Baking like blue-bloods

It comes in 15 colors with a host of options. It can be custom-made to your specifications. It will draw sighs of envy as your friends run their hands down the European styling and smooth finish.

A new sports car? No. It’s an Aga Range, imported from England, and it will cost you about $15,000.

“It’s the Porsche, the Bentley, the Rolls-Royce of stoves,” says Norma Taylor, Aga’s eastern regional manager.

Of course, if you get one, you might have to upgrade the rest of the kitchen, too, from the KitchenAid professional mixer to the All-Clad cookware.

Never have so many people put so much thought into what goes into a kitchen. Gone are the days of pots and pans lasting the length of a marriage. Goodbye, four-burner stove. So long, laminate countertop.

Americans are remodeling the most-used room of the home at a record pace, spending more money than ever on counters, cooktops and all the associated accouterments.

Remodeling magazine estimates that the average cost of an upscale remodeling job in the Washington area is $81,748. Sure, there are mansions in Potomac that need to have the high-end materials, but Jim McCoy, owner and president of the Kitchen Guild, a D.C.-area design and remodeling company, says even owners of small town houses and condos are opting for stainless-steel appliances and fancy coffee makers.

To keep up with the demand, Mr. McCoy’s company has started Express by Kitchen Guild, a remodeling service that offers high-end materials — such as one would see in an upper-brackets home — at a more affordable $20,000 to $50,000. This service is aimed at owners of smaller homes who are seeking the look of a high-end kitchen.

“The kitchen industry certainly has changed,” he says. “We are doing really nice kitchens in relatively modest homes. Absolutely, it can be a status symbol. But some of it is practical — a nice kitchen is going to add value to your home. In an expensive home, it will accelerate the sale of your house when you go to sell. So in that sense, it is not as impractical as a $140,000 Porsche.”

A confluence of events helped create the current kitchen madness, Mr. McCoy says. He says his business saw a dramatic upturn after September 11, 2001, when people wanted to stay home and spend more time with their families.

Around the same time, the Federal Reserve Board lowered interest rates, and housing values started climbing, giving many homeowners access to home equity money to fuel their remodeling dreams. Meanwhile, the cost of high-end materials such as granite started falling, and TV cooking shows became very popular.

Suddenly, it wasn’t so far out of reach to cook in the same kind of space as TV chefs Bobby Flay or Emeril Lagasse.

“It is now much less expensive to keep up with the Joneses,” Mr. McCoy says. “You can even get entry-level appliances in stainless steel now, which contributes to that look of a professional kitchen.”

Refrigerator fantasies

Peter Patel knows what he wants. He has done a few years of research and can see the perfect kitchen in his mind.

“It will have a very nice range — a Viking or a Thermidor,” says the IT professional, who lives in Northwest. “I want a nice refrigerator, a Sub-Zero with French doors and a pullout freezer. I’d like a nice island with a sink in the middle, and a flat-screen TV on the wall. Lighting is important, too.”

Mr. Patel was among the thousands of visitors to the Metropolitan Cooking and Entertaining Show. The event, held at the Washington Convention Center earlier this month, was sort of a Super Bowl for foodies like Mr. Patel. More than 100 exhibitors showed off the latest in fancy salsas, celebrity cookbooks, cool gadgets and expensive grills. Live demonstrations and wine tastings were offered. Aga stoves were on display, as were Viking appliances.

Mr. Patel and his friend David Corson were eyeing the Viking outdoor grill — retail price about $3,200, but a full outdoor kitchen can run 10 times that amount, says the representative for the Viking Range Corp.

“I love kitchen things,” Mr. Patel says. “I have very high standards. ”

For Mr. Patel, the fantasy kitchen has a practical use.

“I cook every day,” he says. “Always from scratch. I never buy frozen food. I also entertain a lot. Cooking is the best hobby to have. You can enjoy it every day and feed yourself in the process.”

So Mr. Patel needs those things — and is willing to wait for the right time to spring for the Sub-Zero. It doesn’t mean that one can’t cook without the pretty toaster or the Henckels knives.

Denise Medved, organizer of the Metropolitan Cooking Show and author of “The Tiny Kitchen” cookbook, fondly recalls her early 20s, when she had “a teeny-tiny kitchen” in her Manhattan apartment.

“I didn’t have a blender or a Cuisinart like my mom had,” Ms. Medved says. “I had to figure out how to make it all work.”

Ms. Medved lives in Old Town Alexandria and has the kitchen she always wanted — two ovens, cabinets with pullouts, a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer, a nice gas range, good pots and pans, and an island.

“I love, love, love my kitchen,” she says. “I still don’t have all the gadgets. Someone gave me a juicer; I gave it away. I was dying to have a mandolin slicer. I used it twice and practically sliced my fingers off. That’s in the pile to give away, too.”

’Kind of like medals’

Hugh Rushing, executive vice president of the Alabama-based Cookware Manufacturers Association, says having the “right” cooking tools has never been so important to so many people. Sales have been rising steadily as many people collect high-end pots and pans the way they would designer shoes or fancy watches.

“For a long, long time, people hid their cookware,” Mr. Rushing says. “Now, it is prominently displayed on racks — kind of like medals. It is just as much a status symbol as having stainless steel appliances.”

While cookware companies will tout their attributes (nonstick … won’t warp … conducts heat the best … European styling … easy cleanup), they all do basically the same job. It is just that making spaghetti sauce can seem so much more stylish in a Calphalon saucepan.

“A really good chef can cook with a license plate and a blowtorch and probably produce some good food,” Mr. Rushing says, “but good cookware can give a regular cook some confidence. Americans are very technology-oriented. We expect a lot of gadgets no matter where we are. That’s why we spend more and save less than people in most other countries.”

Kitchens may make the final jump to ultimate status symbol when people stop using them. You know, like the designer sofa where no one is allowed to sit or the Italian sports car that is driven twice a year.

That’s already happening, says Mr. McCoy of the Kitchen Guild.

“We’ve run into a few kitchens where people don’t cook,” he says. “We’ll put in top-dollar items like Viking and Wolf [ranges], but people don’t really use them. They will admit to us that they eat out every night. The kitchen is more for show.”