Improved over the old model, but still no restaurant stove

Before you lay out $7,500 for this stove, sit down, read this review and call your shrink for an immediate session. If you choose not to follow this advise, you will later need to call your family doctor to treat the bruises you get from kicking yourself for not following the advice in the first sentence.

This stove is an updated model of the previous model DCS RDS-364GL-SS (NG) Dual Fuel stove. I received this stove as a replacement for this previous model which had numerous defects, some of which could not be repaired even after over a dozen service calls over a period of 18 months. (See my review on that stove.) This model has the build in barbecue like grill.

I am happy to report that some improvements have been made on this model, the biggest of which is that it seems to work (something I could not say about my first one). I have owned it for about 1 year.

The needed improvements include 2 smaller burners, better oven rack tracks and a light on each burner dial. They made some improvements to the grill, but it still cooks very unevenly.

In my opinion (and my wife's as well), they did not go far enough with the changes. The problems are as follows:

The burners are very large. The large burners are 4" in diameter, and the flame ring is 7" in diameter when fully on. The small burners are 3.5", with a flame ring of 5" when fully on. The flame is pointed outward and spreads outward from the center when a pot sits on top of it. You will find that the flame will wrap around sides of virtually every pot you own, even large ones. I burned the handle and spout off a 10" tea pot. The other issue is there is no flame in the center, therefore it takes forever for the center of a fry pan to heat. If you try cooking a half dozen eggs in a 10 or 12 inch pot, you will see the problem immediately. The eggs cooking around the edges but not the center. You can put your finger in the center for a very long time. I have learned to continually move the pan around the flame manually to heat it up. The 2 smaller burners are better, but still they have the wrong shaped flame. If you look at a real restaurant stove, you will see the flame is directed upward in the shape of a tear drop. The sweat spot of the flame is directly over the center of the pot ans spreads from the center. This is not the case here. I recently saw a stove in Home Depot Expo that had marketed it self as the only stove with the tear drop shaped flame. I don't remember the brand. Also, the Thermador professional stoves have a star shaped burner. At least this would spread the flame more evenly. Unfortunately, many of these high end stoves, including the Viking and Wolf seem to have these very large round burners. I have no experience on the other brands, but they may suffer from the same design problem so be careful. You can't return these things once used. I cannot understate this problem The problem is a real show stopper in my opinion. I noticed the problem within the first 5 minutes of using the stove and it is a constant problem when frying food. Also, I have burned the handles off several pots, and burned myself as well. The two smaller burners are considerably better, and I find myself using them all the time. These burners are just not designed for a one or two quart sauce pan and you will need to position anything smaller than about 10 inches stradling the flame so as not to burn the handle off. Of course, you can also lower the flame, but then you don't get that high power, and it still is a problem.

If you are buying this stove to do some indoor barbecuing, go out and buy a $500 Weber grill for the outside and save the thousands you are paying for this stove. The flame under the grill comes from a "U" shaped tube. The tube has a center tube in them middle of the "U" that feeds the gas, but there is no holes in that tube. DCS did recognize there was a problem with this design, because the "U" tube was made smaller in the new model. The problem is, it still cooks terribly uneven. If you put a Costco size hamburger on the center, you will find the edges cook fast with the middle is raw. I went an barecued a bunch of shrimp, and it took forever. Not only this, even the shrimp had drippings that really got the gratings dirty as well as the large grease pan below. I didn't want my new kitchen stove looking like my outdoor barbecue, so I spend a half hour cleaning it. After that, I put the cover back over the grill, and will never use it again. The attraction of indoor barbecuing was the reason I spend $7 grand for this stove and now I don't use it.

My wife is disappointed that the stove does not have any digital controls which she got used to on her old stove. In fact, this stove had no electronic controls whatsoever. I will get to that later.

This is a dual fuel stove. The top burners are gas, the oven 220 volt electric. It was the only way to get a self cleaning oven. The oven cooks relatively evenly with no problems. The new model has easy to mount racks -- a vast improvement from the impossible screw on system of the older model stove.

The self cleaning part of my original stove oven never worked an no repair guy could figure it out. This one works, but the unit has no timer to automatically turn off. So after 5 hours on, I went and turned it off. Talk about no digital controls, I could not believe this. Even an old Magic Chef that cost less than $1,000 had a timer for the self cleaning oven.

In all, the stove and oven work. That said, if it didn't cost so much, my wife would like to bring it out to the curb and buy a $2000 GE Profile or similar stove with digital controls, high speed burners that match the size of our pot without burning the handles off the pots. But, we are stuck with it, and if we ever sell the house, this stove seems to impress people who don't know any better. If you buy it, just don't think you are getting a restaurant style stove. The repair people laughed when we said that. They said no restaurant would ever use this stove. It does, however, weigh about 400 lbs, so don't think you will ever pull this stove out to clean once it is in place without lots of help.

Finally, I had a great deal of experience with the Fisher Paykel customer service. If I did not mention it, Fisher Paykel bought DCS, and you will be dealing with their customer service group in Australia. I have to say, the customer service was not too bad. Eventually they did replace the old stove and no charge. I give them credit for that, although why did it take 18 months. It is interesting that even they had a tough time getting repair people to service the stove, and those people, in my opinion, were far less than competent than what you may have encountered. One guy canceled many appointments, lied about having parts, and even lied about having my replacement stove. Eventually the Fisher Paykel people assigned it to another firm in Brooklyn, NY. I live on Long Island.

Another thing you should be aware of is to follow precisely the specifications of where the gas line is to be brought up behind the stove. The builder of my house had the plumber put the gas line right next to the adjacent cabinet. I couldn't get the stove back enough against the wall. It needed to be about 9" from the left side of the stove. I had to use a metal nibbler to cut out part of the rear panel of the stove, and even then, I could not get the stove all the way back. I believe the specs call for the gas line to be 9 or 10" inches away from the left side cabinet. Check this out carefully. This can be problem if your gas line is already installed. And, when the installers were in the house, they called DCS for permission to cut the rear panel. DCS said no, because it would no longer meet UL standards. So, I had to have them set the stove up and leave it in the middle of the floor. I cut the panel after they left, then push the stove back myself. Alternatively, I could have moved the gas line which would have been a big job. Glad I had a hard tile floor. I can only imagine what pushing this 400 lb monster would do to one of the vinyl flooring.

To leave on a positive note, this stove does boil water very fast, and it does have great control over simmer. The grates are a heavy cast iron which is nice. Because so much of the flame on the big burner wraps around the sides of the pot, I found virtually no difference between boiling water on the 17,000 btu large burner or the 12,000 btu smaller burner. So, if you are interested in the high energy burners, they all heat fast.