We have an almost brand new Imperial chicken grill, which is similar we had before, but it's probably 10% cooler than the old one. The old one was about 10% cooler than I would have preferred, so now I'd say it's 20% low on BTUs for my taste. It can't be fixed, it just isn't designed to be hot enough. It's one of those huge ones like they have at El Pollo Loco, and it's a great temperature for roasting chicken, but probably nothing else. The heat is about 10" below the grill and the height is not adjustable. I am a little conflicted because it's great for chicken, and we will either have to buy a new smaller grill and put them side by side, or buy a broiler with two heat zones and cook everything together. This is the grill we currently have
http://www.imperialrange.com/nproductpage.php?id=477
I can see how it's hotter than hell trying to pull something out of the broiler. The grill pulls out of the front, but I'm sure it's still difficult to get in the back. On the other hand, reaching over the top of a grill all night is difficult, and they say that almost all the heat produced by a broiler is flushed out the back. The place I usually eat out on my night off uses a infrared broiler and their steaks are very, very good. Far superior to anything I could produce with a hotter grill, frying pan, oven, salamander etc. etc. Marbled beef that's all crusty on the outside is a beautiful thing.
I think the choice will come down to Montague overfired broiler, a new underfired radiant broiler with a slanted cooking grate so that we have a hotter area to use, or a combination of both. Both would be best, but if I squeeze both in our available space the underfired grill would have to be only 24" wide, and because those don't heat very evenly on the edges I think the usable area would be pretty small. I just realized that the Jade infrared broiler is $20K, so that's probably out of the question, but the radiant broilers I've seen are still about four times hotter than what we have.
The restaurant is busy. If it costs $12K and the food is significantly better, the cost is not a big deal, but with limited space we can't have every toy we want, and although I can spend money I can't afford to screw up.