We are in the process of selecting appliances for a new build. Our current home has commercial equipment, which is great to cook on, but I am not sure I want to deal with the down side again. I discovered Bluestar by hanging out on these forums. It appeared to be the perfect compromise.

I was attending a conference in Boston this week and thought I would take the opportunity to visit Eurostoves and see a Bluestar in person. We really love our commercial chairbroiler, and use it several times per week. My biggest concern was that the Bluestar grill would not meet my expectations.

I emailed Eurostoves to ask if they had a grill I could see. Trevor Lawson responded, almost immediately, that they did. He then asked at I wanted to see cooked on it. I liked the sound of that.

We showed up around noon. They have a great store full of wonderful cooking machines. I cant imagine what their inventory cost is. They best part is that they have a section that is set up for cooking not looking. I wanted to see how the grill performed on steak. Trevor disappeared and came back with steak and stuff for stir-fry. He offered me the opportunity to cook, but I deferred to him. We got to chat with Trevor and Stacey, cook and eat. The customer experience does not get better than this.

I expected the 22,000 BTU burners to be fine, but they exceed my expectations. I would say the performance was equitant to my 30,000 BTU commercial Wolf hotplates. For woking they are superior because of the way the wok fits in the grates allowing the flames to directly contact more of the wok surface. The construction is very similar to the commercial units. The only additional complexity is the igniters. They are clearly more finicky than my standing pilots, but you are not heating you kitchen 24/7 as you are with pilots.

The gill did a good job on the steak and the peppers. Nice caramelization on the steak, which is what I was looking for. The peppers had nice grill markings. It is not quite as hot as a commercial unit and the radiants are much lighter. Subjectively it seemed to cook a little slower. The good news is that it heats up much faster. It is not quite up to the commercial unit, but it is close enough.

There has been a lot of discussion about hood sized for this type of stove. It was very helpful to stand there and watch the smoke and steam from the wok. If you do a lot of woking, extending the hood capture area past the edge of wok is the only way to really capture all the fumes.

We will be purchasing a Bluestar custom 48" range top configured with four burners and a 24" gill. We are also purchasing a Prestige hood liner from them. This is a great store run by knowledgeable and friendly people. They seem to really love what they are doing. I strongly encourage anyone who is interested in high performance cooking equipment to talk to them or visit if you can. Trevor said that they can ship to most of the US so even if you canÂt visit your should consider them as your appliance vendor.