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 (Fire Bowl)
You may be familiar with the small metal grills that some people call hibachi and may even have thought they originated in Japan. To a point you would be right. Servicemen at the end of World War II and the occupation of Japan brought what they called hibachi back from Japan and made the portable grill popular. But, as is usual when bringing thing from one culture to another, changes were made. The first change is that the hibachi in Japan is not a grill for cooking at all, but a coal space heater for cold rooms. The story goes that name of one of the small cooking grills still commonly in use in Japan, the shichirin, was too difficult to roll of the tongue, so the soldiers settled on the easier to say hibachi.
 Another difference is that the shichirin, and its slightly larger cousin, the konro, are made out of a porous ceramic made from fired earth with a few bits of metal framing. There are a number of advantages to having a ceramic grill including the fact that it does not radiate heat like metal (keeping the heat where it should be) which makes it better to gather around and that it is eco-friendly in that it takes less energy to make and contains no unnatural materials to harm the environment when it reaches the end of its useful life. It also doesn’t rust.
In Japan, these grills are used for all sorts of outdoor cooking. Because of the size and safety of the grill, they are often used table top with everyone sitting round cooking vegetables, kabobs, and strips of meat. Although, cooking burgers and steaks on shichirin is rare in Japan, they are well suited to cooking these. An additional advantage of the hibachi is that the rectangular sort such as we stock have two compartments for cooking food at higher and cooler temperatures.
Many people say that cooking on a hibachi, as it is closer to the charcoal, seals in more of the natural flavor of the food and is excellent to use with mesquite.
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