Bookmatched veneer on everything. That will let the grain flow across the doors and drawers as a whole.

The piece on the inside is called a batten and it's used for cabinets made of real wood so they don't warp because of temperature fluctuations. One of my previous kitchens had battens on the back of the doors and I didn't care for them because they encroach on the interior cabinet space.

I have book matched veneer as well. Stunning and high quality if your cab maker can do it.

Thank you all!

So what are you saying is that the cabinets doors will be real wood but the drawers faces matched veneer? I am afraid how they'll match the grain and color well.

jerzeegirl: so what you are saying is that the battens will take some of the interior space but not too much?
Thank you!

Veneer is real wood, real walnut, it is a thin sheet of wood. A good cabinet maker can match the grain exactly. Some people opt not to have the grain book matched, that looks great too. Solid walnut doesn't make a lot of sense financially (it will cost a fortune) or probably environmentally too. Veneer cabinets done well are as good quality, or better, than solid wood. I can't access my photos right now, but I've pasted a link to my reveal thread, you can see my book matched walnut veneer cabinets.

I'm told it is tough to do solid wood slab panels due to concerns with warping, hence the battens to reinforce I guess. Both could be good quality, but you lose space with battens.

Here is a link that might be useful: Book matched walnut veneer slab cabinets

Veneer can stain lighter than solid wood. Whatever your doors are made from, do the same on the drawers. I can email u a photo of a walnut door with a recessed drawer that has veneer.

My kitchen isn't finished yet, but I've included a photo so you can see natural walnut veneer, full overlay, vertically bookmatched.

I wanted solid wood in the kitchen. The bookmatched walnut veneer in my living room is getting chipped from hard use, and we are hard users of the kitchen. So we used a cheaper wood, lyptus, and stained it dark walnut. We have battens as well, and I was surprised...they don't really take up space in the cabinets the way I would have expected.

Whatever you do, keep it consistent. If the drawers are solid, get the doors solid. But you should have as many drawers as humanly possible.

Here's our walnut:

Here's our lyptus:

Veneer is the way to go for flat work. In terms of stain taking differently from solid to veneer, that is very true when talking about commercially available veneer ( veneer that is already layed up on an mdf core. ) Commercial veneer ( most veneers that you see in kitchens ) are insanely thin, around 1/40th of an inch.
If your cabinetmaker knows how to veneer he could use "raw veneer", straight off the tree, much much thicker and will get you a good stain match between itself and solid stock.
Raw veneer comes in lengths just like boards and are actually joined together almost like a tailor lays out cloth. So the maker can make bookmatch, slipmatch, diamonds or whatever pattern you desire.

Thank you all! I need to make a decision soon - it will take 10 weeks for them to make them so next week is my dead line to give them an answer.

Youngdeb: Can you share a pic of your battens - how they look inside of the drawer? Thank you!

I will have 6 big 30" drawers on both side of the range and 3 drawers on the island.

We have solid walnut cabinets that are not bookmatched for obvious reasons :-) We have a very small kitchen, tiny compared to those here and the upcharge was minimal. I think that may have had a lot to do with the person making the cabinets who was extremely excited about the challenge and who loves walnut. We live in a very arid environment and so don't have to deal with extreme fluctuations in humidity between summer and heating season. He did not put battens on the garbage pullout and that has warped slightly in the past 2.5 years and so he's working on that. All of our drawers have the solid wood face on the plywood drawer box.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Thank you for the picture! The batten doesn't look too bad :) I will go with all solid then - will talk to the cabinet maker tomorrow.