My advice is: downdraft, recirculating - forget it as an option. Both are useless and costly. You would be better off with an open window and without a hood.

But if you do decide to do it right, so your hands won't stick to the table because of a layer of grease, I would recommend using a range hood - island or wall, depending on your situation - and running a duct to the outside. If you don't want to run it through the roof (whatever the reason is), you may run it through the wall to the porch, and using a 3"x10" flat duct (so it's less visible) under the porch ceiling to continue the duct all the way to the outside.

Thanks for the feedback, robert_sett.

The more and more I've researched (here at GW and other sources), the consensus does seem to be that recirculating is useless (and downdraft isn't much better).

Ducting through the wall, into the porch, and ducting it through the porch ceiling to the outside seems like the best bet. I do want to do it right, especially since this is a house I plan to live in long term.

Thanks again.

Penetrating a tile roof for an exhaust outlet is perfectly common, and the cap can be painted to match your tile color.

I admit to favoring function over form, but the purpose of an exhaust fan is to exhaust, as efficiently as possible. The closer to straight up and out you can get, the more efficient it will be.

Depending on what's directly above your range, you may be prevented from going essentially straight up and out. But I believe that even a modest detour, running the main duct through the back of a closet then up and out for example, would be preferable to either a downdraft arrangement or one or more ninety degree turns in the ducting to direct it sideways to an exterior wall.

To each his own I guess. We had an Amana cooktop with an integrated downdraft that we replaced with a Dacor cooktop paired with the Dacor popup vent. It works fine for us and has a great wow factor. Our cooktop sits directly in front of a large window so we had no other option but some form of downdraft. Regardless, we actually seldom use the vent and have zero issues.

People who cook a lot of a certain kind of food (like salmon frying)) will notice that a downdraft works until it doesn't work just when you need it most because the greasy steamy smokey fumes are suddenly not being pulled in and are floating up into the kitchen and the rest of the house. If you "seldom use the vent" you won't know about this limiting factor. Someone I know with a downdraft compensates by stopping the cooking; they come back a few minutes later and go slow from then on.

hpxmirage: Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately (in this case anyway), I don't have a tile roof. I have a metal panel roof I just paid big bucks for, so the thought of cutting through it for exhaust, and possibly compromising the integrity of my new roof (leaking had been an issue -- it was a foreclosure home), makes me want to avoid doing that if at all possible.

tarheel72: Thanks. For how I cook, as a single guy, I think a downdraft could be good enough. But, knock on wood, I hope to be married, have a family, and have lots of cooking going on in my kitchen. So, tough one...

davidro1: Thanks for the input. Stopping cooking midway, waiting, and finishing slow sounds like it would be a major pain!

I'm surprised that some consider roof venting so difficult (there was another thread on the Kitchen Forum where someone was advised by her roofer not to go through her roof). Up here in the frozen north, we have all kinds of vents in all kinds of roof materials, to protect our indoor air quality, and the structural integrity of our building materials. And we do get real weather here! It ain't rocket science to seal a vent in a roof!