Identify each Vario module separately, because a single benchtop cut-out may hold induction glass, gas burners and a teppanyaki plate side by side, and the three need different products. Nothing abrasive touches any of them.
Gaggenau's Vario system is the thing that makes this cooktop different from every other in this series.
One cut-out, several appliances
Rather than a single hob, Vario lets separate modules sit side by side in one benchtop opening: an induction section, a gas section, a teppanyaki plate, a grill, sometimes a steamer or a downdraft extractor between them.
They look like one appliance and they are not. A cream cooktop cleaner that is correct on the induction glass is wrong on the teppanyaki plate. A scraper that belongs on glass will mark anodised trim. The gas section wants its trivets and caps soaked and the section beside it wants nothing of the sort.
So work module by module, deliberately, rather than treating the run as one surface. It is slower and it is the only way to avoid using the wrong thing on something expensive.
Nothing abrasive, anywhere
Gaggenau finishes are solid stainless and anodised metal, and they mark permanently. No cream cleanser, no scourer, no abrasive pad on any external surface or trim, and stainless worked along the grain rather than across it.
The teppanyaki plate specifically wants cleaning warm, when residue lifts with a scraper and water. Left to cool and harden it becomes the surface people attack, and it is a large flat area at eye level where any scratch pattern is permanently obvious.
The glass modules
Standard glass care, covered in our cooktop cleaning guide: cool, wipe loose material away, ceramic scraper at a shallow angle, cream cleaner, buffed off dry.
Downdraft modules, if you have one
Some Vario runs include a downdraft extractor between the cooking modules: a slot that rises out of the benchtop, or sits flush in it, pulling vapour sideways instead of using an overhead canopy.
It is easy to forget it is an extraction appliance at all, because it does not look like one. It carries a grease filter exactly as a Gaggenau canopy does, that filter loads exactly as any other filter loads, and the channel it sits in collects everything that runs off the cooking surfaces beside it.
Lift the filter, soak it flat, and clean the channel underneath. If your Gaggenau downdraft has never been opened, that is where the smell is coming from, not from the modules either side of it.
What actually goes wrong
A product carried from one module to the next.
A scratched teppanyaki plate, from an abrasive on a cold surface.
Swirl marks on anodised trim, which cannot be polished out.
Should you do it yourself?
Do it yourself for routine wiping, module by module.
Get someone in for anything set hard, and check they are insured, because the same risk calculation applies here as on the Gaggenau oven.