Excellent points dcarch and jessyf !! I hadn't even thought of just asking the rental company what they expect the house to have, LOL. I will send them an email now. I guess the point of the exercise is a little of both ... We do want the five star rating. Our house is brand new in 2011 and rents near the upper end of the market for rental rate, so one would expect the most expensive houses to have the highest ratings. Also, the houses with the highest ratings are going to be the most desired houses. (assuming they are priced competitively and have not priced themselves sky high out of the market) But also, we do want the house to have the things the guests need. We spent five years designing this house before we built and had all kinds of lists of things we needed to remember to include. We had one guest tell us that everything she looked for, we had. We want every guest to feel that way, that our home exceeds their expectations. My husband and I are not gourmet cooks by any stretch of the imagination. We sometimes go literally months without cooking anything more than an occasional breakfast. We are on a cooking kick right one, but as I said, when we cook it is fairly plain and very easy stuff. Therefore, we really have no idea what kind of tools gourmet cooks use. We don't want it to be a frustrating experience cooking in our kitchen. We want our house to be well stocked with things people regularly use! We even want to include some of the occasional use items if they are not too expensive, for example maybe a garlic press is not a regular use item but they are used fairly often and are not very expensive so it would be a nice thing to include. However, we don't want to waste money on the specialty things that everyday gourmet cooks rarely use. It sounds like the sous vide falls in that category, LOL. There may be other things that are hardly ever used that we would not want to waste money on, no matter how inexpensive they are. (ok, maybe garlic press is not a good example as starting price on one that gets higher than 2 star rating is around $10 and quickly goes up from there) I am very interested to hear what other things you guys would expect to find in a house advertised as having a gourmet kitchen.

So much fun to read everyone's responses! I never really thought about what "cooking" is, and I don't know that it's important to me to have a definition, per se. I prepare a lot of meals without actually heating anything...e.g. yogurt and fresh fruit, salads, sandwiches, plus the preparation of meat and veggies for my husband to grill -- he cooks, but without my prep, that couldn't happen. I like to cook a lot of things from scratch, but I do use supermarket ingredients such as dried pasta, butter, cheese, peanut butter, canned tomatoes, some canned beans, etc. I do buy supermarket bread, rolls and tortillas, but occasionally make homemade bread or focaccia or tortillas. I prefer fresh veggies, but do use some frozen; I cook beans myself and freeze them, but also use the occasional can of black beans. I like to bake - cookies, brownies, bars, muffins, scones, quick breads, the occasional pie or cake. I do make homemade pie crust. We occasionally order pizza, but usually just make it at home. My stand-alone freezer is full to bursting now -- besides a lot of beef, chicken, shrimp, spices, and butter, I've got black beans and garbanzos that I cooked, homemade Cornish pasties, homemade applesauce,and some cheeses. Tonight for the family's dinner, I heated up some of the pasties and applesauce (I'm going out with my book club...yay!). We do use some convenience foods...cereal, bread, Greek yogurt, the occasional frozen dinner, and some Purdue chicken fingers (hey, nobody's perfect!). Some canned soup. Granola bars and fruit cups for the kids' quick lunch box grabs. I didn't always cook this much from scratch -- it's evolved over they years. I used to use more convenience products, but have sort of gotten away from it over time. My mom cooked from scratch a lot, but used convenience products, too. Interesting that someone mentioned just-add-water pancake mix. I don't use that often -- sometimes I mix up the dry part of the pancake recipe, divide in in half, and portion the halves into airtight containers so I can quickly add milk, eggs, and melted butter to make from-scratch whole grain pancakes on a weekday morning. However, I usually keep a box of just-add-water mix in the pantry for those days when we are simply out of eggs or milk. Bon appetit, everyone!

