I have a 1940s house with solid timber benchtops, yes they take a little more care (no hot pans) but from what I hear stone counters stain easily anyway. The nice thing about wood is you can just sand it back and refinish and it will look amazing again. Large slabs are pretty expensive these days so when installing a kitchen downstairs we went with finger jointed timber, was cheaper than stone and slightly more expensive than engineered stone.

Aesthetically they're ugly but stainless steel is probably the best in terms of cost, ease of maintenance and cleaning