Review by Daddy of 3 Princesses:

An afternoon of visiting a few stores and a price match with 10% off, brought the price down to about 00. Still not cheap… but we found out quickly that today, 00 doesn’t even buy you a nice gas stove with extra features… just a gas stove cheaply made. We’ve owned this for about 2-months and it’s fun to cook again! I can actually cook with 5 large pots and pans at the same time! They moved the burners out 3-inches, so it’s still 30″ but you have more cooking area. I can boil water in 5 minutes, program it to shut off after the food has cooked for a set period of time, and the center burner cooks pancakes and bacon just perfectly at 6000 BTU’s (all other stoves with oval center burners were 5000 BTU’s). Sorry, haven’t tried the convection yet…. but it converts automatically. Have read other people’s concerns over the fan noise, honestly we haven’t noticed, but most of our cooking is done well under 425 degrees. The stove will give you a nice commercial look, one burner gives you professional level 18,000 BTU’s, and for the price it’s a great choice. If you’re a professional chef/cook, I can’t imagine you would be happy, it would be all look and not enough power. But for us, large family, cooking 2-meals at home per day, sometimes different items for the finicky kid, it had all the extra features we wanted at a great price without getting into a commercial stove with a big price tag.

Review by Floyd Ian Slipp:

APPENDED UPDATE TO REVIEW:

The rest of this review still stands as written. However, I’d knock a star off the overall rating because of some recent GE service experience.

I was recently using the broiler to make crab cakes, which are better fried, but still OK without the added fat. Anyway, I had the oven door open to turn the cakes, which took about two minutes. After I closed the door, I noted that five of the six knobs on the stove above the door had MELTED! They weren’t completely gone, but rather resembled clocks in a Salvador Dali painting.

I contacted GE and found out that they were now shipping the same range with solid stainless steel knobs (called a “fix” in the biz). After four calls to GE’s customer service line — one in which GE hung up, two in which GE failed to call me back with their resolution — GE notified me that they would certainly replace the melted knobs, just not with the stainless steel ones. Rather, they would send me a new set of plastic knobs. In other words, when you need the “fix,” that’s just when you’re not gonna get it! I pointed out the lack of logic in thier policy to no avail.

My dealer saved me. After bitterly complaining to him, he worked a favor with their sales rep and managed to order a set of new stainless steel knobs to replace the plastic crap they shipped with the stove. Imagine, having to rely on a personal favor from a stranger to get satisfaction on a defective product. Of course, I still haven’t seen the new knobs, but I do have a promise, so to speak.

So beware. If you intend to buy this range, make sure that the knobs are solid stainless. Go to a dealer and pull one of the knobs off the floor model. If it feels light as a feather, it’s plastic, and don’t buy it. Insist on the stainless knobs. If you’re thinking about buying it from Amazon, do it over the phone after receiving explicit assurance that you can get it with solid metal knobs or they’ll replace them after the purchase. Seriously — don’t buy it otherwisee.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: I love to cook. I cook frequently (dinner nearly every evening for my wife and me, and more on weekends). And we love to entertain. Therefore, our recent kitchen renovation required the addition of a higher end range.

We couldn’t afford the space in our kitchen’s footprint for a 36″ or wider “professional” range. And our town’s building code prohibits a “commercial’ range in a home setting because of the amount of heat shielding required to handle the huge heat output of commercial ranges. So, somewheat reluctantly, we accepted the idea of a GE product. We were assured by our kitchen designer that the GE CAfe series would be of high enough quality to suit our needs.

We had previously installed a 15-kilowatt whole-house backup generator to ameliorate the threat of extended power outages, so to avoid having to dedicate two electrical circuits on the generator to an oven, we opted for the gas burner/gas oven model.

PROs:

* Five burners. GE has done a good job here. Each burner puts out a different amount of heat, with the two back units having lower outputs than the front. Adjustment is precise enough to allow a true, very low simmer on the two back burners. The fifth burner, an oval unit in the center of the cooktop, is great for a fish steamer, a large oval pan, or the included non-stick cast aluminum inset griddle. NOTE: I found no evidence of the problem one reviewer noted regarding matching the size of the cookware to the size of the burner. You can fry over the smallest burners and you can braise over the largest ones if you want to. You DO have to think about what pot you’re using to cook your food and then match the pot to the burner, but, then, you have to do this with every stove, don’t you?

