Capital Culinarian owners, post reviews,photos of your new range!
jfolley
13 years ago
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Comments (154)
zartemis
12 years agolast modified: 9 years agoCT_Rob
12 years agolast modified: 9 years agoRelated Discussions
Pro Range (Viking vs. Capital Culinarian)
Comments (24)I know I am a little late joining this conversation, but I found this thread, looking up a comparison between Viking and Capitol. These are my two finalists, but things have changed a lot with these 2 companies in the past 2 years, since the last comments were made. First of all, Viking, who was purchased by Middleby Corporation (approx. 3 years ago), has made significant changes to the entire product line at Viking. I am in the commercial kitchen equipment business, and Middleby Corp owns the finest cooking equipment companies in the commercial cooking business (Jade Range, Southbend Range, Wells Mfg., Lang Mfg., Pitco, Blodgett, Market Forge, TurboChef, Star Mfg., Magic Kitchen, Anets, Toastmaster, Nu Vu, Doyon, and more). I went to the big home show this past spring in Las Vegas, and spoke directly with the CEO of Middleby and asked him what he has done with the Viking line since he bought the company. He hired engineers to revamp everything in the line, and was very proud of his new 7 series ranges with their new burner design and chrome plated griddles. He let me know that he inherited a lot of service issues that he has addressed, both on the manufacturing side, and on the customer service side. I can tell you that working with their commercial division companies, they are very committed to customer satisfaction, and expedited service. Some of Middleby's commercial divisions are making components and ovens for their newer product additions (such as TurboChef ovens in their wall ovens). I can't tell you how these changes have impacted the lastest product offerings, but I can't imagine that the changes have made them worse. I did have a Viking 48" gas range in a house I sold back in 2008, circa 2004, and there were a lot of features I did not like. Burners were not good in simmer mode, gas oven was not self cleaning, and was very difficult to get clean. Charbroiler smoked out the house, whenever I tried to use it. But it added a lot of value to the house when I sold it. Now let's look at Capitol. The guy who owns Capitol, owned DCS, which used to be one of the "players" in the commercial range market. Their ranges were very attractive, performed well, but were not heavy duty enough for high volume restaurants (Wolf and US Range were the big players on the West Coast, where DCS and now Capitol are located.) As many companies have gone light weight, easy to clean, low maintenance, Capitol appears to be sticking with some of the old commercial designs, which pay off from a performance standpoint, but may intimidate some, from a maintenance standpoint. I am truly impressed with the open burners on the Capitol Connoisseurian and Culinarian ranges. I can tell you that not only the burner design, but the top grate design adds significantly to the performance of the burners. Their is a bowl/ring that is part of the cast iron grates that directs the heat back up onto the pans that is deflected down off the the bottom of the pan, containing the area. The open style grates, that are light weight and easy to clean, have no added qualities to the performance. I am impressed with the thermostatic griddle (which is also standard on the Viking). The old manual flame griddles got too hot and made them useless for breakfast items, and left the griddle only for meat and searing. The addition of a self cleaning oven on the all gas model is probably the biggest "plus" feature of the range comparing it to Viking. With Viking you have to go to Dual Fuel, which raises to price by a couple thousand dollars. To me, the downside of both of these ranges is that they don't have a real good computer control for the ovens, like you see in a regular domestic range. I would love some feedback from anyone who has bought these two products in the past 6 months or so, with the latest improvements, and the bugs worked out....See MoreCalling 36'' Capital Culinarian Range-Top Owners
