Another vote for the Lacanche. We have a Saulieu and it was the best kitchen decision we made in our remodel. I especially love the French top. You can do low simmers on it, or you can take the round center part out and pop in the wok ring, and it becomes a super high heat wok burner. The build quality is great but the technology is very simple, so repairs should not be complicated, if you ever need them. Their US office is also in NYC, so less shipping cost and easy access to parts for you. This is a range built to last a lifetime. And they are absolutely gorgeous, and will be the star feature of the kitchen.
One place that we saved some money was with the cabinets. We got ours from Green Demolitions. They buy high end cabinets being removed from homes for redos (usually when a new owner with different tastes moves in). They only buy stuff that is in ver good shape. You have to spend some time looking through plans to see what will fit in your kitchen, but we ended up getting a killer deal on solid wood cabinets, and they included a bunch of high end (Miele, Sub Zero, Viking) appliances like warming drawers, dishwasher, wine fridges, under counter fridge drawers, etc. in our package deal. That allowed us to go a bit higher end on the range and on the granite (Madagascar labradorite and Volga blue). I would estimate we saved $20-30k on cabinets (over using locally purchased semi-customs, not full customs) and got a number of appliances (some of which we love but would not have sprung for otherwise) as a bonus. Oh, and as the name implies, recycling perfectly good cabinets is a good environmental decision.
