Why I Love My Outdoor Kitchen 

You know we LOVE to grill year-round over here. It’s a huge part of how we cook. And since our last grill was barely hanging on, we knew it was time for an upgrade. We’d planned to redo our backyard when we moved into this house in 2020, hoping to create a fun, usable, beautiful space for our family to play, eat, and entertain friends!  We definitely wanted a pool, but we also KNEW our backyard wouldn’t be complete without a big, functional outdoor kitchen to make preparing, grilling, and serving food to family and friends truly make sense out there! And now it does!

We decided to use RTA Outdoor Living and Coyote Outdoor for this prefab kitchen and it has been an absolute dream. We’re obsessed! If you follow along on Instagram at all, you’ll see we’re always out there grilling our Sunday meats, making smash burgers, sautéing veggies, and cooking our pizzas. OBSESSED.

I’ve had questions about it since we finished everything at the beginning of last summer. So I thought I’d share all the details here on the blog!

The Process of Getting an RTA Outdoor Kitchen 

Once we knew that we wanted an outdoor kitchen, we started looking into RTA. I had just found them online and loved the idea of designing exactly what we wanted ahead of time with the dimensions, shape, materials, and appliances… all while my contractor was working on my pool and hardscape.  I loved knowing we didn’t have to start from scratch once the rest of the backyard was done. But that the kitchen would be ready to install when the backyard was at that point. It was so easy. 

We worked with a guy named Daniel (if you need a name), who was fabulous! He made the process so simple. We got exactly what we wanted and couldn’t be happier! 

If you’re interested, there are so many ways to start–you can use their design tool here, order an already designed one here, or even book a free one-on-one call to work with an expert directly. 

Getting the RTA Outdoor Living kitchen installed with the Coyote appliances was not complicated at all. There were a few hiccups because we hadn’t added the electric and gas everywhere it needed to be. So learn from us there by double-checking the plans! But they give you all of those details ahead of time. 

We went big, since I love tons of space to prep and we use the bar for big dinner spreads when friends come over or just for our family on Sunday afternoons. The best.

Why I’m Obsessed with Coyote Appliances 

We got so many great appliances from Coyote, but some of our favorites have to be S-Series Grill, Warming Drawer, and the griddle! 

It took me a minute to learn how to cook on a stainless steel griddle, but now I LOVE IT. We’re always making the viral smash burger tacos on them (yum!). If you watch my outdoor dining highlight, you’ll see what I’m talking about, or just google smash burger tacos. I usually make mine with half a Cut Da Carb wrap and 96/4 beef from Trader Joe’s. The griddle makes them so easy to make! Just having a flat top is fulfilling a dream for me. Haha.

The grill for us was a no-brainer. Ross is our grill master, and we all LOVE to eat what he grills. We use it all the time to make recipes like this Herby Mediterranean Grilled Chicken Tenderloins or this Brown Sugar Spiced Pork Tenderloin. This Coyote grill has made the quality of our grilling SO much better. It’s so easy to control the temperature and sear super hot like we love to do, or move things to a cooler side of the grill while the cheese melts, etc…

And finally, the warming drawer is such a nice touch. We love making pizza in our Ooni (because there’s plenty of counter space in our RTA kitchen), and keeping the pizzas in the warmer drawer until everyone’s ready to eat! We use it for our grilled carne, or chicken, or tri-tip… to keep things nice and warm right up until go-time. Total lifesaver. If you love entertaining family or a big group of people, the warmer drawer is key. 

The RTA kitchen and Coyote appliances have been so high-quality that we recommend them to anyone. If you’re wanting the details of what we got, here’s the deets…

RTA Kitchen and Coyote Appliances Details 

Okay, for the countertops and RTA Outdoor Living kitchen details…

• Finish: Modern Concrete Bright
• Countertop: Alpha White Granite
• Layout: Custom U-shape

Here’s the dimensions: 

• Bar Island length: 12ft (that was customized to the height of the grill island) 
• Grill Island Length: 6ft
• Straight Island Length: 2-6ft (next to each other at the same height) 
• Height for everything: 35.4 inches 

The Coyote Appliances we got: 

• 24” left-hinge refrigerator
• Dual trash and recycle
• 31” dry pantry
• 36” S-Series grill
• 31” double access doors
• Three drawer cabinet
• 21” sink 
• Single access door 
• Warming Drawer 
• 30” griddle 
• 31”  storage combo 
• 31” double access door 

You can use the info above to get an entire kitchen just like ours right here. Or if you’re just needing to update appliances, you can find all of them here. 

Why I Love My Outdoor Kitchen

This RTA Outdoor Living Kitchen has been more amazing than we could’ve ever imagined. We all love spending time in the backyard, but we might love spending time near food—- even more. Ha. The kitchen just really completes our outdoor space for us. It makes inviting people over so much more fun.

We live in southern California, so it’s something we use pretty much all year round. But even if it’s cold, we might be eating inside, but we’re still out there using the functions of the grill! If you want to see how we use it on basically a weekly basis, you can check out the “outdoor dining” highlight on my Instagram. We spend so much time out there, and it’s been an AMAZING place for our family to come together. 

If you have any more questions, feel free to reach out. And of course, the kitchen has made us love our grilled meats that much more (and we already loved them kind of a lot). If you’re looking for some more grilled recipes, you can get a bunch of them on my blog like this Honey Chipotle Grilled Chicken or this Balsamic Grilled Flank Steak. Enjoy! 

And if you’re looking to build your dream outdoor kitchen, you can start here. 

Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission. Read the full privacy policy here.