Our Place Always Pan Review 2026: Does the Nonstick Actually Last?

Our Place turned a single, brightly-colored pan into a genuine cultural moment, the Always Pan sold out repeatedly in its early years and still shows up in nearly every gift guide aimed at new homeowners. The design is undeniably good. Whether the nonstick coating underneath that design holds up the way a $135-150 price tag implies is a separate question, and it's one independent test labs have answered less generously than the brand's own marketing. We pulled apart the current cookware and kitchen-appliance lineup, cross-checked lab testing from Consumer Reports and America's Test Kitchen, and looked at an active legal investigation into the brand's safety claims to give an honest answer.

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Our Place has built something real: a design-forward cookware brand that genuinely changed how direct-to-consumer kitchenware gets marketed. The gap between that design reputation and independent lab performance is the honest story worth understanding before paying premium prices.

Brand Snapshot

Our Place was founded in September 2019 in Los Angeles by Shiza Shahid (previously the founding CEO of the Malala Fund), her husband Amir Tehrani, whose family has deep roots in white-label kitchenware through his grandfather's company TableTops Unlimited, and Zach Rosner, who built e-commerce operations at Everlane and MeUndies. The idea came from Shahid and Tehrani's own dinner parties, built around the insight that most home cooks found traditional cookware sets overwhelming. The company raised early funding from Dreamers VC (Will Smith's venture fund) and FabFitFun's venture arm, and by 2020 was already profitable with revenue projected around $20 million. Today, direct-to-consumer sales still make up over 90% of the business according to Shahid's own 2023 statements, alongside wholesale distribution through Nordstrom, Target (roughly 650 of 2,000 US stores as of late 2023), Amazon, and international retailers like Selfridges and Harrods. Manufacturing is based primarily in China, with glassware made in Thailand.

Product Deep Dive: The Current Cookware and Kitchen Lineup

The Always Pan remains the flagship product, now sold in ceramic nonstick ($135 standard, $115 mini, $149 large), a cast iron version ($69-$115 depending on region), and a newer Titanium Always Pan Pro ($149, $125 mini). The Perfect Pot runs $99 on its own or $249 bundled with an Always Pan as the Cookware Duo. Beyond cookware, Our Place has expanded aggressively into small appliances and accessories: the Wonder Oven, a 12-liter air fryer and toaster oven combo, starts at $149, with a Complete Wonder Oven Pro Set bundle reaching $549 in promotional pricing. A 13-inch carbon steel wok runs $139, and a Knife Trio sells for $145 at regular price. It's worth flagging that Our Place's own site showed real pricing inconsistencies across pages and regions during our research, confirming the exact current price directly before buying is worth the extra step given how often the brand runs promotional sales.

Our Place Core Cookware — Pricing

Pros and Cons

Pros

•      Genuinely distinctive, well-regarded design that consistently draws praise even in critical reviews

•      The current 450°F oven-safe upgrade is a real improvement Consumer Reports specifically credited over the original version

•      Trustpilot sits at a strong 4.3 out of 5 across more than 5,000 reviews, with 75% at five stars

•      Even heat distribution measured well in Consumer Reports' and CNN Underscored's independent pancake and omelet tests

•      Versatile single-pan design genuinely suits small kitchens and first apartments, where storage space is limited

Cons

•      America's Test Kitchen's own testing found the nonstick coating lost its effectiveness after cooking just 44 eggs, concluding "most likely not" worth buying

•      Consumer Reports' home tester reported mushrooms and shrimp failing to brown and onions failing to caramelize, standard searing tasks the pan struggled with

•      Reviewed.com documented coating/paint chipping near the handle after only a few uses

•      An active law-firm investigation (not yet a filed lawsuit) is examining whether the brand's "constructed, not coated" and PFAS-free marketing claims are accurate

•      At $135-150 for a single pan, CNN Underscored called it "a waste of money" for anyone who already owns cookware they like

What Real Owners and Reviewers Are Saying

"I like everything about this pan, clean up is easy, the size is perfect for us, and the non stick is excellent."  — Linda, verified Trustpilot review

"Hardly used but now every thing sticks."  — Lyn, verified Trustpilot review

"The Always Pan lost its nonstick qualities after we cooked just 44 eggs in it. So should you buy this pan? Most likely not."  — America's Test Kitchen, independent lab review

"Other pans do just as good a job for far less."  — Consumer Reports, independent home-tester review

"I've had mine for two years now, and it's still in pretty excellent condition... the nonstick coating is still working great!"  — Kristen Garaffo, Hunker, long-term owner review

How Our Place Compares to the Competition

The honest comparison here isn't flattering for Our Place on pure cooking performance. Reviewed.com specifically pointed buyers toward the $30 OXO Good Grips Pro as a traditional alternative, and that gap, a premium design-forward pan underperforming a budget option on core nonstick durability, is the central tension in every independent review we found.

