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Professional Cooker Brand?

V

Vinny

pfm Member
I know that this has been covered before - a decent, reliable, long-lived cooker, but I also know that there are one or two professionals here that I'd like to chip in, who I do not recall contributing previously.
I am looking for a 4 ring, ideally one wok ring, twin oven, preferably dual fuel cooker, but this is not cast in stone, although a twin oven would be close. To save me trawling the www, is/are there any professional manufacturers/brands that I should look at?

I bought a Smeg about 10-12 years ago which fitted all my spec', including cast pan supports, but it sarted to fail, corrode and fall to pieces within 12-18 months. I have been putting up with it as that costs me nothing and it is still capable of doing what I want, but yesterday, the serpentine heating element in the top, small, oven fell out of the top/roof of the oven, literally, it just propped itself across the oven space.
 
we just did a big kitchen reordering project for a community project . rangemaster won by far with its abilities , only just been done so too soon to say if we were right
 
I have a Britannia 1200 range with a 900 fan and a 300 conventional split double oven and 7 gas hobs. It is probably 20 years old now and has been brilliant as has the service. We had an oven element fail on Christmas eve about 5 years ago and got a same day replacement around 4 hrs after making the call to them - we had 12 for dinner the next day.

Built like a brick outhouse but don't know if that still applies.

I think they are made by Bertazzoni
 
cutting42 said:
I have a Britannia 1200 range with a 900 fan and a 300 conventional split double oven and 7 gas hobs. It is probably 20 years old now and has been brilliant as has the service. We had an oven element fail on Christmas eve about 5 years ago and got a same day replacement around 4 hrs after making the call to them - we had 12 for dinner the next day.

Built like a brick outhouse but don't know if that still applies.

I think they are made by Bertazzoni
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They are made by Bertazzoni now but my Britannia was made by ILVE and this is pretty much identical to mine
https://www.rangecookers.co.uk/products/ilve-milano-120-7-burner,7004/

I would purchase from ILVE based upon my experience.
 
Thanks for the replies.
Cookers are like a lot of other household items - they USED to last for ever, which is one reason why I was happy to buy a Smeg cooker - they used to have a fantatstic reputation. I actually have an all electric Belling in the back of my garage, it was bought when I lived where there was no gas, around 40 years ago - it worked fine, no failures of any kind, for around 15 years and would probably do so now, and for another 15-20 years.
I only recall my mother ever having two cookers and for a great deal of their lives she was cooking for 4-5 every day.

The reason that I was looking for comment from a chef is that a commercial cooker is simply going to get more, more demanding use in a week than most domestic usnits would in a year - in effect, an accelerated aging test.

As for what I am looking for in terms of design - that is in my OP As to budget - the Smeg was far from cheap compared to everything else that was in the shop at the time.

To give some idea of how mind-numbingly poor some of the most basic design of the Smeg is - the controls are on the front, at the top and use metal knobs, which get VERY hot if an oven is on. All of the legends for the knobs were applied as transfers, so the first time that anyone went to clean the panel............................... I bought an engraving tool, the panel is pretty much as this model - https://www.johnlewis.com/smeg-suk6...p.ds&msclkid=db97b1fab68c17a64c72d79d42e3bdd4
 
We had "Stoves" range,similar experience to yours ,one ring stopped working ,main oven door wouldn't shut properly, just seemed flimsy.
 
We`re having a load of work done on the house including a new kitchen, when we moved in 35 years ago we had a secondhand Tricity, it lasted nearly 20 years with some repairs, the replacement Scandia duel fuel unit was utter crap and was replaced with a duel fuel Hotpoint free of charge. The Hotpoint has lasted O.K. (Oven elements every 3 - 4 years) but will be replaced with an induction hob arrangement.

Everybody we have talked to says that modern appliances don`t last and the man who delivered the new fridge and took away the 50 year old one said the replacement will not last anything like as long.

Mind you if it sees us out that will be O.K......
 
