Professional cooks use a ton of stuff, and not all of it would be what they choose at home.
Carbon steel is great, requires a little upkeep, but part of what makes it great is how it works with a really high heat source; the stoves in a restaurant behave very differently than your home one.
An extreme case of this is woks. There is very little you can do at home to reproduce the effect of an 80k BTU burner and a carbon steel wok.
I agree, 15k BTU is not 80k, but with a little patience on preheating (I don't have waiting customers) I still enjoy working in the wok I own. Also, it is not a restaurant sized wok, but for flash frying chopped food, or getting a nice quick sear, it works great.
Carbon steel is great, requires a little upkeep, but part of what makes it great is how it works with a really high heat source; the stoves in a restaurant behave very differently than your home one.
An extreme case of this is woks. There is very little you can do at home to reproduce the effect of an 80k BTU burner and a carbon steel wok.