs, etc. But you’d be missing out on a lot of excellent camping experiences if you just limited yourself to the basics. So let me set the mood for you. It’s your first night on a 3-day camping trip. Every twig snap and leaf rustle has kept you awake. You’ve endlessly tossed and turned all night, performing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with your sleeping bag. Your begging for the sun to come so you can start your day. Finally, sunlight comes up over the mountains, and you exit the tent and start a fire to warm up. You make a hot cup of coffee, and the steam from your cup dances in front of you. Now it’s time for pancakes and bacon. The sweet taste of buttery pancakes and that crispy bacon has erased the night of ruined sleep and has reinvigorated that admiration for camping. A good breakfast is the key to a good camping trip.

With my love of breakfast foods, I had to make sure the Wolf and Grizzly grill could support my heavy cast iron skillet. Once again the little grill came through. It didn’t even flinch when I set the pan on it, even when I had it balancing on some stones while doing some river-side cooking.

What can you cook on the Wolf and Grizzly Grill?

So far, I have yet to find something I can’t cook on the Wolf and Grizzly grill. But we looked at a few critical things when testing the grill.

First, we looked at the spacing of the metal rods on the grill surface. Would a breakfast sausage link fall in between the rods? Nope, the grill gently cradled our sausage like a newborn baby. It passed that test with flying colors.

Next, Would a hotdog roll-off if the grill wasn’t level? Leveling anything outdoors is a challenge. The grill did a pretty good job of keeping our weenies out of the fire. The rods are spaced just far enough away that enough of the hotdog rests below the surface to prevent it from rolling away.

Finally, we looked at how much food you could reasonably cook on the surface. You’re looking at about four burgers or two ribeye steaks of space (Forget the metric system, we measure things in terms of meat from now on). So for camping trips with 2-4 close friends, this grill gets the job done.

The grill performs best with foods that get cooked hot and fast. You can’t fit any big logs under the grill. So you will not be doing any low and slow cooking unless you’re willing to be stoking the fire with kindling constantly. But the grill was designed for mobility, not all-day cookouts, so I can’t fault it for not being able to handle a bonfire.

Easy to Clean?

It is a nightmare to clean any cookware that sits on an open campfire. Cast iron pans, dutch ovens, skewers, etc, all get cloaked in black soot that gets all over your hands and camping gear. While the Wolf and Grizzly Grill is no exception, it does come with a few items that make it better than other grill grates. First, it comes with a custom grill cleaning tool that you can use before and after cooking to remove stuck-on food scraps. And it comes with a microfiber towel for wiping it down. At least I think the towel is for cleaning. I dunked my grill in a nearby stream and proceeded to wipe the grill down with it, and it was still a very messy experience. But the case the grill comes with is the real hero. I rolled up the grill, wrapped the microfiber cloth around it, and placed it in the case. That kept the remaining soot from getting on the tent, sleeping bag, or any other gear until I could get it home to wash it in the sink.