THE GRILL EMERGED from hibernation last week. I rolled it to its place of honor on the brick terrace and, in a howling, freezing gale, managed to get it started. Although I used to be a year-round griller, I have lately taken to storing the Weber kettle during the rainy months. Its predecessor, by contrast, was left exposed to the elements and fell to ruin.

Grilling in April is a bit like playing baseball in April. There is a defiant aspect to the effort, since winter's grip, though loosened, has not yet dropped entirely away. Back east, this can mean snow-outs of ball games; here the inclement conditions are more likely to include wind, rain, and fog, which are not necessarily fatal to baseball but can make lighting the barbie a tricky business. One takes a certain cold comfort, of course, from the recognition that things aren't likely to improve much as spring warms into summer, except that the rains will stop.

A friend called the other day to ask how I managed to grill steaks without burning them. He was frustrated by leaping flames that rose from fat dripping onto the coals. My answer was simple: use the lid. The lid damps flames and also creates a convection effect so that whatever you're cooking cooks faster. Weber kettles are meant to be used with their lids, apart from a minute or so of top-off cooking at the outset, for a nice seared surface.

I was reminded by the assumptions of this conversation that the Weber kettle is a given, an icon of industrial design quite as familiar to our American eyes as a Corvette. My friend has a grill just like mine, with a lid, despite the fact that he lives across the bay, in America. My father presided over a series of them when I was a boy, in America; they vanished under winter's blowing and drifting snows, only to reappear in spring, ready for marshmallow-roasting. It is true that in these latter days of limitless, and hellish, consumer choice you have a fairly wide selection of gas grills from which to select, but you are going to have to look hard to find a charcoal grill that isn't a Weber kettle.

I know because I've tried. Two years ago, when I was last in the charcoal-grill market, I wanted something – anything – other than a Weber kettle. I wanted something with an adjustable fire grate; something not classically suburban American. But the search exhausted me, and I have since come to understand that the Weber is an icon because it works. It is worthy. This has put a lid on my unrest.