Servicing a Capital Culinarian is one of the easiest jobs for a tech because of design and accessibility. Through Utah there is a group of independent techs called Mr. Appliance. They've been certified to work on both the indoor and outdoor equipment for Capital. That applies to the all the other Rocky Mountain and Northwest States. IF a dealer is not a service center then these guys are more than capable of handling anything they would need to do. I have the 30" CC because of our counter configuration. My wife talked me into looking at it and we watched the Youtube videos. We also looked at the price and there was quite a bit of savings over the Wolf and the Blue Star. We saw no advantage in Viking, Blue Star was interesting until we spoke with a local dealer and they couldn't adjust one for our altitude and took it back the same day they tried to put it in. When we saw the Life Style Article provided by Mercedez Benz and their write up we had to have it. Had it sent to a dealer so we could pick it up and they got to look at it. Their sales staff was ooohing and awing when we took it out of the double wall box. Came on its own pallet. For everyday cooking and simmering I'll never even look at anything else. I put my high end stainless away and I've really enjoyed using my cast iron skillets and pans for baking and frying. We'll be building again in a few years and this time it will be the 60" with the double oven and again the gas range and ovens. The ceramic plates really make the oven work efficiently and evenly. I am suprised at all those waffling both dealers and consumers.....look at most of the chef shows now and they almost all have the Culinarian Stoves! Large smooth oven door handle, largest window on the oven door and the drip lip and catch trays make cleaning up my messes great and the design keeps it from getting into the door. Everything can go in the dish washer. I couldn't do half the things as easily with any other brand. By the way my son who's a welder looked it over and said he'd never seen seams in Stainless that were so nearly invisible and smooth. This is the upper end of tech in the cooking world for the common guy to get his hands on. I didn't get to try it out but made a lot of calls to dealers in the East and to California. I met one guy who was frustrated about getting a counter range and built in ovens. The contractor and the appliance dealer didn't know anything about Capital they said. I happen to know they did but he went back to California and bought what he wanted and had the cabinet guy put them in. He looked them in the eye and stated he would never cook on anything else again. I wish he'd known about Gygi the dealer in SLC. Would have saved him some trouble. Oh and Gygi does have an operating model in their culinary school which is in the center of the store and open to the public. I think that one is a 6 burner top 48".....have to look again. You don't know what you're missing until you get your hands on one of these pieces of kitchen equipment. I don't care what it takes, I'll always have one now in my home.

Interesting - more comments than I expected lean toward the Cafe. The precise oven temperature control is something I hadn't factored in. Our previous (electric) range had digital controls and I'm so used to having them I didn't even think about the fact the CC would mean reverting to the analog oven control, so good point. I know the CC excels in many respects, but since we don't have the luxury of separate wall ovens here I think our range needs to be more of a Jack-of-all-trades. The Cafe seems to fit that bill better for our situation so that's the way I'm going to go. Yes it does looks like a hell of a range, and there actually aren't any cheaper ones that offer such high powered burners and comparable feature set. The Cafe seems to be in a class of its own bridging the gap between typical consumer models and the higher end pro-style ones. The nice thing about a freestanding range is it's easy to swap out, so if I hate it, it's no big deal to change it later. Thanks for the feedback.

