“We put 30 burgers on it, or we’ve done chicken breasts for a party of 20 people with a single grill, and just throwing it on a wooden table,” Leggett says. Once the grill is open, you can put coals and grates on one or both sides, allowing for more surface space than a Big Green Egg. It creates the strongest lattice with the least amount of material.” “It’s the most efficient way to run a web across a surface. “The honeycomb is nature’s pattern,” he says. Leggett says the grates are so strong you can stand on them. The whole thing weighs 28 pounds.Įven the stainless steal honeycomb cooking grate looks artful and locks into place with a satisfying magnetic snap, which is due to samarium-cobalt magnets that don’t lose their polarity under high heat. Nothing is painted, so it won’t corrode, peel, bubble or chip. The die-cast aluminum cook box has military spec coating with Type III anodization, and the perforated exterior uses Type II anodization, the same kind used in the same factories as your MacBook. Intake dampers on the sides allow for convective airflow. We even dorked out about the ergonomics of the handle.” The Nomad Grill & Smoker retails for $599.Įvery detail has been taken into account. “The proportions of the overall grill are modeled after the golden ratio, which is just pleasing to the eye. “We wanted to make something that was like, what if Apple made a grill, or BMW made a barbecue,” Leggett says. They sound clunky, and parts fall off, and they’re no longer serviceable-the companies go out of business. They are quasi-disposable, just rattle traps.
“You walk through the aisles of any major hardware store, even at Barbeques Galore and REI, especially in the portable category, the camp cookers and that sort of thing. “There’s a lot of schlock out there,” Veatch says. “The thought was, let’s build a better portable grill.” “It started with an observation that it was something that doesn’t exist in the market,” Leggett says. The two were looking for a venture to start together when they came up with the concept for a portable grill back in the fall of 2016. Leggett comes from a construction background, mostly custom homebuilding, and Veatch was doing Spanish language multicultural marketing before going to work at the flip-flop company Hari Mari.
That sort of casual and hip, Austin engineer meets O‘ahu surfer vibe is at the core of the collaboration between these longtime friends. “I had to get a fresh shirt!” Veatch shouts from the back room. “We start every meeting with John walking through the office, half naked, scurrying around,” Cam Leggett says, laughing about the state of undress of his Nomad cofounder, John Veatch. But I found my attention quickly diverted by a shirtless figure running across the office hallway. The blue-accented, perforated aluminum designs would be equally at home in the MoMA gift shop or tucked in the trunk of Steve Jobs’ BMW Z8. When I first show up at the new Nomad headquarters and showroom in Bishop Arts, I am enamored by the wall display of suitcase-shaped portable grills.