Salesman’s Lie : Grill-It : National Boat, Caravan and Outdoor Show
I went along to the National Boat Caravan and Leisure Show at the NEC at the weekend. In general the show was an improvement on previous years, and it appeared that even more had been crammed into the 5 Halls than usual.
One thing that was memorable from the show, for all the wrong reasons, is a stall selling the Grill-It “Deluxe Gourmet Grill”. This is one of the stalls where a salesman gives a demonstration talking about the product, but doesn’t actually tell you the price until the end. What is normally showmanship, turned out to be just a complete pack of lies, although I never trust a word they say anyway. In reality I don’t think it’s a bad product and for most parts is suitable for what I purchased mine for, but I’m sure that some at the show will be disappointed to hear the lies they’ve been told and that it may not be quite as suitable for the reason they bought it.
The most obvious lie, and the one I instantly saw through was their claim about this being a limited offer that is about to run out. We went to the stall shortly after lunchtime and they had only 7 of these left at this special offer, having only 50 to sell per day. So, what a surprise it was when I heard an hour later that they still had only 7 left! Perhaps they have had to give a lot of refunds during that hour 😉
The special offer they were giving and showed was how you bought the Grill-It and got the Roast-It free. They said that was what was only available to the first 50 customers per day.
The Grill-It is designed to fit on your cooker and allows fat free cooking. The feature that makes it stand out from a George Forman Grill / Electric Low Fat Grill is that it has a tray around the outside which is filled with a liquid that produces steam keeping the food moist and perhaps flavouring the food. The sample that they gave on the stall was more moist than a George Forman, which does dry food out somewhat.
Another thing that they were saying on the stall is how suitable it is for taking camping / caravanning. It is NOT suitable for most caravan cookers. I have used mine on my full size cooker at home, and it is so big it only just fits on the cooker, overlapping into the neighbouring cooking ring areas. It is such a tight fit that I’ve managed to knock it off the grill a few times by mistake. I’m pretty sure it will not fit on most caravan (especially tourer caravan) cookers.
I’ve only cooked a couple of things with it so far, some low fat sausages that would probably have cooked better on the George Forman, but I have cooked some fish on, which was nice and moist. It didn’t live up to the claim that it wouldn’t smell of fish cooking though. I haven’t yet tried the Roast-It, which does sound quite good, although perhaps better just using a normal roasting tin, with a rack and adding the liquid direct into that.
It’s not a bad product, and I’m looking forward to cooking chicken and mushrooms, which is the one demonstration they did, but don’t believe what the salesman says, as he’s a down-right liar.