Our Place review: the Always Pan, honestly assessed

The 60-second read

Our Place sells colourful, non-toxic cookware built around a single idea: that most home cooks own far more pans than they actually use. The Always Pan, its hero product at $135, is designed to replace eight or nine separate pieces, and it has sold well enough to turn a 2019 startup into a brand with physical stores. The cookware is genuinely good-looking and genuinely well thought out. Whether it is worth the money depends almost entirely on whether you cook the way Our Place assumes you do.

Buy it if / Skip it if

• Buy it if you cook mostly one-pan meals and want to stop owning six pans you never touch

• Buy it if you want to get away from PTFE and PFOA coatings without paying for a full clad stainless set

• Buy it if your kitchen is small and storage is the real constraint

• Buy it if you cook across cuisines — steaming, braising, frying rice, simmering curry — rather than just searing

• Buy it if you care how your cookware looks on the stove, because very few brands do this as well

• Skip it if you cook on very high heat and sear steaks constantly — ceramic nonstick is not built for that

• Skip it if you want cookware that lasts twenty years, unless you go Titanium

• Skip it if you already own a decent pan and are buying mostly because of the colour

Who Our Place is

Our Place launched in 2019, co-founded by Shiza Shahid and Amir Tehrani. Tehrani’s family had been in cookware manufacturing for decades; Shahid came from a non-profit background. That combination produced a brand that sells cookware but talks mostly about cooking, gathering and family food culture — which sounds like marketing until you look at the product range and notice it is actually built that way.

The commercial model is direct-to-consumer, with a small retail footprint and a tightly curated catalogue. Our Place does not sell forty pans. It sells a handful of pieces in a lot of colours, and expects you to buy a complete setup rather than accumulate pieces over years.

The customer is reasonably easy to picture: someone setting up or resetting a kitchen, cooking for one to four people, who cares about what goes into their cookware and how it looks on an open shelf.

What Our Place does differently

The hero product is a consolidation argument, not a pan. The Always Pan is marketed as a 10-in-1 system — frying pan, sauté pan, steamer, saucier, braiser and more — with a nesting steamer basket and spatula built in. This is the brand’s actual thesis, and it holds up: for anyone whose kitchen storage is the real bottleneck, buying one pan that genuinely covers eight jobs is a better decision than buying eight pans.

Non-toxic is the default, not the premium tier. Our Place’s ceramic nonstick is made without PTFE, PFOA, lead or cadmium, and that applies right across the range rather than to a single “clean” line. The newer Titanium collection goes further and uses no nonstick coating at all, pairing titanium with stainless steel — which removes coating degradation from the equation entirely.

It is built for cuisines that most Western cookware brands ignore. The pan’s depth, lid and steamer design reflect cooking that involves rice, dumplings, braises and simmered dishes, not just a weeknight steak. The Traditionware collection extends this further. Very few cookware brands design around anything other than European and American cooking, and it shows in the specifics.

Colour is treated as a product decision. Blue Salt, Spice, Sage, Char, Butter Yellow, Forget-Me-Not Blue, Vanilla Bean — the palette is coherent, unusual and the single biggest reason this cookware ends up displayed rather than stored. That is a design achievement, not an accident.

The range, decoded

Products worth your money

Ceramic Nonstick Always Pan 10.5" — $135

Best for: The default buy. If you are getting one Our Place item, this is it.

Why it stands out:

• Replaces around eight pieces of cookware, with a nesting steamer basket and beechwood spatula included

• Ceramic nonstick made without PTFE, PFOA, lead or cadmium

• Deep enough to braise and simmer properly, not just a shallow fry pan with a lid

One honest limitation: Ceramic nonstick wears down with time and heat — treat it as a three-to-five-year pan with care, not a lifetime one.

Bottom line: The product that built the brand, and still the clearest value in the range if one-pan cooking is genuinely how you cook.

Titanium Always Pan Pro 10.5" — from $165

Best for: People who liked the Always Pan idea but want it to outlive a coating.

Why it stands out:

• Titanium and stainless steel construction with no nonstick coating to degrade

• Handles higher heat than the ceramic line, including searing and oven finishing

• Carries a lifetime warranty rather than the ceramic line’s shorter cover

One honest limitation: It does not behave like nonstick — eggs and fish need proper preheating and fat, and there is a learning curve.

Bottom line: The version to buy if you cook often and hard, and the one that answers the single biggest criticism of the original.

Wonder Oven — $185

Best for: Small kitchens that need an air fryer and a toaster oven without surrendering the whole counter.

Why it stands out:

• A 6-in-1 countertop oven combining air frying, toasting and baking with steam infusion

• Steam infusion is the genuinely unusual part — it helps bread and leftovers reheat without drying out

• Comes in the same palette as the cookware, which matters if it lives on your counter permanently

One honest limitation: The capacity suits one to three people; it is not the oven for a family roast.

