Stove cooks almost any which way you can.

Byline: Jim Boyd The Register-Guard

A Beaverton man invented and is marketing a new kind of outdoor stove that can be used to sear, saute, grill, toast, stir-fry, boil, braise, poach, steam, fry and smoke. What's more, the gas-fired stove's circular cooking surface invites people to cook together in a convivial way.

"It can't do rotisserie. That's its limitation," says Bob Shingler, the president and CEO of Evo Inc., the 3-year-old company that makes the Evo flattop grill.

Shingler and chef Keith Ellis of Cook's Pots & Tabletops, the exclusive sales agent for Evo in Eugene, will be demonstrating the $2,495 outdoor appliance from noon to 2 p.m. today at the open-air farmers' market that's held from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Wednesdays at the Fifth Street Public Market.

Shingler pronounces his company's name as three individual letters - E. V. O. - but he doesn't correct anyone who pronounces it E-voh. The name is "designed to be a spin on the word 'evolution' because we're evolving the way people cook outdoors," he said.

The stove's 30-inch-diameter cooking surface sits over two rings of burners that are capable of heating the flattop from 250 degrees to a high of 670 degrees. The inner and outer rings of burners have separate adjustment knobs, so the cook can choose to have a cooler edge, a cooler center or the same temperature across the entire disk of sheet steel.

You can fry or stir-fry directly on the Evo's cooking surface or use it to heat pots and pans to cook several things at once.

Shingler said he sometimes cooks a big pizza by turning on the outside ring of burners, putting the pizza in the center of the cooking surface and covering it with the flattop's hood (which looks like a huge frying pan lid).

"Because the heat is coming from the outside edge and goes up into the hood, it creates like a convection in there, and it cooks a pizza perfectly," he said.

The Evo flattop grill is a new concept filling a new niche in the market for gas-fired outdoor grilling equipment, and that's why Shingler decided to produce it.

"You can go out and buy a barbecue at Home Depot for $299 that has a side burner and a back burner and a rotisserie or you could go to buy a Viking range that has the same stuff for $6,000, and they all do essentially the same thing," he said.

The grills that use infrared heat for cooking are an exception, he said, but they also cook food over an open grate.

"What niche does it (the Evo flattop) serve? For all the people that are buying this product and recognize this style of cooking, I think it kind of brings people back - to coin a phrase the slow food movement uses - it kind of brings people back to the simple material pleasures of sharing the creation of a meal together," Shingler said.

"You can stand around this grill and give your friend a spatula and you can cook together. You really can't do that on an open flame grill because of all the smoke associated with typical grilling," he said.

Shingler believes buyers of the Evo flattop will own a charcoal grill, too, but not a gas-fired one.

"There's nothing like the taste of a steak on a charcoal grill," he said. "I mean, for people who appreciate that flavor and that experience, charcoal is just a fabulous way to cook."

On the other hand, gas grills are difficult to clean, he said, so "you're cooking over kind of a regenerated smoke from last week's fish fry."

The Evo flattop, by comparison, is easy to clean and certified for restaurant use by the National Sanitation Foundation.

Evo makes its grills almost entirely from components manufactured by 14 Portland-area subcontractors. The commercial-quality gas valves are imported from Italy.

Evo offers three models of the cooker: the $2,495 standard model mounted on a triangular cart with wheels; a $1,997 model with short legs that's sold to caterers and restaurateurs for use on a banquet table; and a $1,997 model with no legs that's designed to be built into an outdoor kitchen, a popular feature of homes in the Southwest.

Shingler has ties to Eugene. He attended the University of Oregon and worked as manager of the Sirco computer store before leaving Eugene in 1982 to pursue a high-tech sales and marketing career in California.

Shingler got his inspiration for the Evo flattop grill from several sources - the decorative and functional wood stove that his mother occasionally used to cook meals at home in Monmouth, the French flattop stoves that are used in some restaurants, and from the grills used by Mongolian eateries.

"All these combined things just kind of culminated one day when I was out fly-fishing with a friend and started describing to him what I would like to have in a larger cast-iron skillet so I could cook larger meals," Shingler said.

Shingler worked on the design for the cooker in his garage over a period of 4 1/2 to 5 years, and then launched Evo in January 2000.

CAPTION(S):

Keith Ellis will demonstrate the Evo from noon to 2 p.m. today at the farmers' market at the Fifth Street Public Market. Chris Pietsch / The Register-Guard Keith Ellis cooks on the grill invented by Bob Shingler.