* Easy to clean. The stainelss steel burner deck is easy to clean up with a sponge after each use. It’s better to hit spills with a quick cleanup as soon as you’ve completed cooking, but as long as you don’t allow grime to build up (i.e., clean up after each use), you’ll have no problem.

* Looks sleek and smart. The range is stylishly designed, with three coated finish lack cast iron grills (the center one is different from the two identical outer grills) that form a single-height cooking surface over the burners. The front panel showcases all touch-panel controls, and is pretty intuitive. The rest of the front is flat, with a chunky oven door handle.

* The main oven is very versatile, with a large array of features (i.e., convection baking and roasting, timed start/finish, probe cooking, broiling, etc.) that provide endless flexibility with baking. The three racks have six height positions. The racks are enameled so that they can stay inside the oven for automatic cleaning. And, for the most part, the auto cleanup is effective.

* The drawer below the main oven is a small second oven.

CONs:

* You have to stretch your definition of an oven to call the bottom oven an oven. First of all, even on the “all-gas” model, the bottom oven is electric. And it’s not 220 volt electric, its 110. So “cooking” in it is like cooking in a toaster oven. GE should be honest about this, and not put a control on the oven that implies that you can get it up to 450 degrees F. You might be able to pull off getting it to 450 (with a tailwind), but the element is far too wimpy to sustain that temperature with food in the oven and with opening and closing the drawer. GE should instead call this oven what it is: a warming drawer. The lower oven works acceptably well in that limited role, although you need to allow at least 15 minutes pre-heating to even achieve that use. This is a serious unmet expectation.

* The brushed stainless finish on the panel in front of the surface burners is delicate and scratches VERY easily. You have to be very careful in removing the heavy burner grates for cleaning that you do not contact this panel with the grate. The slightest contact between the grate and the flat stainless panel WILL produce a noticeable scratch.

* The knobs are plastic and feel cheap — too cheap for a ,400 stove. The shaft of the knob is terminated in an incredibly flimsy plastic ring which won’t last. You’ll be replacing these knobs in time.

* There is no battery backup for the clock, so any power bump will cause you to reset the time.

* The automatic cleaning does not clean up the inside of the oven glass very well. I have to figure out a way to clean the glass, or over a year or so, it will turn opaque from burned-on spattered grease that inevitably accumulates if you use your oven frequently.

So there we are. After three months of use, Im happy with this range. It’s highly featured, it’s easy to learn to use, and the manual is useful in this regard. It’s not cheap (I have no idea how one reviewer got the ,800 deal — all I can say is mazel tov), but good things seldom are.

Try it — you’ll like it.

Review by trose:

This oven totally exceeded my expectations (there were no reviews online when I bought it and I couldn’t find the model in stores.) Beautiful, easy to use, easy to clean (top is black by the way, not stainless steel, which you can’t tell from the image). However, it looks good. OK it does have that silly “Chicken Nuggets” button on it (please leave me my illusions that I’ll be doing something more glamorous than heating up the nuggets, even if that does happen occasionally!). It’s a mixture of shiny handles and stainless steel, which matches other appliances well, no finger prints, continuous grate on top, great heating/cooking etc., warming drawer, bottom oven rack that slides out when you open door, etc. No complaints. (Oh, except I had to buy the broiler pan separately. No biggie.)

Review by Kevin R. Connolly:

I just had my new DCS all gas 30″ self cleaning range installed a month ago. What can I say – WOW! The installation was flawless and all equipment worked perfectly right out of the shipping carton. DCS proved the most versatile and reliable hands-down. I spent the past six years frequently comparing DCS to Viking, Wolfe, Thermadore, Blue Star, Five Star, Dacor, and many other manufacturers. DCS was simply superior to all the rest. Five burners, each with perfect simmer (quiet too), many oven options, self cleaning, all gas, easy to use, and all cooking options work flawlessly. My neighbor liked the stove so much that his family purchased one shortly after. If you’ve ever considered purchasing a professional series range then I urge you to look into DCS and then go for it.

Review by B. Sturge:

I have to write a short review to say how nice these Elba units are. I have the 2403 Duel Fuel model. Ignore the Avanti name, they are only the importers and I know their reputation in the US is not of high quality. Elba however is an Italian cooking appliance manufacturer independent of Avanti. My unit is of the same quality of a Viking or other high-end stainless range. Everything is solid & perfectly finished. The oven is spot-on accurate top, bottom, front, back. The triple ring burner is fantastic for large pot quick boiling. The oven programming function is deceptively complete although takes some time to learn. Lastly, the Elba units are about 1/2 the price of similar 24″ American units.