I can only recall 1 Turbochef owner here but no report. I've seen it in action and found the performance impressive and it seems to be new technology. Might be a good idea to contact the company and ask them to put you in touch with other owners.

I emailed Elizpiz and asked her to comment so hopefully she'll weigh in. That's a good idea, though, and how I got to see a Lacanche before buying one. Luckily there's a dealer in the area who'll demo it, but I'd rather hear from people who use it on a regular basis. I'm surprised there aren't more owners on the forum!

If I recall correctly there are also some videos on You Tube -- one is Martha and the owner of the company. But every bit might help.

I saw some like that...I think one was Martha cooking at the owner's home (set in his basement kitchen with an old well converted into a wine cellar, and all I could think was "Man, we NEED that posted in the kitchen forum gallery!!!"). Others have Charlie Trotter featured.

Hi Anna! Just got your message. I can give you lots of feedback on the TC, but the most critically important piece for you is that we DO NOT use the self clean feature for the speed oven - and in fact were advised by the TC folks themselves not to use it!! (long story cut short is that we had a TC technician from Dallas install the oven, and he was the one who told us this).

There have been various threads about self cleaning ovens in general and you may want to start a thread about that here and x-post to Kitchens. It seems many do not use the self clean feature. So, if that is important to you maybe it should be your starting point.

As to more general feedback (warning! this is long!), here's an excerpt from an email that I sent recently to another GW'er asking about our TC. Important to note is that ours is the first model off the block, and I am sure that TC has continued to refine the ovens based on consumer feedback.

We are a two person household. But we do entertain a lot and cook frequently during the week.

Pros:

- I love having two wall ovens. The convenience and ease of preparing food for entertaining is great. I would imagine that would hold true for a family of four, for instance.

- There are some dishes that are now TC standbys for me, the most popular of which is roast chicken. I can roast a stuffed chicken in less than 30 minutes and it is DELICIOUS. Cooking fish in the TC is also something we do frequently, as well as roasting veggies, which take a fraction of the time. I've also made quick breads with great success, and rack of lamb - something we do less frequently - is a breeze.

- Overall, I would say that all of the food weve cooked in the speed oven is excellent

- From a pure aesthetic perspective, I love the look of the ovens, and I also think the fact that the oven door colour can be customised is a pretty neat feature. There are about 190 RAL colours to choose from and although it may not be obvious, our red is custom - the "standard" TC red is brighter and we wanted a deeper, almost cherry red.

- The conventional oven is excellent

Cons:

- Cleaning the speed oven is a nearly impossible task. The extreme high heat means that the ceramic plate at the top of the oven is constantly "dirty". Now by this I donÂt mean that bits of food are sticking on it; just that the plate is completely darkened. With the extreme high heat that oven reaches, I am not concerned about whether that is a problem, but it is definitely a consideration if you are a clean freak and like things to look as you bought them. This definitely doesnÂt. BTW, the oven sides are also affected by this but less so. I do two things to clean the oven: first is something I read about on GW, and that is to leave a small bowl of ammonia in the oven overnight. The fumes flake away the residue on the top and sides and donÂt harm the plate. I also bought some cleaner directly from TC. ItÂs not something they advertise or talk about on the residential site, but if you go to the commercial part of their site, they have all kinds of info about all of the products they sell (I bought extra oven racks for the bottom oven as well, for my Christmas baking marathon).

- The bottom oven is the same to maintain as a regular oven  no issues. But note we don't use the self clean feature there either

- After more than a year of use IÂve come to the conclusion that the speed oven is really designed for ppl who either donÂt cook frequently or who are less confident with cooking. In other words, itÂs highly pre programmed and even though TC touts the fact that you can adjust settings for your favourite dishes, it is only but very small increments way from the presets. This hasnÂt created a problem, as I can always find something that is close to what I want to cook and you can stop/alter the cooking process along the way, but it bugs me that I canÂt adjust the temp settings more.

- And speaking of temp settings, because the bottom oven dial is analog rather than digital, there isnÂt the fine increments of temperature that there might be in another model. For example, there isnÂt a 225F, 275F or a 475F setting.

- The fan is LOUD Â and the oven takes a while to cool down. If you eat in the kitchen (as we do), it can be annoying. Even more so if you have guests over

I guess the bottom line is: would I buy them again? I would certainly put TC in my consideration set. I love the speed of cooking esp when I have several things on the go. The bottom oven is excellent and I use it more frequently. I look the look, and the few times weÂve had to deal with TC for service issues theyÂve been great. At the same time, I would also consider more closely other speed ovens  the Advantium for instance, or Miele. If you have the opportunity to test whatever you buy "live", that I think would help. We did see a demo of the TC, and that helped sell us (3 min roasted cauliflower that was addictive!). Regardless of model  FOR SURE I would go the double oven route  love that!

