@jscout - Funny about your heat zone suggestion. I had to cook that way since my old range had various burner sizes and one side got hotter than the other. It's fine to push cooked food over, but when making pancakes and stuff that I want to cook quickly and evenly, it drove me crazy. In fact, it was one of the reasons I opted for all the same size burners and the CC. The 7 gauge griddle will have lots more room to experiment. I ordered the pan on Monday and will have it tomorrow, can't wait. Thanks for the good suggestion about the surface thermometer too! Next up, a new, bigger wok since I am keeping the CC wok grill on the range. Thanks to the good advice of GWers, I am leaning toward a hammered wok form the Wok Shop. Just have to decide on the type of handles, wood/steel, long/spool...

Went to the showroom in Newport Beach - thanks for the tips on the phone numbers! Well worth the trip, totally made my decision easy. The Capital looks so much more refined than the Blue Star. The Blue Star was top of my list but it looks so industrial that I just couldn't put it in my kitchen. I thought I wanted a self-clean but after looking at both, I liked the manual much better. The shelves in the manual slide in and out much better than the shelves on rollers in the self-clean version. The rollers seemed to stick on the self-clean displays and the rotisserie is a beast! I'm sure if I was really into rotisserie cooking, it would be great but it looks like you could spear an entire turkey on that thing! Sam was super accomodating and made everything super easy - I ordered my 36 Culinarian the next morning and cannot wait for it to arrive . . .

Overall, we've been really happy, and we've been having pretty good results with ours. We managed to get the grates just in time to cook Thanksgiving dinner on the thing. Very glad I heard about the Capital before going for Blue Star. The wok burner was a big selling point, and so far we've been very happy with it. The wok grate holds the wok very securely (we tested this when we visited the factory, so it wasn't surprising). Boiling water, even large quantities, really is quite fast on this thing. While I still think that anyone who tries to justify purchasing a $4k+ range because it will "save time" is engaging in a high degree of rationalization, there definitely are cases where you notice a few minutes being shaved off here or there. Using the burners on "normal" settings is also very satisfying; I haven't found that getting used to that much power has required too much adjustment. We have all 23k burners, and the lowest flame really does get down pretty low (though it's still high enough to keep a ~4.5 qt saucepan at a pretty active simmer, so if you want to do really delicate stuff, you might still want one of the smaller burners). Baking and broiling (so far, broiling has been limited to making tomatillo salsa) have been going pretty well. Adjusting to using convection has, of course, required some experimentation, but the oven seems to bake evenly and well. Even with reduced heat *and* reduced cooking time, the cookies I've made so far have still been a little dry with convection; thinking of taking the advice of a pastry chef friend to just leave convection off when making cookies. A few minor issues / irritations so far: 1) Slight buzz sometimes when the convection fan is on - this happened more before we got the grates, but even with the grates on, something seems to rattle / buzz occasionally (besides the sound of the fan itself). 2) Burners constantly re-igniting. This happens most with one of the burners (front right), usually when it's just been turned on and when it's turned up all the way. If you back the heat off, it will usually stop re-igniting, and then you can bring the heat back up after a little bit. Seems to happen even when all / most of the holes have flame coming out of them. 3) Occasional constant re-igniting when burners are on simmer... this is probably due to flame from some of the holes going out, so maybe not a "bug", but it's still kind of annoying. On a more cosmetic level, I don't think they did a great job with the center grate for the 30" -- it just doesn't really fit in - the height seems just a tiny bit higher than the grates, and having the solid bar across the sides makes it look awkward. It's almost as if it were designed for a different range - at first, I thought it was actually from the Precision, until I looked at the iamges of the Precision online. Something closer to what Blue Star has (where the cross-hatch pattern kind of "mates" with the grates themselves) would look better IMHO. There is a little bit of "fuzz" with the way the grates fit in the top - I'm not sure whether this is intentional or not, but there's no obvious way to tell exactly how the grates should be positioned (other than trying to visually line them up so the burner's in the center). We didn't want a self-clean range, but the setup for the rails on the self-clean model does look a little nicer. Looks-wise, I don't really love the logo, the black sides of the knobs (and the red knobs are even uglier), or the rounded corners on the bar to open the oven. I know people make a big deal about the look of the Capital, but I have to say that from a purely aesthetic point of view, I personally much prefer the Wolf, or even the Blue Star. But still glad we went with Capital.

David, I posted another message re calibrating your CC ovens, not sure where it went... Ask Capital to give you instructions on calibrating your oven, you should not have to mentally calibrate your temperature setting each time you use an oven. My repair tech calibrated my oven. He removed the oven knob and used a flat heat screwdriver to turn a set screw in the shaft. Put your thermometer in the oven, a remote temperature probe like you would use to keep track of temp on a roast would be good. Turn your oven on, and track the cycling of the temp. You will need to turn the screw in the shaft to adjust the temp up or down. I don't remember which direction the tech turned it, but you could start with what the eHow article says, if you can't get specific info from Capital. You are aiming to have the set temp exactly in the middle of the temp range that the oven thermostat cycles to. If the temperature range is very large when the oven cycles on and off, you should talk to Capital about getting a new thermostat. After I go the new one, it cycled very tightly, about 10 degrees above and 10 below. I would think anything with 20 to 25 above and below to be acceptable. I certainly wouldn't be happy with 50 or 80 above or below (and some brands of ranges have thermostats that are that bad). But you will need a technician to install the new thermostat. It's not a simple install because it requires removing lots of stuff to get to where it goes. Good luck, Mary Ann