Winco CSFP-9 Polished Carbon Steel French Style Fry Pan 9-1/2"

This is a decent pan. It's thick enough and should last a long time. Its size matches the listed diameter. It hasn't warped for me even under high heat use. The surface is pretty smooth. The handle is painted metal and is kind of long, which helps keep the end cool enough to grab even when the pan is hot. But if you keep the pan on the heat long enough (longer than you typically would frying something), the entire handle will become too hot to touch. I had imagined the reason for having a metal handle was to be able to put this pan in the oven or under a broiler. But the paint on the handle will melt at as low as 400 F! It doesn't start dripping off the handle, but it will become deformed by anything hot and hard that touches the handle. So if you season your pan in the oven, do it right-side up, not up-side down, so that the handle doesn't rest against your oven rack and get the paint deformed. If I grabbed a hot pan from the oven by its handle, I'm not sure if the paint would come off on the oven mitt or not. Given that the paint is not actually heat-proof, I wonder why they couldn't just put a silicone grip on the handle. The pan comes coated in a clear varnish, to prevent rusting. You'll want to remove that varnish before you season your pan and use it for the first time. The included instructions said to heat water to boiling in the pan and then scrub it clean, but that did NOT do anything to remove the varnish. I scrubbed it clean with a Scotch-Brite green scouring pad and isopropyl alcohol, and that did remove the varnish. You'll know it's off when the pan starts rusting before your very eyes. Seasoning a pan is a whole complicated subject unto itself. In my experience, it's no replacement for teflon, but it can create a sort of nonstick coating that works well enough with some types of foods and oils.