Crappy Miele cooktops with knobs on

See where the knobs broke.

Or should that be knobs off?
On the surface Miele is the brand to buy. It’s solid, doesn’t discount and sponsors most of the important food events. It is the backbone of the mobile kitchens at Prahran Market.

Then why am I left so angry by my stove top? Because it is really badly designed, has plastic knobs which broke off within a few months and because it costs about twice as much as, for instance, Smeg.

Miele also invoices direct so retailers can’t discount. But because I packaged it with a shitload of stuff, the retailer applied a discount to everything else. That means I didn’t pay full price for Miele (Yah boo sucks to you) anyway. This included my Qasair extraction system which is custom installed semi-industrial and which is probably the best you can buy. And I don’t say that lightly.

I’m not saying I expect the hob to be durable enough to survive cooking for several brigades of storm troopers invading Poland. But I do expect it to be robust enough to survive the vigourous shuffling of pans and the odd -okay, quite frequent – pot boiling over in the hands of a brigade of onefood wanker cooking for two.

On the plus side the hob has nice heavy trivetts and I’m sure if I was igeneous enough I could disable a modern day T-90 Russian tank with them.

There are several problems with my Miele hob. On the design the raised panel with the knobs raises the knobs too high, above the hight of a pan on the trivetts so when you pull the pan towards you it hits the knob knocking it off. Remember these are cheap plastic knobs and after several months of being knocked off plastic bits broke off so it is difficult to operate the knobs now.

The burners although seemingly robust are not. The rivets on one have corroded and the whole unit has fallen apart. What I’m cooking here is stocks and soups, not concentrated sulphuric acid or making home made explosives.

I regret leaving my Ilve in Sydney. But them Stephen Downes had problems with Ilve and on his comparatively low profile blog attracted some 27 comments from people griping about their stoves.

It’s a sad time that it is so difficult to find, outside Choice, any independent advice. Food glossies certainly don’t give this advice and that’s perhaps why they lost their way, because they have been led astray by big spending advertisers like Miele. Or Ilve for that matter.