Still seeking any advice....

$2500 is tough to get a quality pro range. Bertazzoni is a good look for the money and will give you better performance than the Jenn-Airs and Kitchenaids. I would suggest Capital if you can get it for that price. Thermador is normally much more for a new one. 5 Star, American and Blue Star are a little new to most markets and could be tougher for service. If you can stretch your budget buy a Viking - by far the best out there!!!

" We thought long and hard about Wolf, but I'm unimpressed with the small cooking area" You are in no way limiting your cooking area or diminishing performance by having the stainless band and slightly narrower burner grates. The cooking area is determined by the burner. The grates the just a support for the pan. I have a Wolf DF range and would not recommend it for other reasons but I regularly use 14" skillets and a griddle that is 15" across. I have a 36" so the burner grates are around 11" wide. If the pan hangs a little over the burner grate it doesn't matter. Many grates look like these. You can use pans bigger than these grates. Also look at the back as some ranges have something sticking up immediately behind the grate. This can be more limiting. The important thing is to have pans that conduct heat well. Factors that affect performance would be BTUs -high heat, for stirfry and rapid heating low end for simmer burner cap- this influences the way heat is delivered to the bottom of the pan. Something like a BlueStar (bottom) keeps the heat to the middle of the pan on big pans or distributes the heat more evenly if the pans are sized to the burner. The capped burner, top, depending on how it is engineered can have a lot of flare on high heat. Notice the Thermador, right is capped and seems to have quite a bit of flare BS on the left Also look at the shape, the BS star shape is good for cast iron, which does not transfer heat well compared to aluminum or copper The Wolf is a dual stacked burner so less flare than some. Some feel there is a cold spot with a capped burner but if you have heat conductive cookware, the heat will be even. The control of the knob also affects performance.

Thermador is a part of the same group of appliances as Gaggenau and Bosch, a German conglomerate. GE was bought by Haier, a Chinese manufacturer with a decent reputation, though not high end. I like German appliances and cars myself.