Wolf is the brand you often see - ain't cheap. Real commercial stuff doesn't usually have the gas or leccy supply available in homes

Luxury Built in Ovens | Sub Zero & Wolf

View Wolf Appliance's range of integrated & built-in luxury ovens, available in double & single sizes in 3 different models.
subzero-wolf.co.uk subzero-wolf.co.uk
 
Funny how everyone claims to be concerned about "the environment," and everything has AAA, AA, AB codes for "clean working," but nobody seems to worry about the massive damage to said environment by machines that last 3 years instead of 30 and the consequent environmental cost of constantly getting rid of old stuff and manufacturing new stuff. We have a 28-year-old AEG washer that works like a dream. When a technician came to replace the programming knob about 5 years ago, he almost went down on his knees to kiss the floor it stood on.
I've seen new washers with about a hundred progammes, with names like "Sweaty socks made of mixed fibres, fast colours, rapid eco-wash" that nobody, but nobody, expects to last more than 5 years.
 
Modern white goods really are appalling, and I suspect that they are all very similar - all singing, all dancing with endless useless features, built down to a price that means next to no life.

Our first fridge was given to us - it looked like something out of "Here's Lucy", it was replaced simply because it was huge for what it held - it must have been 30 years old when we got rid, and still worked fine.

Slightly different - I should have known better, but I have 3 Beko units -an under-counter fridge, a small fridge-freezer and a chest freezer in the garage.
The fridge has a theromstat knob alongside one shelf, so each time you get something out of put something in, the setting is very easily knocked/changed. The drain at the back perpetually blocks too, no matter how often the gutter it sits in, is cleaned.
The chest freezer was fine until it was switched on - as it froze, the plastic handles that located the baskets into the top lip of the chest, shrunk/contracted, so that they no longer hold the baskets in position.
The fridge section of the fridge-freezer has very poor temperature distribution (much colder at the bottom), and it ices-up. The baskets in the freezer compartment are two part, with clear fronts that clip to the moulded white drawer bodies. On first freeze, the fronts shrunk more than the bodies, so they are not at all well held in position. The plastic used for the fronts is also exceedingly brittle. I tried making the whole contruction more robust by strategic positioning of cable ties, but all the ties that I tried are very brittle at -20C, so just snap/shatter.

Do not buy Beko.
 
Ex-wife and I decided on Smeg and it was fine. If I was buying again I’d look at Wolf, Bertazzoni and Miele.
 
.........or just say sod it and pay a modest price and expect to need another in 5-8 years......................
 
Vinny said:
.........or just say sod it and pay a modest price and expect to need another in 5-8 years......................
Click to expand...
But it is all land-fill and pollution from making new stuff and trying to recycle some of the old. And the "premium" brands seem to have become crap too.
We had, until about 2000, an American Frigidaire refrigerator ("Made only by General Motors" it said on the front) built in 1956. It was given to us by a friend of my parents who was moving, took three "real men" to bring it over, and it never missed a beat. That's 44 years without needing repair, and it was still working perfectly when we threw it away, alas, to re-do the kitchen. It was probably not very eco-friendly functioning, and had a V-8 rumble sound when the motor started up, but it was built like a Dualit. You could take it all apart to clean. It must have also cost a fortune new, but 44 years and still working!
 
PaulMB said:
But it is all land-fill and pollution from making new stuff and trying to recycle some of the old.
Click to expand...

But if they are all going to fail in some way at 5-10 years old, why pay more for no more useful life. At least cheaper ones should have less in them in total, so less to to be recycled????

I have not dug into it, but it concerns me that the "Rangecookers" (ILVE) website also lists DeLonghi, Creda and Bertazzoni - I am assuming they are all the same group/ownership.
 
Vinny said:
But if they are all going to fail in some way at 5-10 years old, why pay more for no more useful life. At least cheaper ones should have less in them in total, so less to to be recycled????

I have not dug into it, but it concerns me that the "Rangecookers" (ILVE) website also lists DeLonghi, Creda and Bertazzoni - I am assuming they are all the same group/ownership.
Click to expand...

Rangecookers is a retailer, not a brand, they sell all those brands.

edit, slight correction, they do have their own brand as well but they are primarily a retailer
 
cutting42 said:
Are you sure? There were no connections historically. Miele is an independent family owned business and only rebranded Liebherr fridge/freezers to my knowledge. The rest was their own.

Bosch/Neff/Siemens are one and the same for sure
Click to expand...
Sorry might be confusing them with Siemens now you say that. Miele is nothing like what it was though either.
 
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