Why do you think it is all or nothing? What's wrong with a built in counter with storage and a sink, and a separate portable gas grill next to it?

How accessible is your outdoor space from the kitchen? If your kitchen is right there, I would do a minimal cooking/kitchen space outdoors, and spend more money inside. If it’s a pain to go from the kitchen to the outside, spend more outside.

@mindshift makes a good point. Built-in grills can be expensive. You can build a masonry cabinet with stainless steel doors for fairly cheap. Add a stone countertop with sink and even an ice chest. Place your grill next to it. Design it so that the height of the cabinet lines up with your grill.

Thank you all. This was very helpful. Our indoor kitchen is pretty accessible. I think given the wildlife population, countertops would be just unappealing, not to mention require a lot of work every time we wanted to use them, (think, squirrels, raccoons, other animals, and hawks, owls, crows etc.)

I am going to skip the outoor kitchen and get a better grill and invest in a nice firepit instead. The house is pretty indoor, outdoor and our kitchen is pretty large. I think it is a better use of limited resources. This discussion was extremely helpful.

We are doing a screened in porch because of ^^^ all of the above! Hoping interest rates keep dropping since it won’t be cheap.🙂