Right now, I have the equivalent of a Ford Escort for a stove. It’s small, wimpy and poorly designed. There’s nothing about it that I love; and a lot about it that annoys me.

I would love to trade my Ford in on what Italian stovemaker Paolo Bertazzoni calls a Ferrari — a precision appliance that can do zero to 500 degrees before I can peel a clove of garlic; a stove outfitted with burners so perfectly engineered that they can warm a hollandaise and sear a roast — at the same time.

OK, so maybe I can’t exactly afford the Ferrari that Paolo wants to sell me. But I can sure daydream about it — in detail, thanks to a pretty convincing sales pitch from Paolo about everything that makes his stove great.

“We are coming to the American market with a stove that has all of the BTUs and the standards of a pro-range, but our style is different,” Paolo told me.

Of course your style is different. It’s Italian! As Paolo talks, I can’t help but think how lovely it would be if I could test-drive his stove to confirm that it meets my criterion for a great stove. But he doesn’t offer. And at $4,000, that’s just not an option.

I can, however, share with you a few details about why that stove costs so much.

First, he says, a Bertazzoni stove has color — seriously great yellows and greens and reds that are cooked on in the very same way that the color is cooked on the surface of a Ferrari, (the manufacturing plant for which happens to be located very close to the stove factory. Hence, his comparison.)

Even better is that the Bertazzoni stove is completely cleanable, with no poorly-located screws or joints that cannot be cleaned. I like this idea a lot. My Ford Escort doesn’t include this feature.

Not convinced? That’s because I forgot to tell you about the Bertazzoni burner that kicks heat up in stages, for any size of pan, thanks to concentric rings of fire. If this doesn’t impress you, you are spending entirely too little time in front of the stove.

Just in case I was still waffling, Paolo threw out one last tidbit — the Bertazzoni is made to last a lifetime. That, I have to say, is long enough for anyone to get their money’s worth out of the thing.

– Jolene Thym