One thing I think gets thrown around here somewhat in error is "open burner". There are residential style open burners that many old basic gas stoves used and some new offerings such as viking and up till recently wolf offered as an option. The debate should be about "commercial style" open burners which as far as I know are only offered by 3 manufacturers (bluestar, capital and american range). Your typical residential style open burner does not offer a huge performance advantage over a sealed burner, but there is a huge difference in performance between a commercial style open burner and a residential style (open or closed) burner. The only way a residential style burner (open or closed) ccould give similar performance (with same btu rating) to a commercial style burner is if the cooking vessel had a huge diameter. Larger than 12" for sure. I have owned a residential style open burner 15k viking and also have 15k commercial style bs burners currently and I can say with real world experience the two burners can not compare on high heat performance. After owning both and using many, I would say that as long as there is a commercial style open burner available I don't think I could go back to anything else. I was never truly happy with the performance of any residential style burner that I have used or owned. If ther were no options available I'd seriously have to look into what it would take to legalize a real commercial range. @OP you may very well be happy with the performance of the monogram. We can't tell you if you will be or not. Those of us that own commercial style burners can collectively tell you that you will get better performance with a commercial style burner, but we can't say if its overkill for you or not. I was never thrilled with the performance of my 15k res style.

I purchased a wolf dual fuel 48" 9 months ago and after several service calls, Wolf did a buy back on the range. It was kind of strange, I would have been ok with another range but they did not want to switch it out. They were very nice, tried to service it but never really looks at the internals, instead would send a chef out here to cook in it and troubleshoot it. My issue was mainly the convection. Cook on one rack, no issues, cook on all of them like cookies and extremely uneven cooking from top to bottom and back to front. Not satisfied. Hated the lack of rolling racks, I find the racks hard to pull out. Had the double griddle. Fantastic to cook on but the grease catcher does not catch grease, instead it fills up, overflows underneath and makes quite the mess, even when the catcher is not full....they even mentioned that it is a design flaw. The actual service help after was good in most respects, would I buy another wolf? maybe some day, but not that range for sure. Also, took forever to heat up and boiling a pot of water took too long for such a beautiful unit. I am now purchasing a capital culinarian...hoping for much better results.....

locaiz-I like the Monogram too. The burners all having the same BTUs and all with the simmer feature is a huge plus IMO. Aesthetically, I really like those grates. I investigated Thermador but I heard that when you put the burner on simmer it cycles on and off continuously every 30 seconds and makes an annoying clicking sound as it does so (imagine 'click-click, click-click' every 30 seconds). I did like the star shaped burner though especially for smaller pots, but the clicking thing was a deal breaker for me. I also checked out the new Viking and it was very nice. I put it back on my list. The salesman told me about the new Dacor that is nicely priced at ~$2,000 with 6 burners. Haven't investigated it enough to give a completely educated opinion, but simmer was only available on 2 burners and not all burners have same max BTU output. From the pot size aspect, it does have some different sized burners. Wolf is almost always a good bet, but the price can be a little prohibitive. Open burner vs sealed burner--if you have spillage or overflow with sealed burner all the liquid stays right there. You remove the grates and clean it up. Open burner spills/overflows go into the burner insert and down through it into a tray that slides out from under the rangetop. The debate comes in with is it easier to just mop up at the rangetop or to be able to break down the whole unit and clean the pieces in the sink/dishwasher. I would think that if you're not a pro chef, having "better flame" from the open burner configuration would probably be lost on you (as it would me as well) because you wouldn't have anything to compare it with and even if you did have a comparison, you probably wouldn't be able to tell a difference, again because you're not a pro. These are the only 2 major things I've heard on the comparisons of the two. antss-Just curious, do you have the GE Monogram that was made by DCS or the one actually made by GE? I was told to handle the smaller pots, just turn the flame down. Have you found this to be the case? Thanks!

