Eighteen years. That’s how long I’d had my Stoves range cooker. It arrived when we renovated the kitchen during the toddler years, back when baby no.4 fitted in the kitchen scales and I thought a slow cooker was cheating. And despite a heavy-duty daily battering from four children, assorted visiting teenagers, and more macaroni cheese than is decent, it just… kept going.
Until it didn’t.
I won’t bore you with the sighs, rattles, lost rubber feet, small grill fires and eventual outright refusal of the front right or wok burner to light – unless the back right was lit at the same time and the pan bridged the gap to force a shared flame … yeah, we did that little dance for about two years. It had been repaired, and repaired, and… it was time.
I’m a big fan of ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’, but also ‘if it’s a bit broke but you love it, ignore it as long as humanly possible and only then fix it’, and ‘if it’s really broke, just replace it with the same’.
So I ordered another Stoves Richmond 110cm Dual Fuel Range Cooker. The exact same model, just 18 years newer. A bit like upgrading a beloved car – you go for the new model, trusting it’s going to be even better.
It was not.
Let’s start with the fact that the old one was an actual beast. Properly solid. It sat in the kitchen like it had been poured into the space – all weighty and dependable. You could lean on it while stirring something, slam a pan down, even trip over a dog and fall sideways into it – it didn’t budge.
If there had been a small gas explosion in the kitchen, I’m fairly sure the entire house would be reduced to rubble, and the cooker would still be sitting there in the dust, still warm. Still roasting a chicken. My trusty friend took whatever I threw at it – spitting oil, molten fruit from jam making, melted plastic, endless teenagers making late-night oven chips – and just carried on without complaint.
The new one?
It wobbles. And not in a poetic ‘oh the fragility of modern life’ kind of way. Nudge it to clean the sides and it trembles like it’s been personally offended. Open the door a bit sharply and the whole thing shivers like it’s considering flight. I haven’t yet tripped into it (give me time), but when I do, I strongly suspect I’ll be retrieving pieces from the back garden.
It looks the same. But something’s changed.
And I don’t mean to be all ‘oh, they don’t make them like they used to’ – I’m not one for cardigan-and-slippers nostalgia. But there’s definitely been a shift. A lighter build, maybe. A cost-saving frame design. A world in which even the solid things are a bit more… trembly.
Don’t get me wrong – it works. I cook on it every day. It even cooks faster (turns out almost-20-year-old gas jets really slow the gas down. These babies are roaring JETS). It heats things up as requested. It hasn’t exploded. And I didn’t expect magic sparkles and certainly didn’t want Alexa integration. But… there’s something missing. Actually, there’s quite a lot missing.
Admittedly, yes, I should have checked the height properly. I didn’t. Because the model was exactly the same. But now it sits proud above the worktops that used to line up flush with the old one – like a slightly smug tower block that refuses to join the rest of the street.
And on top of it sit the pan supports – once neatly sunk into the hob – now jutting upwards like scaffolding on a half-finished building. They’re sharp, angular, have no rubber feet and are just unapologetically industrial: there’s none of the soft comfortable curves the old ones had. It’s probably just a design update, but honestly, they’re… a bit ugly. Like someone swapped out a classic Aga vibe for ‘urban warehouse, but make it hostile with a touch of camping cooker’.
And the sleek splashback that came with the original? Completely incompatible – and apparently now considered an optional extra, because this one didn’t come with one at all.
The cast iron griddle … isn’t. It’s a simple hotplate now – and a skinny one at that. Half the weight of the old model (naturally I’ve kept the original, because it does at least brand a steak. And potentially stop a burglar).
Even the metal rail across the front, which used to have a lovely heft to it, now feels tinny. Like the design brief was ‘make it look the same, but flimsier’.
Lighting the hob is now a daily exercise in patience. You press the button, the flame lights… and goes out immediately if you let go. You have to keep holding it in, clicking away for a second longer than necessary. Sounds petty. But trust me – after the fourth re-light of the morning coffee pot, it’s enough to make you start swearing at inanimate objects.
And the new ‘air fryer’ oven function? I mean… no. It’s just a fan-and-top-heat combination. In a full-size oven. The whole point of air fryers is their speed, their dinky size, their ‘grab it off the shelf for a portion of nuggets’ energy. Not an entire oven that takes exactly as long as… well, an oven. The pull-out basket tray is a genuinely nice touch though. I’ll give them that.
The oven controls, too, have gone through a sort of baffling redesign. The left oven is controlled by the dial on the right of the clock, and vice versa. Why? Who knows. It’s a fun daily brain teaser. Also, you can only turn the temperature dial one way – so if you fancy using the grill, you’ve got to wind your way through every single setting until you get there. The old model let you just twist right, straight to it.
It really is the small things. The slowly irritating small things.
And all this for just £2,000. Plus fitting.
When the original arrived, I remember feeling actual happiness. Like properly excited, making-dinner-in-the-fancy-oven-just-because silly happy.
This one? It’s… fine. Functional. Meh.
And for £2k, I’m going to be honest – I expected a bit more than ‘fine’. I wanted to love it. I wanted it to love me back.
I miss my solid, dependable, friend-in-the-kitchen.
So here we are. Stoves, I’m still yours. I just think we need to talk.