Kitchens are very personal to those that use them. One cooks dream kitchen will be another cooks nightmare. Fingers crossed in two years time I will be allowed to build MY dream kitchen in our current house. Any line cook/professional chef will feel at ease here, but most people on this forum would be shocked. I am in a very unique situation where my wife has a very well paying job that means I do not have to work to put food on the table. This is not to say I could not find work, as 13 years in the Australian Army (retiring as a Major) and four years as a Finance Professional (two finance degrees, the highest a Masters) have left me with marketable skills. After moving to Dallas TX via five years in New York City, from Sydney Australia, I was looking at short courses to improve my home cooking. Not finding any courses that were of value I enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu and completed a 15 month Culinary Associates Degree in 13 months then worked in a five star restaurant for nine months. This was all to improve my home cooking. Kitchens for me are a place of work. If you want to socialize there are other rooms in the house for that. If you need to do homework, there are other rooms in the house for that. If you are in my kitchen you are cooking and/or cleaning. By their nature kitchens are hot, noisy, dangerous places. Pets and very very young children do not belong in the kitchen as they pose a risk to themselves and others, both through injury and food contamination. My kitchen will have a commercial range hood. I'm not talking 27" deep 48" wide 1,000 cfm, but a 48" deep 9' wide 2,500 cfm hood covering the entire hot cooking area. The hot cooking area will have one gas wok burner and outlets/space for two 3,500w (240v) portable induction burners, two 1,800w (110v) portable induction burners, one 240v counter top deep fryer, two immersion circulators (110v) in their water baths, and a commercial combi oven. Portable burners and the like allow flexibility in the kitchen and increase prep counter space. Most of my kitchen will be stainless steel with open shelving. It might not grace the pages of Better Homes and Garden, but it will be a bullet proof kitchen that is easy to clean. As much as possible the kitchen will be a separate room, NOT open the the main living areas. For me kitchens are food preparation areas with other rooms for food eating and socializing. A separate kitchen allows the noise, heat and smells to be contained in one room, not spread throughout the house. This kitchen will match my cooking style and methods. I hunt and have a chest freezer full of venison, rabbit and squirrel I harvested myself. The freezer also contains sub-primal cuts of animals that I buy in bulk. I much as I can I butcher and process my own meat and make sausage from scratch. I make all stocks, broths and sauces from scratch. I need large prep tables that are easy to clean to do this. While I do not consider my cooking methods cutting edge, I do own and use equipment not often seen outside professional kitchens. I cook Sous Vide for almost every meal. I use immersion circulators to cook most of my proteins and I use a vacuum chamber sealer to seal product in plastic bags. For those that have seen the five volume cookbook Modernist Cuisine, I can prepare most of those recipes with the current kitchen tools I own. My dream kitchen will allow me to cook them all. I rarely cook one pot wonders. A normal mid week meal, for just my wife and I, will be one course with a protein, sauce, two different vege and a starch. I require five separate burners to heat the food for plating - one for each item. I will/have happily spend/spent 6-8 hours a day in the kitchen for 3-4 days preparing a themed 9 course tasting meal (paired with wine) because one friend from out of town is/was coming over. I enjoy preparing, cooking, plating and serving food at home that is 5 star restaurant quality. When people ask me what do I do, I say I am a Personal Chef to my Wife. I can count on both hands the number of times per YEAR that we order take out and/or eat at a restaurant for dinner when in Dallas. A kitchen is where cooking occurs. While many people forget it, cooking is a very serious business. When you make mistakes in a kitchen, at best people go yuk and a pizza is ordered; worse case people die. To reduce the possibility of food borne illnesses, the kitchen needs to be an area that is separate from the main area of the house. It should not be a thoroughfare for the family and pets traipsing from the carport/outside/garage/etc to get to another part of the house. The materials the kitchen is made of need to be easily cleaned and sanitized. If you are scared to use a pressure washer on them, it is not the right material. My dream kitchen is most peoples nightmare. It is industrial, noisy and tight. Any aisle wider than 36" wide is too wide, any wider I would have to take a step to reach something - that is inefficient. The lighting will be bright and daylight balanced. I spend my pretty-mood-lighting-funds on the lights outside and in the great room, not the kitchen. The only view in my kitchen, other than the four walls, is the TV in one corner. The best views in the house are when you are sitting on the back deck with a cold beer in both hands, not standing at the sink washing a stack of dirty pans. A "cook's kitchen" is one where any cooking occurs. I have friends with kitchens costing $200k+ that only get used to heat precooked purchased food on Thanksgiving - I do not call this a cook's kitchen although it could be. Another friend will prepare, from scratch a 3 course plated meal for 10 in their 800 sq ft NYC studio apartment. The "kitchen" is a bar sink, 2 feet of counter space, 1 hot plate, 1 toaster oven and a dorm fridge. What constitutes a "cook's kitchen" for me is one that I am willing and happy to spend many hours a day, day after day in. For me this is commercial kitchen in a residential home.

I got something different each time I counted the squares, so I gave up)) Just posting another idea, assuming that you have 90" on the bedroom wall and 11' b/w the exterior wall and the laundry. I'm thinking 12" angled shelves b/w the exterior wall and the range and 6" open shelves for cutting boards on the other side. If o/h is 1" that would give you 47" b/w the peninsula and the exterior wall. The cab in the corner faces the laundry. On the peninsula, next to the corner open shelf for trays, cooking sheets, then drawers, I think the trash can be under the sink. You can have a 12" pull out for pantry storage next to the fridge, but it will probably be cheaper to have a broom closet there. On the other side, MW is on an upper shelf. I have pantry and a drop zone (hoping that door swing direction can be changed), where you now have the sink+DW.