Bottom line: A rare countertop appliance that is pleasant to look at and actually does something its competitors do not.

Cookware Set — $359.95 (from $518)

Best for: Anyone furnishing a kitchen from zero — a first flat, a wedding registry, a move.

Why it stands out:

• A 13-piece set covering Always Pan, Perfect Pot and both mini versions

• Saves roughly $158 against buying the pieces individually

• Available across the full colour range, so the kitchen looks deliberate rather than assembled over years

One honest limitation: If you already own a good pot, you are paying for a duplicate.

Bottom line: The best-value entry point in the catalogue, and the way most people should buy into the brand.

What owners actually say

Consistently praised:

• Looks — this comes up before performance in most owner feedback

• Easy cleaning while the coating is new, with very little sticking

• The one-pan consolidation genuinely working for small kitchens

• Comfortable weight, lighter than cast iron or heavy clad

Consistently criticised:

• Coating performance declining after a year or two of heavy use, which is the single most common complaint

• Not suited to high-heat searing, which disappoints buyers expecting a do-everything pan

• Price relative to what a comparable ceramic pan costs elsewhere

• Occasional handle-comfort grumbles on the larger sizes

The pattern is consistent: people love it early, and the durability question is what determines whether they repurchase.

The money question

At $135, the Always Pan sits above supermarket ceramic nonstick and below premium clad stainless. You are paying for design, the consolidation concept and a non-toxic coating — not for twenty-year durability, and it is more honest to say so.

Value is strongest for people replacing several pans at once, cooking in small kitchens, or buying the Cookware Set rather than single pieces. It is weakest for high-heat cooks and for anyone buying a second nonstick pan they do not need.

If longevity is your main concern, the Titanium line genuinely resolves it — at roughly $30 to $65 more, with a lifetime warranty and no coating to wear through. For many buyers that is the better long-term purchase.

How it compares

Buying it

Buy from fromourplace.com — the full colour range, bundle pricing and warranty all run through the brand, and third-party listings rarely beat the set discounts.

Shipping is free on orders over $135, returns are free, and there is a 100-day trial, which is unusually long for cookware and genuinely useful given that a pan’s weaknesses only show after weeks of cooking. Warranty cover varies by line: the ceramic pieces carry shorter terms, while the Titanium Always Pan Pro is covered for life.

On discounts: the sets are permanently reduced against the sum of their parts, and the deepest reductions land around Black Friday and seasonal colour clear-outs. If a specific colour is on sale, it is usually being retired.

Questions people ask

Is the Always Pan actually non-toxic?
Our Place’s ceramic coating is made without PTFE, PFOA, lead and cadmium, and this applies across the range rather than to a premium sub-line. The Titanium collection uses no nonstick coating at all.

How long does the coating really last?
Expect three to five years with careful use — medium heat, no metal utensils, hand washing. Heavy high-heat cooking shortens that considerably, and this is the brand’s most common owner complaint.

Ceramic or Titanium — which should I buy?
Ceramic if you want true nonstick ease and cook at moderate heat. Titanium if you sear, cook daily, or want a pan that does not have a coating with an expiry date. Titanium costs more and carries a lifetime warranty.

Can it go in the oven and the dishwasher?
Oven use is supported within the stated temperature limits. Hand washing is strongly advisable on the ceramic line regardless of what is technically permitted — dishwashers are the fastest way to kill a ceramic coating.

Is the Cookware Set better value than buying pieces?
Yes, substantially. The 13-piece set is $359.95 against $518 bought separately, which is the clearest saving in the catalogue.

Does it work on induction?
Yes, the cookware is induction compatible alongside gas and electric.

The verdict

Our Place gets criticised for being a design brand that happens to sell pans. That is unfair, but it is not baseless — the colours and the photography are doing real commercial work here, and plenty of people buy the Always Pan because of how it looks before they think about how it cooks.

What that criticism misses is that the underlying idea is sound. Most home kitchens do contain too many pans, most of them unused, and a single well-designed piece that covers eight jobs is a genuinely better answer than a twelve-piece set bought on sale. Our Place understood that early and built a product around it rather than around a materials spec sheet.

The honest caveat is durability. Ceramic nonstick does not last forever, and buyers expecting a heirloom pan at $135 will be disappointed in year three. Our Place has effectively conceded this by launching the Titanium line, and anyone cooking seriously should probably start there instead.

Buy it if your kitchen is small, your cooking is varied and you want one beautiful thing instead of eight mediocre ones. Skip it if you sear hard, cook hot and want cookware that will outlive you. The 100-day trial means finding out which of those you are costs nothing.