Hopefully someone who has experience with both Dacor & KA will respond, but I have the KA 30" & am very happy. Of course, I am a warming drawer novice so I might not know what I am missing. Once I found out the KA had the slow cooking function I decided I wanted it & have used & enjoy it. I never used a countertop slow cooker since it always seemed too heavy & took too long for me to get cleaned up. I use my Corningware French White mostly for cooking dishes & find clean up quick & easy. (In another thread on GardenWeb many cooks have shared their slow cooker recipes. I have used many of them & love them. The link is below.) There is a vent to open & close for dry or moist heat. As a novice I move it back & forth, & wonder when I need to add a dish of water. My warming drawer usage is mostly to get a meal to the table warm keeping individual dishes or dish components warm, thus I have not used it for a party where food remained in it a while. I did read in another thread that for one cook it was important that the warming drawer be tall enough to hold the bowl used for proofing bread -- she found it to be a drawer other than KA. I have my WD under my scoop drawer, under my 36" gas cooktop. I did research getting a 36" WD so that it filled the space/balanced under the cooktop. However, since KA doesn't make a 36" WD & since they are the only drawer with slow cooker I stayed with the KA. My cabinet maker created panels for either side of the drawer so it didn't look blank. I have found that I will welcome a 36" warming drawer since at times I am getting this one pretty full. One challenge I've had because of the location under my scoop drawer is when using slow cooking the utencils in my scoop drawer get very hot. The KA customer service tells me this is "working as designed". I think KA is not designing their products for serious cooks since it appears they design it to be placed in the oven stack (all are 30") & haven't considered the implications of it being installed somewhere else. We have attempted to use a insulation pad for a water heater to reduce heat transfer, but it didn't seem to make a big difference. I certainly would expect you to be reimbursed for any differences in costs between the appliances you paid for & the appliances you receive. I hope you aren't/didn't base the price on MSRP since so many times the applicances are available for MUCH less! Good luck as you progress, but unless there is a height issue between the Dacor & the KitchenAid I think you will be happy (I feel it is high enough for my needs). Here is a link that might be useful: Your favorite Crockpot Recipe!

I would pick an all-gas range and electric wall oven. An all gas range is considerably less expensive than dual-fuel, and you would have the flexibility of two ovens & an infrared broiler (only available in a gas oven). You could use the gas oven as a warming oven, handy to the rangetop, or its extra large capacity for crowds. If you don't choose a range, then a rangetop will give you higher BTUs and large burner grids than a "cooktop", which has discreet burner or hob areas. I'd pick the GE Monogram 36" 6 burner gas rangetop. For an electric wall oven, I believe a GE Monogram convection gives good value for the price. Others may suggest good alternatives. We installed a 36" 6 burner DCS range because it was available in all gas while GE Monogram only has dual fuel. At the time, 3 years ago, DCS offered rolling oven racks, higher burner BTUs, and a simmer ring on all burners, while Wolf did not & was considerably more expensive. We're very happy with the DCS & would get it again. We also have an electric wall oven & love the flexibility.

I personally find Dacor's customer service to be seriously lacking. I have had their products in my own kitchen before, and thought they performed well, but had a client (I'm a designer) with a terrible experience. She paid for the beautiful new Millenia oven and only after 9 months and 3 replacements did she receive one that worked and had no defect. The products are good, but it was ridiculous how bad the customer service experience was. It was also silly that only my involvement as the designer brought any kind of resolution. I didn't sell the product, just fought on my client's behalf. Numerous phone calls over months were made. The cs staff is very skilled at commiserating and sounding concerned, but bad at offering any real resolution. I think other threads on this board would back that statement up. They finally do the right thing, but it takes a lot of buzzing in their ears. I'm no longer recommending their products to clients.

Sorry, just took a look at this thread again and noticed your question...by the time I got to Miele, I had decided on induction, so I didn't give the Miele an actual test drive. I did give it a pretty thorough inspection at the Miele place, though, and thought it was a very sexy range -- and the performance seemed very similar to the Wolf dual fuel. I say that b/c the Miele also has the stacked burners, which I really liked, but the BTUs are higher than Wolf (which top out at around 16k, I believe -- Miele was closer to 20k or so -- I can't quite remember). The Miele ovens on the 48" range were very nice -- the smaller one is a speed oven, and the bigger one is a regular convection. The speed oven wasn't a big plus for me personally, since I really wanted a steam oven as a second oven, but there are people on this forum who love their speed ovens. One thing I really liked about the Miele oven, which Wolf doesn't have, is the burst of steam option, which is great for baking (you can program up to 3 bursts of steam for up to 6 min. each during cooking). I didn't care that much about the MasterChef options on Miele, but again, others love these. At any rate, the Miele seemed very similar to the Wolf, I liked the steam option on the oven better and liked the Miele burners better (also, if you're interested in a grill, theirs was excellent and seemed very similar to the Wolf, which I think is the best in the business). If I had stuck with a range, I would have been very tempted by the Miele.