Watch the show in 30 seconds0:30
An outdoor kitchen is hard to judge from a photo. A grill hood either lifts smoothly or it fights you. A 36-inch counter either feels roomy or tight once you stand at it. The show floor answers both in seconds. Booking six showroom visits takes weeks. See it in person at the Fort Lauderdale Home Show, September 4–7, 2026 at the Broward County Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale.
Builders here still call it a summer kitchen. Quotes for one land close together on the parts you can see. They split far apart on the work behind them. These three choices move the number the most.
The cabinet run gets built around the appliances, not the other way round. So choose them first: grill width, side burner, power burner, pizza oven, fridge and vent hood. Do it before anyone pours the masonry. Choose late and you get a blank filler panel where the warming drawer should have gone.
“Stainless” is not one thing. Within a few miles of salt air, the higher-nickel grades hold up. The cheap grades are magnetic, and they freckle with rust inside a season. Marine-grade polymer, a heavy outdoor plastic, is a real option too. So is block-and-stucco. Both are fine choices, and both need very different care.
The hidden work is where budgets break. Size the gas line for the total BTU load, which means every burner running at once. Give the fridge and the lights a circuit of their own. Add a water supply and a drain if you want a sink.
Then get these four on paper before you start choosing stone.
Real photos from recent shows.
Three outdoor kitchen quotes only mean something if all three price the same work. Take photos of the space from three angles. Measure the run you want. Snap a photo of your gas meter, breaker box and hose bib. Hand every vendor that same packet. Ask them all to price the same scope: same length, same appliance count, same countertop. Then the price gaps are real.
After that, the gaps hide in what a quote leaves out.
Booking one visit at a time turns this into a six-week project. By the third meeting you have forgotten what the first one quoted. Here the builders, grill dealers, paver and turf crews and pergola firms share one air-conditioned hall. Ask the same three questions ten times in an hour.
The costly mistakes out here are built in, not skin deep.
Each one gets fixed the same way. You cut back into finished stone and pay for the same labor twice.
Spend on what you cannot swap later. That means the cabinet boxes and the gas, water and power behind them. Run one extra circuit and one size larger gas line than you need today. Adding either one later means tearing out finished stone. Facing stone, furniture, drawers and lighting can all wait a year.
Open every drawer. Stand at every counter. Price the whole patio — kitchen, pergola, pavers and turf — with the people who would build it. September 4–7, 2026 at the Broward County Convention Center.
