I posted that we were visiting Viking and Wolf distributors to test their 36" rangetops with grill - following are our comments.

Overall - we had a great experience at the Viking distributor - spent almost 3 hours using the appliances and got a really good sense of them. Encountered a timing screw up at the Wolf distributor so had much less time and chance to use the equipment, however what we did do was very revealing.

The main thing we were interested in was the performance of an interior grill - we knew we'd be happy with virtually any of the gas burners (compared to our current Jennair gas range)...although we did want to compare the performance of those as well....and were particularly curious about sealed versus open burners.

Following is a summary of our experiences - the majority of which were using the Viking grill/open burner followed by the comparison of the Wolf grill (didn't use the burners)

Viking open burner

- I lean towards an open burner for performance and would be quite happy with Viking's - clean up isn't onerous

- Viking burner water boiling test - 10 minutes to a rolling boil for an equal amount of water that takes 13 minutes on our Jennair gas burner - not a big deal but we appreciate the speed

- frying an egg - excellent results with a sunnyside up egg using an open pan - all of the egg white cooked thoroughly with nice browning (not too much) on the underside - yolk, while runny, was still hot. I couldn't possibly do that now

- simmered butter - the simmer setting was very impressive - Viking's chef did the chocolate chip/paper plate demo which is impressive (not sure what it demonstrates, but it's impressive!)

Overall - impressed with the open burner performance

Now onto the grill

We were concerned about 3 things - extraction, cleanup and practical application - I'll deal with each in turn.

Extraction - the demo unit had a 1200 CFM internal extraction hood mounted slightly higher than recommended (for viewing sightlines at the test kitchen) We were both really surprised/impressed by the performance of the unit - it was quite quiet and there were virtually no cooking smells (after 3 hours of bending over a grill unit - cooking all many of smelly things - neither of us had cooking smells on our clothes). This is a major issue for us with a very open concept house. We now feel confident that we can deal with the extraction issues.

Cleanup - the Viking grill unit we used had been in place for about 3 years - it wasn't pristine but it it wasn't gross........probably approximates how the normal user would treat it. No major issues identified there.

Practical Application - this is our main issue - we have a very good outdoor grill but have weather limitations - plus we think we'll use an indoor grill for more spontaneous, smaller things if it's there (and works well). So we took a lot of items to figure out if this is a realistic investment for us (lots of cost for us to insert this into our existing kitchen/need it to be worthwhile).

We grilled the following

- marinated salmon fillets - results: good grill marking but needed more time than our outdoor grill - that's OK. Very moist - overall comments - our first attempt so we probably started too low - we can see that we could replicate our recipe

- chicken thighs - we BBQ'd two chicken thighs to see what would happen - we never actually do this but thought it would be interesting. They cooked well - maybe about 20 minutes and were actually quite tasty. Learned that PAM'ming the grill is very important here

- shrimp - we do a shrimp wrapped in basil leaf and proscuitto skewer - performance was just fine here - just like outdoors

- a piece of cod - this was very interesting - a simple piece of cod on the grill at medium high for approx 5 minutes - the outcome was terrific. Nice grill marks and suitably underdone - very moist and quite delicious with only salt and pepper

- vidalia onion and radicchio pieces - this wasn't terribly successful but I think it could be - we identified the need for a hood to increase heat - the chef said she uses the lid from the wok for certain items. For these items it would have been better to have enclosed heat like you would have in an outsid e BBQ with a lid - but a big lid over the grill would have sufficed

- sliced Squash, Eggplant brushed with Olive Oil - this was very interesting - results were mixed. It seemed to reveal the grill's uneven cooking - veg at the rear were under cooked and at the front overcooked. Not dissimilar from a regular outdoor BBQ but is that acceptable for an appliance of this cost? The good results were great - so we could see ourselves getting used to moving stuff around.......

- meat - a big T Bone Steak, hamburger and sausage. Here the difference was really obvious. It did not achieve the heat of our outside BBQ - in the case of the hamburger and sausage that just means the application of a little more time, but in the case of the steak it also seemed to affect the amount of flavour. (in the case of the hamburger we would also use a lid to melt cheese). For smaller cuts of meat (like a lamb chop or a filet) it would probably be fine - we intentionally chose a big, fatty T-Bone to create lots of smoke......and on that subject we were really impressed with the extraction with all that meat on the grill.

So after our morning at Viking we were quite impressed - very much liked the burner performance (but consider our perspective) and were quite impressed with the fish and vegetable performance (meat performance somewhat secondary for us).

So .... off to Wolf

For a variety of boring reasons we couldn't replicate the Viking experience (Wolf - you might want to think about that) so in our limited time we concentrated on the grill. Our biggest question was the infrared/single high setting of the Wolf. Following are the comparisons to above

- salmon fillets - grill too hot - exterior burned before interior warmed

(note - we did not have the opportunity to use the diffusing tray although we're not really fond of that option)

- steak - fabulous - better than our outside BBQ - but, we're not really looking to replicate that

- hamburger - same as above

- didn't try cod or vegetables but they would have been cremated - too hot (but again can't comment on the results had we had the diffusor plate in - would be interested in comments about that)

Net, Net.

Well - now I think we have to seriously reconsider the Capital - apparently its Grill is infrared and variable heat - that would be the killer combination for us.

Happy to answer any questions and comments appreciated