There is a specific type of cookware purchase that I think a lot of people make. You’ve decided you want to upgrade from the old nonstick pans you’ve been using for years, the ones where the coating is starting to look questionable and you’re not entirely sure what you’ve been ingesting. You want something that performs well, doesn’t contain the chemicals that older nonstick coatings were made with, and looks good enough that you don’t feel the need to hide it when people come over. You’ve seen both Caraway and Our Place everywhere — Instagram, the kitchens of people whose homes you admire, every gift guide written in the last four years. You need to pick one.
I have been cooking with both in my actual kitchen for long enough to have real opinions that aren’t based on first impressions or marketing materials. Here’s what I actually think.
Caraway launched in 2019 with a clear premise: make ceramic nonstick cookware that looks beautiful, performs well, and comes with a storage system that solves the pan organization problem most kitchens have. The Caraway set — four pans, lids, and the magnetic pan rack and lid holder that hold everything together — was designed as a complete kitchen system rather than individual pieces. The colors are considered. The design is consistent. The whole thing photographs extremely well, which in 2019 was not incidental.
Our Place launched a year earlier, in 2018, but became famous in 2020 with the Always Pan — a single pan claiming to replace eight pieces of cookware. The Always Pan can sauté, steam, strain, braise, and sear. It has a built-in strainer lid and a wooden spoon holder. The premise is that you need less, not more, and the best kitchen setup is one that’s edited down to the pieces that actually do the work. The aesthetic is similarly considered — the colors are distinctive, the design is clean, and the Always Pan in particular became a cultural object in a way that few pieces of cookware ever do.
Both brands use ceramic nonstick coatings instead of PTFE (what most people call Teflon). This matters to a lot of people for health and environmental reasons — ceramic coatings don’t contain PFAS chemicals and don’t off-gas the way older nonstick coatings can at high heat.
What ceramic coatings also don’t do, that PTFE coatings historically do better: maintain their nonstick properties indefinitely. All ceramic nonstick coatings degrade over time. The questions are how quickly, under what conditions, and what you can do to slow the process.
Caraway’s coating handles this degradation more gracefully than Our Place’s in my experience. After consistent use over multiple months, the Caraway pans maintained their slickness noticeably better than the Our Place Always Pan. Eggs still slid cleanly in the Caraway longer than they did in the Always Pan. This could be a care difference — ceramic coatings are more heat-sensitive than people expect, and cooking on anything above medium heat regularly accelerates coating breakdown — but I was using both with equivalent care.
I want to spend time on the Always Pan specifically because it’s Our Place’s flagship and the product most people are deciding between when they’re comparing these brands.
The Always Pan is genuinely clever as a design object. The steam basket fits inside the pan. The lid has a strainer built in. The wooden spoon rest on the handle is a small detail that sounds like a gimmick until you have a toddler and every saved step matters. The pan is beautiful in a way that makes cooking in it feel more enjoyable, which is a real effect even if it’s a soft one.
The cooking surface is 10 inches. This is the limitation that matters most in everyday use. Ten inches is fine for eggs, fine for sautéing vegetables for two people, fine for sauces. It starts to feel genuinely constrained when you’re cooking protein for more than two people, when you want to sear anything that needs space around it to brown properly rather than steam, or when you’re making a sauce that benefits from a wider evaporation surface. The Always Pan is a brilliant one-person or two-person weeknight cooking tool. It is not the pan that replaces eight pieces of cookware in the way the marketing suggests if you’re regularly cooking for a family.
The 2024 and 2025 versions of the Always Pan addressed some earlier durability complaints. The coating has held up better in recent iterations than earlier versions did. Our Place responded to criticism thoughtfully rather than ignoring it, which I think deserves credit.
The Caraway set — which includes a 10.5-inch fry pan, 3-quart saucepan, 6.5-quart Dutch oven, and 4.5-quart sauté pan — covers more cooking ground than the Always Pan, and the size range means you’re using the right pan for the right job rather than adapting everything to one vessel.
The 10.5-inch fry pan is the piece I use most. It heats evenly, food releases cleanly for longer than I expected, and it handles the range from delicate eggs in the morning to browning vegetables for dinner without requiring temperature adjustments that feel like working around the tool rather than with it.
The Dutch oven is the surprise standout. Braised dishes, soups, anything that starts on the stovetop and goes into the oven — the Caraway Dutch oven does this as well as anything I’ve used at double the price. It’s substantial without being unwieldy and it holds heat beautifully.
The magnetic storage system that comes with the set deserves more attention than it typically gets. Pan storage is genuinely one of the least-solved problems in most kitchen setups, and the Caraway system — where pans stack on a magnetic rack that sits on a counter, lids in a separate holder — is elegant and actually makes the storage look good rather than chaotic.
Both brands are clear about this in their care instructions but it doesn’t get communicated strongly enough in most reviews: ceramic nonstick coatings should not be used on high heat. Medium is the ceiling. Medium-low is better for most things. High heat breaks down the coating faster than any other single factor.
This matters because most people who have cooked on stainless steel or cast iron, where high heat is often what you want, bring those habits to ceramic nonstick and then wonder why the coating degrades faster than expected. The adjustment is real and requires some relearning.
Caraway’s coating handles occasional heat inconsistency more forgivingly than Our Place’s in my experience. This is subjective — it’s based on observation over months of regular use — but it’s consistent with other long-term user reports I’ve read from people who’ve used both.
Caraway’s core set (four pans plus storage) runs around $395-495 depending on sales. Individual pieces are available separately. The pricing is premium but not absurd for what you get, particularly because the storage system is included.
Our Place’s Always Pan is $150-170. The Always Pan Pro, their more recent version with some upgrades, runs around $195. The full Our Place set (Always Pan plus Perfect Pot) is around $300.
If price is the primary consideration: Our Place at a lower entry point. If coverage and long-term performance are the priority: Caraway’s set justifies the higher spend.
If you live alone or cook primarily for one or two people and you want a single beautiful pan that handles most cooking tasks: the Our Place Always Pan is genuinely good at what it does and the price makes it an easier decision.
If you cook for a family or for guests regularly, want cookware that covers different cooking needs with the right tool, and value longevity of the coating: Caraway’s set is the better long-term investment.
The brands are not competing for the same kitchen. They’re designed around different cooking realities, and buying the right one means knowing which reality yours actually is.