Comments (9)Hi Bee, I'll toss my hat in, even though I have a 48 inch CC rangetop. The rangetop has 6 burners and a grill. See the photo below - click on it for a larger photo. Please tell me what brand you have. -- I had a custom Modernaire hood insert made for a wood hood. I went custom because I wanted a flat (and not tall) front edge of the hood to reduce the apparent mass of a big hood. (Also it is a landing perch for Alfred E Neuman until everything is completed.) The cfm's? -- I have a 1400 CFM Abbaka blower mounted on the roof. It is beautifully made, powerful, and quiet. I'm using a 10 inch round duct with 3 elbows, which is pushing it. -- The best price I found on the Abbaka fan was at www.dvorsons.com Is it oversized? If not, do you wish it were? -- The hood is oversized at 54 inches wide and 27 inches deep. Frankly I wish the hood were deeper, and here's why. Because of the shallow capture area under the hood, smoke plumes reach the front edge of the hood. Also, the front edge of the hood is occupied by halogen lights and controls, so the real suction area extends 21 1/2 inches from the tiled back wall. But, we've never noticed any spillover of the smoke out of the hood. -- See more comments below about dimensions. Do you wish it was quieter? -- Yes, but it is pretty quiet. The noise is from the air flow through the baffles and there's not much to do about that. Actually, a lower hood will sound quieter than a higher hood, if there is a direct line between your ears and the baffles with a high hood, and a indirect line between your ears and the baffles in a low hood. -- No one has ever commented that it sounds loud. The Abbaka fan is the quietest I could find. Abbaka publishes its sound level and Broan refuses to do so. I even called Broan's technical support people and they refused to give me a noise level for their fans. Do you wish it was more powerful? -- No. I wish the hood extended deeper than 27 inches. Maybe I wish I had more capture area (height of open space under hood) but it would mean losing the low profile of the front edge of the hood. Other comments about dimensions: -- After tiling the backsplash the 27 inch deep hood became a 26-1/2 inch deep hood. -- The rangetop cabinet is deeper than the adjacent cabinet, and we pulled the rangetop out slightly from the back wall so the back of the stainless back ledge is 3/4 inch out from the finished backsplash. We like having the extra space behind big pots and big flames on the back burners. We should have made the hood deeper to the extent we pulled the rangetop forward. -- The CC installation drawings are terrible. You should call them to clear up some of the ambiguities in their dimensional installation drawing. -- The front lip of the wood hood is 7 inches high. The bottom of the hood is 70 inches from the floor. My wife and I are both 5-11 and we don't come close to hitting our heads. Remember, the front knobs stick way out so they keep you from rubbing your body against the front of the beautiful and curvaceous rangetop. -- Our countertop is 37-1/2 inches from the floor and the bottom of the hood is 32-1/2 inches above the counter. -- The hood is 31-3/4 inches above the rangetop stainless and 31 inches above the cast iron grates. I hope this helps! By the way, we went with a Liebherr refrigerator in part based on your kitchen and we love it! Good luck with your new kitchen! Billy [URL=http://s773.photobucket.com/albums/yy12/BillyG_photos/?action=view&current=IMG_1818.jpg][IMG]http://i773.photobucket.com/albums/yy12/BillyG_photos/th_IMG_1818.jpg[/IMG][/URL] Here is a link that might be useful: Abbaka Blower - 1400 CFM...See MoreCalling on Capital Culinarian owners!
Comments (9)Thanks, Breezy, for noting this here on the kitchen forum. Actually reading through the threads (there are several current and past) may be of some interest especially to those in the market. I know that I am having trouble with my machine but I'm not sure I've exhausted efforts to fix it. For my part I do still like the machine a lot - just want to get that out there. But in an effort just to try to figure out how common our problem might be, I've set up a brief survey for current Culinarian users to weigh in on this. If you're a current Culinarian user and you'd be so kind as to answer 6 brief questions there, it would be much appreciated....See Morewhat range hoods are you using for your capital culinarian?
Comments (3)In some commercial settings, the requirements for grease removal from the vented air stream are apparently more stringent than for regular home or even restaurant ventilation. For these cases, there are various combinations of baffle, mesh, ball bearing, and no doubt other schemes to capture not only the large end of the grease particle spectrum, but also more of the small end of the grease particle spectrum. Even intense UV is used to disassociate the grease molecules. I don't think that there is anything intrinsically wrong with mesh+baffle filters, so long as the baffles are constructed conventionally and the air flow on high is sufficient for centrifugal grease separation, and when the air flow is lower the mesh is effective. However, cleaning cannot be put off as with baffles alone....See MoreBrightFutureFoods
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