Recently, https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:grate has been documented with some 232 uses, to map whether leisure=firepit and amenity=bbq have a grate (AKA cooking grate / grill / cooking grid).
While it might be useful for leisure=firepit, I do not think it makes sense for amenity=bbq at all.
BBQ grill is a place that has some way to contain a fire and a grill/grate/grid on which food is cooked. If it misses that grill, then it in my opinion can hardly be classified as amenity=bbq, but is instead fire ring / fire pit (see Fire ring - Wikipedia) which is according to wiki to be tagged as leisure=firepit instead.
Who do others think? does amenity=bbq + grate=no make any sense to you, or should it be documented as discouraged?
Maybe someone meant places designated for grilling, often with dedicated infrastructure but without bbq itself that needs to be brought by users, covered by bbq=bring_your_own / bring_own_bbq=yes
A steel grill or grate is not mandatory for every BBQ. Lots of BBQs do have a one, being placed over the heat source, mainly (but not always) open fire, but there are also BBQ facilities which are completely closed. This type has a metal plate on top being heated from below mainly (but not always) by gas and is very common all over Australia. There is a picture of one of those from Lyndhurst NSW in the wiki.
Btw. in Germany we call the open type with a grate “Grill” and “grillen” is very popular in summer time. The term BBQ has only become more popular recently in the course of updating the German language with fancy American-english terms
Thanks; indeed flat heated metal plate is a different format than grate grill surface; but it does serve the same purpose - so food is put on it and it cooks on it. Don’t know that there are tagging which distinguishes between them (apart from possible description=* of course)
I was mainly concerned with places which completely lack such (usually metal) surface to hold food at all; i.e. which are unusable for bbq unless you bring extra piece of hardware with you (be it flat metal, or a grill / mesh metal), i.e. places like this:
Sure - but don’t tell a grill or BBQ fanatic that grill or plate is the same - there are heated arguments about which kind provides the REAL BBQ experience and again don’t dare to tell that firing with wood, charcoal, gas or electric is all the same … but this goes off topic.
Neither do I and no need to worry about that now, sooner or later some bbq expert will come up with a proposal to do so for sure …
bbq=yes or bbq=byo is fine when added to a leisure=picnic_site or camp_site but not together with amenity=bbq.
