Fourteen pancakes. That's how many fit on the griddle at Long Pine Key on the Sunday morning of Presidents' Day weekend, with a corner left over for the strip of bacon Nico insisted on "parking" there. Our old method was the Lodge 12-inch skillet, three pancakes at a time, and by the last batch the first eater wanted seconds and the cook (me) still hadn't eaten.
We bought a Blackstone 22-inch tabletop griddle at Walmart on February 7 for $149. That was the same week we were buying tires, a battery and a propane tank for the camper, and it was the only thing on that week's receipts that wasn't strictly necessary. So it gets the same question as everything else that rides in the Pilot: does it earn the space?
Why now, and not two years ago
For two tent years we cooked on the Coleman two-burner stove ($55 back in 2023), the skillet, two Rome pie irons and a fire when the park allowed one. That's plenty for a weekend. The pop-up changed things a little. It has its own two-burner stove inside, and a lot of gear that used to ride in the back of the Pilot now lives in the camper. That freed up a corner of cargo space, and Dana and I had a short debate about what should fill it. She voted for a second food cooler. I voted for breakfast for four at the same time. She agreed to a trial, which in our house means "prove it."
The tabletop model sits on our little wooden slat-top table or on the end of a picnic table, runs off the same one-pound green propane bottles as the Coleman, and has two burners under one flat steel top. We skipped the big freestanding griddles. They need their own legs and a lot more room, and we are not feeding a scout troop.
What we've cooked so far
One camper trip and four backyard dinners in, here's the honest list:
- Pancakes. The reason it exists. One cook, one batch, everybody eats together.
- Smash burgers. Our second dinner at Long Pine Key. Balls of ground beef pressed flat with the back of a spatula, onions on the side, cheese melted on top. Maya ranked them above the ones at our usual burger place, which I'll take.
- Eggs, bacon and potatoes at the same time. The camp breakfast I always pictured and never pulled off with one skillet.
- Quesadillas. Four at once for lunch, ten minutes start to finish.
- Cuban sandwiches pressed under the skillet. Faster than the pie irons, though Maya says the pie iron ones "taste more like camping," and she isn't wrong.
What it does badly: coffee. Marisol's old cafetera wobbles on the flat top and the heat spreads wrong, so café con leche still happens on the Coleman, with that familiar click of the igniter at 6:45 a.m. The Coleman comes on every trip anyway as our backup.
The parts that don't make the reviews
Wind is the first. On a breezy morning the flames struggle and one side runs cooler than the other. Long Pine Key was calm, but I already know the Keys are going to test it. The plan is to set it up on the downwind side of the camper and see what happens.
Cleanup is the second. It isn't hard, but it's a routine, and routines matter at 8 p.m. with a tired six-year-old. While the top is still warm, I scrape the grease toward the rear trough, wipe it down with paper towels, then rub on a thin coat of oil so it doesn't rust in our humidity. No soap. The grease cup needs emptying after every meal, which I learned on the second night when it overflowed onto the picnic table bench. The ants found it before I did.
The third is weight and shape. It's heavier than it looks and it's an awkward flat rectangle. It rides on top of the bins in the Pilot inside a zippered bag so nothing else smells like bacon. I'd guess it takes about as much room as one of our big storage bins.
Camp math, and the verdict so far
On paper, $149 divided by two nights of use is an ugly number. But on most trips we've ended up buying one restaurant breakfast because I was too slow cooking for four, and that runs us about $35. If the griddle kills that habit, it pays for itself in about four trips, before you count a single pancake.
The real test was the smell of bacon at 7:30 a.m. pulling Nico out of the camper with his hair standing straight up and one shoe on, asking if he could flip something. He flipped four pancakes, folded one in half and called it a taco. Maya ran the timer on Dana's phone. Dana drank her coffee sitting down, which she says has never once happened on a camping trip.
So it stays, at least through Bahia Honda at the end of this month. If the east wind down there makes it useless, I'll say so, and the second cooler gets its turn.