"Commercial bakeries use nothing but gas ovens." This is not true. If you are talking about bulk bakeries, they are more inclined to because it is often cheaper but they also have steam injectors to add humidity when needed. I know several specialty bakeries that use electric ovens. Many deck ovens in commercial kitchens are electric. I knew of a bakery that was called "the Electric Bakery". It really depends a lot on what they are baking. I know a baker that has specialty ovens for pies. This really has nothing to do with home ovens because they are a different breed anyway as they are expected to do many different things. "Dual fuel is excessively expensive, and overly complex for no benefit in performance ." Performance is different things to different people. They have different needs so there is no one size fits all. If I were selling appliances, the first thing would be to assess that person's needs and make individualized recommendations based on those needs. I most likely would never recommend ranges to begin with unless there was a compelling reason like space or cost issues or even a preference for "looks" over cooks. Pick out each component because it meets individual needs in the best way possible. As far as cost, you can buy electric ovens with features that have high utility for less than some gas ovens with limited features. Electric ovens can be complex, but so are our home computers and cars these days. This is not necessarily a bad thing. These ovens can have features that many consider helpful in how they use their ovens. It takes a computer board to coordinate fans, heating elements and tight temperature control. I love being able to control the direction of heat and fan speed in my oven. I can have air movement slow or fast to facilitate browning or not if I am baking a cake. It has a lot greater range of temperature, with or without the fan than many ovens gas or electric that cost a lot more. There is a learning curve with these features especially with the many choices something like Gaggenau or Miele give you. The combi oven is the king of control of the cooking environment but not in a range yet. The other side of the coin is some ovens have this figured out and others, not so much, so you have to read as many reviews as you can. To minimize risk if you want these features, buy the longest service agreement that you can. They can be difficult to evaluate and compare because a feature named the same name in two different brands can mean two different things. Even the term "dual fuel", in most ovens it means gas burners and an electric oven but 5 Star when they say dual fuel means a gas oven and electric oven together in the same range. You have to decide what is a benefit and what is a burden? No one answer. "could you please explain why all gas is fine" "All gas is fine." I might agree with that statement depending on how you use your oven but that in no way means they are the same and it in many cases gas is not the best choice. Gas and electric ovens are constructed differently. Because you have combustion for your heat source, another difference, gas ovens are vented more to remove products of combustion including water, so those products of combustion and humidity from food move out of the oven and into the kitchen. That may be good or bad depending on where you live, but how is that significant to cooking? It is much more difficult to keep added steam in a gas oven if you are doing that for bread or adding a pan of water for cheesecake. Because there is more of an air current, in a gas oven, this removes more moisture from the surface of what you are cooking. This inhibits starch gelatinization during the first part of baking so inhibits rise and changes the appearance of what you are baking. On the other hand, because it evaporates moisture from the surface and allows it to heat more quickly, the Maillard and other browning chemical reactions take place more quickly. This is why meat, vegetables and even baked goods brown more quickly. Will you notice? A lot of people say they don't. I have baked in gas and electric ovens for over 50 years and I used to attribute differences in outcomes to different ovens rather than a difference in fuel but with the many books and websites that have come out on food science, you can see the rationale for the differences in outcome that cooks report in cooking/baking forums. It was kind of a "aha" moment to put these comments with the science. All of the information coming out challenges what used to be conventional wisdom and yet it might be hard to see if you are not baking the exact same recipe side by side. You do see the same observations cooks make repeatedly in terms of cooking on cooking and baking forums and people seem to notice the difference more coming from electric to gas but you do see the occasional comment about excess moisture in some electric ovens when they are coming from gas. Most advertising literature and websites about ovens actually say a gas oven provides moist heat and electric dry but they are only looking at the heat source and not the oven as a whole and the process of cooking which provides a lot of moisture to the oven chamber. Another difference is that there are more and more features being loaded into ovens now as noted above, mostly electric but sometimes gas too. Some electric ovens have added steam. Combi ovens are very useful in their ability to control humidity and really make the case for buying ovens separate from the range top instead of having to pick the priority of the burners or the oven. I am not a fan of the current trend of hiding the bake element in electric ovens. Sometimes with pies, you need that bottom element exposed. It used to be you could put a tray under the element to catch spills. If you put it on the bottom now, it will melt. Some other things to consider. gas broilers are of two types. There is the traditional gas broiler, but they are not very good. Many prostyle gas ovens have an infrared broiler. They are very hot and even, but can be small. They are great for a couple of steaks but not so much trays of appetizers or broiling larger amounts. How big is the oven? Do you want a quick preheat or need room for full commercial sheets? Look at the rack size for usable space and size top to bottom. What is the temperature range, lowest and highest? What are the increments that you can set your temperature? 25F or 5F? Ovens are not an easy choice these days but I think it helps at least some people to realize the differences so you can at least make a somewhat informed decision.