This is a good thread. Almost two years ago, I purchased a 48" GE monogram dual fuel range. Before that I had a 30" GE Profile electric slide in range, so it was quite a change. For those contemplating the decision between a Culinarian and a Monogram, it might be useful to hear what I like and don't like about the GE monogram range What I like: - Dual ovens. I use the small (10"-wide) oven surprisingly often. Fits standard casserole dishes and comes with a small roasting pan which is perfect for roasting small pieces of meat. Also good for keeping food or plates warm. The large oven gets a work-out too. At 36" wide, it has plenty of room for multiple items. - multitude of oven settings. Both ovens have bake, roast, and broil settings with convection turned on or off, plus also proof and clean settings. One oven can be on clean mode while the other is cooking normally. Cleaning time can be set for up to 5 hours. - probes: both ovens have meat probes. A small plus since one could go out and buy a meat thermometer, but this way I can see the internal temperature on the oven display and the oven shuts off and a beeper sounds when the correct internal temperature is reached. - closed oven doors when broiling. The oven door must be closed to broil. There are oven vents that exit behind the range top at the rear of the stove that are used when broiling. This does two things: it keeps smoke from the oven out of your face and under the vent hood, and it is safer with little kids around. - timers: two of them low burner settings. On the 48" model, all of the range top burners are a stacked 5" burner. All are capable of reaching a low range of 140 degrees and a high range of 18,000 btu. GE has done a remarkably good job with the burners at the low range. You can place a piece of paper over a burner on low and it will not burn (I've tried it). I have melted chocolate and made hollandaise over the low burner without using a double boiler and it works like a charm. The burner is more than capable of holding a delicate sauce for hours and is also great just for keeping a single plate or dish of food warm. - easy clean up: food does not get baked on to the range top surface very easily. - fit, finish, design. looks good and functions well What I would do not like: - high burner settings: Despite being an 18,000 btu, the burner is not able to bring a pot of water to a full rolling boil without a lid, and even then it is not great. The reasons have all been given in this thread. The jets of the monogram burner (like all sealed burners) point out sideways under the cap that seals the burner. Consequently, the flames arc outwards and then upwards. When a pan is placed on top of the stove, the exit pathway for the gases forces the flame to arc even further out to the side. the result is that the flames do not come into contact with the pot, and it takes a long time for water to come to a boil. The problem is exacerbated with smaller pots because of the diameter of the burner cap. Put a 5" pan on the stove and crank it up to maximum and most of the flames are shooting out past the side of the pot heating the side of the pot, not the bottom. Put frozen vegetables in the water and the cooking time has already passed by the time the pan recovers to a boil again. Put too much meat in the frying pan at once, and the pan cannot recover to maintain a sear. Quite frankly, for high heat cooking, my 30" electric stove was far superior. It is at these high cooking temperatures when I really covet an open burner. Even at the same btu level, the monogram cannot match the Culinarian's heating properties. By comparison, I have also cooked on a Thermadore range. Their star-shaped closed burner does a much better job of delivering flame to the bottom of the pot and appears to be a good compromise between heat delivery and sealed unit. - wok cooking. Despite having a range top specifically designed to hold a wok, the monogram is useless at wok cooking. No heat is delivered to the bottom of the wok, the wok's curved shape ensures that all heat is quickly dissipated up the side. The result is that it is impossible to stirfry in a wok on the GE Monogram (note, the 36" monogram does come with smaller diameter burners, which may be better for woks) No infrared broiler: one of the downsides of choosing an electric oven is that there is no infrared broiler in the oven. The broiler that comes with it is pretty good, but is no substitute for an infrared. All in all, the GE mongram is an pretty good product and performs very well for 90% of the cooking functions. Compared with other sealed-burner ranges, Monogram offers good value for money. The only disappointment is its performance at high heat, but this is really a choice between a sealed burner and an open burner.. I hope this helps

Posted by trevorlawson I think its fair to say that the CC will out cook a thermadore due to open burners. Fair to say based on what? Please describe what this means. The high end is 22K BTUs-pretty close to Capital. This is the rating for the heat output, nothing to do with open or closed. The low end is 375 BTUs. We don't know what Capital has for that. I am sure everyone knows what I sell. What I sell does not detract from the fact that open burners outperform sealed burners. The difference between open and sealed burners is significant nothing nominal about it. We tested a wolf range with caps on and caps off using same pan same water side by side at the same time, the burner with caps off boiled water over 23% fast..... that is significant Here is the video. Outperform would be a mischaracterization of this "test". I see performance as more multidimensional than putting the most heat in the center of a pan. If you had a wider pan, or changed the metal it was made of, or what you are cooking, your results would be different. This falls under the category of showmanship rather than anything scientific. How can you say this-"the burner with caps off boiled water over 23% fast."without any supporting data? You are right it is not how big the burners are but how the burner delivers heat to the CENTER of the pan, so the base of the pan gets evenly hot. Sealed burner send vast majority of the heat to the outside of the pan, open burners send the heat to the center of the pan. Please explain using the principals of heat transfer how delivering heat to the center of a pan is allowing the base of the pan to get evenly hot. If you have a ring of heat on the bottom of the pan, heat will travel in both directions from that ring to heat the pan. The center will receive heat from more directions and heat quicker, until it comes to equilibrium, than the outside so it is optimum to have a ring with the maximum heat more towards the outside of the pan than the inside. It is much harder to get heat to the part of the pan outside of the ring. A sealed ring burner flame pattern is only slightly wider than an open ring burner, a little more if you have it wide open. If you use a pan with reasonably good heat transfer like copper or aluminum, the burner shape doesn't really matter as much, but I wouldn't want the heat in the middle of the pan. The only way I would see heat in the middle of a pan as a benefit is if I were using a very small pan or a wok. I use everything from a 7 inch pan to make caramel with no stirring to a 14 inch aluminum pan on my sealed burners. For any pan less than 7 inches, I have a "small pan burner" I can make fried potatoes in that 14 inch pan with even color all the way across. I use cast iron if I need a lot of heat as in searing meat.