Who Should (and Shouldn't) Buy Our Place

Good Fit: The Design-Conscious First-Time Buyer

If this is a first real cookware purchase for a small kitchen, and the design and versatility matter as much as peak searing performance, the Always Pan still does a lot of jobs reasonably well in one piece.

Good Fit: The Gift Buyer

Several reviewers specifically describe it as a strong housewarming or graduation gift, where the visual appeal and story matter more than multi-year nonstick durability.

Weak Fit: The Serious Home Cook

Anyone who regularly sears, browns, or caramelizes food will likely find the same limitations Consumer Reports' tester did. A dedicated stainless or carbon steel pan will outperform the Always Pan at these specific tasks.

Weak Fit: Anyone Prioritizing Long-Term Nonstick Durability

Given America's Test Kitchen's 44-egg finding and the recurring coating-degradation complaints on Trustpilot and Thingtesting, buyers who want a nonstick pan to still perform like new after a year or two should look elsewhere first.

Our Top Pick in the Lineup

For most buyers, the standard ceramic Always Pan at $135 remains the sensible entry point, it's the most tested, most reviewed product in the lineup, with the clearest independent track record, flawed as it is. Buyers specifically chasing better searing performance should consider the newer Titanium Always Pan Pro instead, which early coverage suggests handles higher heat more capably than the ceramic original, though it hasn't accumulated the same volume of independent long-term testing yet.

Pricing and Where to Buy

Our Place sells primarily direct through fromourplace.com, with wholesale availability at Target, Nordstrom, and Amazon offering a useful alternative purchase path with those retailers' own return policies as backup. Given the brand's frequent sales (Black Friday, spring, and holiday promotions all shift headline pricing), waiting for a sale period rather than buying at full list price is a reasonable way to reduce the real risk that the coating underperforms its price tag.

Reading the PFAS Investigation Correctly

It's worth being precise about what's actually happening here, since the details matter. In December 2025, the law firm Migliaccio & Rathod opened a formal investigation into Our Place's Titanium Always Pan Pro and Always Pan 2.0, examining whether the "constructed, not coated" and "NoCo" marketing language misrepresents what may be a conventional spray-on coating, and whether the brand's PFAS-free claims hold up under independent testing. This is a pre-litigation intake process, not a filed lawsuit, no court case has been opened, no named plaintiffs exist yet, and critically, no one, including the investigating law firm, has produced independent lab results confirming PFAS is actually present. Our Place has told at least one independent investigator it does not release its own test results, citing proprietary information, which is a legitimate business practice but also means the company's safety claims currently rest on its own word rather than published third-party verification. None of this means the pans are unsafe. It does mean the strongest safety claims in Our Place's marketing haven't been independently confirmed one way or the other, which is worth knowing rather than assuming either the best or worst case.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the Our Place Always Pan nonstick coating actually last?

Independent testing suggests it degrades faster than premium competitors. America's Test Kitchen found it lost nonstick performance after just 44 eggs cooked, though some long-term owners on Hunker report two-plus years of good performance, suggesting real variability between units or cooking habits.

Is the Our Place Always Pan actually PFAS-free?

The company claims so, but no independent, published lab test confirming this has been produced, and a law firm investigation opened in December 2025 is specifically examining this claim. Treat it as an unresolved question rather than a settled fact in either direction.

Is Our Place worth it compared to Caraway?

Both sit in a similar price range for ceramic nonstick cookware. Our Place has the stronger design reputation and broader appliance lineup, but Caraway has drawn somewhat less public scrutiny over its specific marketing claims, worth factoring in if that's a priority for you.

What's the Our Place return policy?

Our Place generally allows returns within a standard window on unused items, though exact terms vary by product and sale status, worth confirming on the current site before buying, especially around promotional periods when final-sale terms sometimes apply.

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Final Verdict

Our Place earned its reputation on design, not performance, and that distinction matters for anyone deciding whether to buy. The Always Pan looks great in every kitchen photo and genuinely suits a smaller or first kitchen that needs one pan to do several jobs reasonably well. What it doesn't do, according to multiple independent labs rather than just scattered customer complaints, is match premium nonstick durability at a premium nonstick price. Buy it for the design and the versatility, go in with realistic expectations about how long the coating will perform like new, and keep an eye on how the open marketing-claims investigation develops. For a direct ceramic-nonstick competitor at a similar price point, see our Caraway Home cookware review.