HTH!
Eliz

I do have some updated info from Turbochef that outlines the newest upgrades etc if you are interested just send me an email.
I have no usage feedback on them - have been trying to get to a demo and never can arrange the schedule. There is only one dealer in the area and they only have them on display in one of their locations. (Atlanta)

Eliz, thanks so much for your thoughtful and thorough response. All the pros sound great!

Re the cons: Did he say why you shouldn't use the self-cleaning feature? I'm not a neat freak at all; it's just that ovens have to be cleaned before they can be used for Passover or if a kashrut "mistake" occurs. I do clean my Lacanche ovens the old-fashioned way because I have no choice--I just hate it! Interesting that the TC ovens are certified kosher but they tell you not to use the self-clean...I will have to ask my rabbi to follow up and get me an answer on that one.

I don't like the idea of the pre-programmed dial for the very reasons that you cite; DH and I are both experienced cooks and like to have more control over the settings than the TC seems willing to give us. And on the lower oven, I am assuming the controls go from 300 to 350 with no 325 in between? That sucks! Can you leave the dial somewhere in the middle or does it click from one setting to the next with no option to leave it set in between?

It may seem crazy that with two ovens in the Lacanche that I'm considering adding more (and such insanely expensive ones at that!). But it would be such a wonderful thing to get home at 8pm and still be able to have a freshly-roasted chicken for dinner. And when Shabbat comes very early in the winter, it would be amazing to get home at 2pm and still have time to prepare a chicken and sides instead of eating rewarmed brisket every.single.week. Plus I am not planning to put in a warming drawer, so to have an extra oven that doubles as a warming drawer and proofing cabinet would be like having three appliances in one. Neither of my Lacanche ovens is convection, and I've missed having that lovely even baking ability, even though the convection oven I had before was a gas "faux convection" oven--I can only imagine how much better the real thing is! That's a huge part of the appeal for me; I definitely need an additional convection oven for heavy-duty baking, plus just a larger oven than the Lacanche can give me when I have a lot of guests.

But if you really can't use the self-clean feature at all, that might be a deal-killer for me. Although come to think of it, I won't be able to use the speed oven on holidays proper anyway, so maybe it's not such a big deal if I don't use for the whole week of Passover. Hmmm.

Chana,

I just looked at my Advantium, and I don't know how one could kasher it under any circumstances because of the plastic parts and the convection holes in the bottom. At least, if it's supposed to have self clean, in theory the TurboChef should be manually kasherable.

During the years I've been on GW quite a number of people have had problems with the self-clean cycle making their enamel flake off, or warping the floor of the oven. The best reports for self-clean working correctly with an enamel interior are for BSH (Bosch, Thermador, Gaggenau). I have a Gaggenau and ran the self-clean once so far. There was a line right under where the oven window is on the front edge of the floor of the oven, which seems to have been protected by the window, so self-clean isn't the be all end all for kashering either.

Something to ask your rabbi about is the convection fan area. I don't know how much the self clean affects that in terms of kashrut, and if it can be kashered at all.

With all of that, your idea to keep the speed oven for not-Pesach meat sounds good. You could save the convection oven for dairy/parve baking, and use your Lacanche for everything else.

Thanks plllog--I will include your feedback when I email him and ask him to check into it.

>>With all of that, your idea to keep the speed oven for not-Pesach meat sounds good. You could save the convection oven for dairy/parve baking, and use your Lacanche for everything else.

That's my plan...but I have to figure out if it will be worth the extra $.

I bought one of the first Turbochef ovens in the country. I showed it back to them after the Thanksgiving country wide Turbochef snafu. I gave them the list of changes that they need to do in order to make it in the marketplace. One of the most important was that in the original issue (you can still see it in their literature) they made it impossible to use plain microwave function. This year they made it available as the Favorite.
Back then one of the major issues was that during the Thanksgiving great many TC ovens blew the little fuse. In order to change that fuse it was required to remove the oven from the wall. The double oven weights over 400 lbs (some 186 kG) and requires 3 -4 strong men to handle. Imagine having to change the fuse after the warranty. Turbochef's stupidity caused them to commit to only 1 year warranty. Today they still did not learn their lesson, even though they lost a lot of market and were bought up by a British company. Sure they do not sell it in Europe as they would have to give a minimum 2 year warranty by law. I wonder why they do not sell it there as I know plenty of people in Europe with enough money to burn.
Otherwise the oven is very loud and does the heating even when you only want to look at the menu. It is loud but it does wonders. Back in 2007 our 13 lbs turkey was done in 41 minutes and it was the best done turkey in 30 years of trying.
If you decide to buy - make certain that you are buying at least 2nd generation Turbochef - you can recognize it by looking at the Information screen -- if the version number is 02.04.xx - it is 2nd generation oven. If it is 01.04.xxx it is the one you do not want to buy.
Current firmware is 02.04.01 and it still has bugs in it.