Green Weber Performer 22.5" Charcoal Grill 1427001

I switched from years of (propane) gas grill use when my second wife wanted to cook over real wood so much she was willing to put a pit and a few bricks around it in our back yard! Needless to say, this weber is fantastic. I could have bought a grill that was 10x the price, but I love this one. There are so so so many ways to cook with it. Right now, I'm experimenting with mesquite smoked pizza. Yum The starter mechanism is very handy and simple to use -- it looks flimsy and I wasn't sure how it would stand up over time, but it's still working fine after almost two years of hard usage -- you can also couple it with a starter chimney to help get things going.

There are two accessories I'd suggest with this grille:
FIRST, get the hard anodized GrillGate with the special pronged spatula that comes with it. There's a simple square one on Amazon, but there is a round three piece interlocking one on the GrillGate.com web site that I got (you often want to remove one of the three pieces for flavored wood, smoking, etc.) -- This one is custom made for the weber grill although I suspect the cheaper one available here at Amazon might work fine for most purposes. This product also makes an alternative to buying the D shaped pizza stone if you are experimenting with Pizzas.
SECOND, is the Smokenator 1000 -- this odd gadget system works amazingly well. Who would have thought you could smoke or control temperatures or moisturize during long cooks with this grill?
[I have a garage area full of gadgets for this grill, but these are the two that have been fantastic]

Another suggestion is to actually read the Weber how-to manuals that either you get with it or can pick up off their web site. Lots of good tips. Ditto for the manuals that come with the two accessories above. In general, I've found the Weber brand products to be good products at good value prices.

I've had to learn my way around charcoal over the last year. Lump charcoal is the way to go. Virtually every brand is better than the usual store briquettes, yes even the "competition" briquettes. However, afficianados are talking about the new Wicked Good Charcoal Briquettes, so I've ordered a few bags and will give them a try.