About the cleaner, not about the cooktop: I heartily recommend BARKEEPER'S FRIEND. I've used it for years, and love it. I believe you can find it at WalMart, although sometimes supermarkets in general will keep it next to the BonAmi. Barkeeper's Friend is much more than other powdered cleansers though. Buy a container of it and see. Not very expensive.

The Blue Star grill is 15,000 BTU, the Capital is an infrared ceramic grill @ 18,000 BTU & the Wolf is also infrared ceramic @ 16,000 BTU. The Capital & Wolf use gas to heat a ceramic surface so that one is cooking via infrared as one does with charcoal. From the pictures on Eurostoves, I don't think that Blue Star uses the same infrared ceramic for the grill. Trevor? When I bought the house (built in 1992) I live in now, there was a Jenn-Air downdraft cooktop with a grill on one side with only two burners on the other side. I got another double burner cartridge and got rid of the grill ASAP. But that was the older type of electric grill. Charcoal is definitely not an option. I wouldn't want to deal with the mess. We will have an LP connection on one of our decks for a larger grill when we want to entertain. And I can see that a grill on my range would not be worth very much if I wanted to use it to cook for a crowd. I just would like some feedback from folks with infrared ceramic grills or the Blue Star type on how well they think the grill would accommodate grilling just for two people. Of course, the websites for the manufacturers make it sound like the grills are easy to clean. I will have good ventilation so that I will be able to do the recommended burn off. Is cleaning one of these grills much harder than cleaning an outdoor gas grill? The Blue Star that I have been able to see was not working. I don't think I would need to use the grill & griddle simultaneously, but I do have room for 48" if that would be the best configuration. Yes, I don't meet many Jo Ann's especially with the space on the middle. Of course, I've never been sure if my 1st name is Jo & my middle name is Ann or if my parents named me Jo Ann & forgot to give me a middle name. Do you have a middle name? Thanks - Jo Ann

Hi there, Personally, I would probably go with either a Wolf or Blue Star....(But, that's a personal choice)....Viking & Dacor have a bit more service issues....At least, they have in our over 30 years of experience. HOWEVER...Whatever you choose, a griddle is a very nice touch....I'd say, a much better choice than a grill. A grill is sort of a "one trick pony", a Griddle can come in handy for MANY types of cooking methods! Breakfast cooking, pancakes, bacon, grilled sandwiches (paninis, etc), hot dogs, thinly sliced steak for Cheese Steak sandwiches, burgers, stir fry, eggs, vegetables, and a host of other things.....All with less smoke. Griddles require much less cleanup, and a heck of a lot less smoke to deal with. A simple scraping of the waste/drippings into the small hole is all you need to do. A grill inside the house is always more of a hassle. I still suggest a very powerful hood to go over that range....whichever range you choose. You'll still want to deal with smoke & heat the minute you start cooking on that high powered range and/or griddle cooking. Take care. :)

One of our main goals was to get an indoor grill so we could grill year-round (it gets cold in the mountains). After looking at all the major pro ranges and rangetops, we decided on a 48" rangetop with 24" grill. The smaller 12" grills just didn't seem to have enough grill area, especially if we were to cook for guests. We have now used the grill numerous times and it was the right decision for us. Two things - Range Hood: you will need a good range hood to remove the HOGS. We have a 1200cfm blower and about 3/4 speed on our variable blower is usually all that's needed - but we have had it on full speed when we got pans too hot. External blowers usually produce much less noise than internal blowers so if you have space external is really nice. Cleaning: If you use aluminum foil in the grill area and pans its not bad. We found that cooking in the center of the grill results in grease droppings only in the center and we can then clean periodically by only replacing a few pieces of foil instead of the entire grill area. The other thing is cleaning the hood. When grilling, blackening, wok, etc - lots of grease can collect in the range hood. We have baffle filters and just put them in the dishwasher to clean and then just wipe down the inside of the hood. Its amazing how much grease will collect in the baffle filters when cooking that creates lots of smoke, etc. It is way more than we had expected so a good hood/filter is really needed. Would I buy a 24" grill again - absolutely.