Home Improvement Product Reviews

We are not professional cooks, but a large family of 6 and we LOVE this stove, February 26, 2008

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.

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Advanced home cooks should be happy with this range, WITH ONE CAVEAT …, August 14, 2008

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…

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Stainless Steel knobs overheat drastically when using higher temps in oven for baking long periods of time or artisan breads, February 23, 2009

By 

Wanda S. Shoemaker (USA) – See all my reviews

  

GE CAFE 30″ stove. Directly behind the top of oven door are air vents that vent lots of hot air onto stainless steel panel behind knobs, onto stainless steel knobs and top of panel directly above knobs. Knobs become extremely hot, enough so that I need to use a hot mat to control knobs when using the oven for baking and I am using the top for cooking. To me the GE Cafe has a poorly designed feature that needs to be corrected….I’m concerned due to safety reasons for myself, my young grandchild and anyone that might be using my stove, ie. guest or other visiting family members. I called GE, they sent repairmen to check out my complaint. He called GE while here, they suggested removing oven door, shoring up the door to make it tighter. I told them this wasn’t where the problem is, the issue is with the oven vents that are blowing hot air directly onto knobs and panel. This can’t be good for wiring that controls the touch control panel, plus the safety issue that I’m most concerned about. I asked GE if this was going to be rectified, representive said NO.

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