any "big box" store as well as many supermarkets....... cheap ass hibachi style that you can chuck when you're done. charcoal, lighter fluid, BEER, ICE...... depending on the size/quality of your grill the coals will need about 20-30 minutes ++ to get primed. A football and a radio isn't a bad idea either. Prep & marinade your meats the night before in ziploc bags so there's nothing to worry about on gameday morning. (except maybe fish fillets as they shouldn't be marinaded that long, especially with a citrus dressing) If you're bring potatoes you can "pre-cook" them in the microwave for 5 minutes at home to shorten grilling time. If you're getting corn-on-the-cob, remove the silk, then soak them in water in the fridge over night in their husks so they don't burn on the grill. put everything that's considered "trash" in a heavy duty garbage bag, extinguish your coals when you're done and enjoy your day..... If traffic is going to be brutal we'd often "post tailgate" and listen to the other games on the radio while traffic thins out. have fun
Try a dollar store for the pre-loaded disposable grill. This is the time of year when it becomes hard to find charcoal and grill stuff in the supermarkets.
For food, I recommend hot Italian sausage on Italian bread with a spread of green and red sweet peppers and onions. Before the game, fire up a big pan about medium flame. Pour in a good amount of olive oil. Slice up one good sized red pepper and one green one. Put then in the pan. Stir for about five minutes. Then take a good sized yellow onion, slice it in sections, not diced but in rings. By now the peppers should start caramelizing. Put in the onion slices. Continue stirring until cooked through. Put in a tuperware container. At the tailgate put the hot sausage on the grille, and put the contents of the container in a pot. The olive oil should prevent the contents from burning, but stir often. You're at this point just heating up the veggie part. Take the sausage when cooked, put it on a slice of Italian bread, put the pepper/onion combo over it, and wrap the bread over. Enjoy.
Walmart, target, Dollar Stores, many supermarkets As mentioned by someone else they may be a little harder to find up there considering the time of year
Don't waste your time at the home depot in the city, I've been there a bunch of times, and don't remember ever seeing camping supplies. Try hitting up the cosco uptown instead.
Here's a great recipe for tailgating. Most of the heavy lifting is done at home. Only the finishing touches at the game. Enjoy. Find Big Blocker and trade some ribs for some sausage.
50% of the tailgating experience is ridiculing opposing fans (17a & pats-hater are jedis in this field).....so, come up with some good chants to scrutinize the Packer passer-bys.
a good easy tailgate food is marinated pork tenderloin. take a ziploc bag, a pork tenderloin, and a bottle of soy vey (worst name ever) island teriyaki marinade. throw the whole bottle of marinade and the tenderloin in the bag. leave that bad boy in the fridge for like a day or two. pop that sucker on the grill when you get there. takes about 15-20 min on the grill, covered. cut it up into bite size pieces and just pick at them. they are like candy you wont be able to stop.
if you and your friends don't tailgate often, then your best bet is to find a big one and buy your way in. there are a few open to the public like tailgatejoe.com who charge $25 for food and booze. just seem easier then buying, cooking, and cleaning with such a small crowd and it being your only time.
This is true as well. It is what you make of it in the end, but with a group of 4? it's not 'wise' to throw a fancy tailgate. Then again, if you've never tailgated before there's a sense of pride in being a man and doing a tailgate with your friends. Like others said in the posts above, if you're set on tailgating don't overdo it. If there's only four of you there's no sense in buying costco-sized burger packs and ungodly amounts of bratwurst. A decent rule to go by is $8-10 spent per person for food/condiments. As far as recipes, that sausage, pepper, and onion idea is good. A lot of the prepwork is done at home so all it entails is to grill the sausage, heat up the veggies and slapping it on a bun. Some others if interested, rated by cost: $$$$ - Bacon-wrapped shrimp: Buy 16-20 sized cooked/tail-on/deveined shrimp and toss in a marinade of 2 oz olive oil, 2 oz lemon juice, oz hot sauce, half-cup preferred barbeque sauce, tablespoon salt/pepper, tablespoon paprika, tablespoon garlic. Throw the shrimp in the marinade when frozen then put it all in the fridge the night before the tailgate, remove from fridge before leaving and assemble your shrimp by wrapping each one individual with a half-strip of bacon. Place the baconed-shrimp in some tupperware and put it in your cooler. Put on grill till bacon is crisp and eat up. PROTIP: Get a long skewer and put 5-6 shrimp on a skewer to make grilling/flipping the shrimp easier. $$$ - Cheesesteaks: Since it's hard to grill the steak-ums people usually use for cheesesteak you can buy a cheap cut of steak like a skirt steak and grill it at the tailgate. I'd recommend marinating the steak with a simple marinade of italian dressing, salt, and pepper. Make sure the steaks are thin, you don't want to grill 2-inch thick behemoths. Cook 3 min on each side (depends on heat of grill though) and let them rest for 5 minutes. When the steaks have cooled a bit cut them really thin across the grain of the steak and stack the slices in a hoagie-roll. Top with american cheese and eat up. If you need the cheese to melt put the sandwiches in the corner of the grill somewhere with low indirect-heat and wait about a minute (put the lid on the grill) til the cheese melts through. $$ - Sausage pepper and onion recipe the guy posted $ - Burgers and hot dogs. If you can't pull this off you're a fucking retard. PROTIP: Spread yellow-mustard (not spicy-brown, the neon colored shit that normally tastes disgusting) on burger patties when grilling for some added flavor. Apparently in&out burger in Cali does this as a trade secret. Whether they do or not I don't know but it tastes better. Also, if you have one of those portable tent-things -- forgot what they're called exactly but they have 4 poles and a canopy above -- it definitely helps. Adds to the experience I think and is unbeatable when it rains. Bring a sautee pan and a pot for the grill if you'll need it.
you can go in yellow or orange lots. You can tailgate in the "lesser" lots, the orange, but you cant go into the "higher" lots which would be green.
