I have no issue with the beautiful tile in my kitchen. Yea, we have occasionally dropped something and it broke (like a glass), but it probably would have done the same in my last kitchen, which had hard wood floors. I liked those, too. At first, we questioned the wisdom of hardwood in the kitchen, but it worked. I have hardwood in my kitchen eating area and dining room now, but tile in the cooking area/entry way. My feet don't hurt, either, and I do cook. We did look into cork, but at that time we just couldn't spend the $.
And +1 on getting the best dishwasher you can. The one we got for the remodel, well after 3 years the top rack disintegrated, fell, and broke about half of our glassware that was in there! The same thing started happening again, so we got a Bosch a few months ago and I like it a lot.
I love stainless. Yes, splatters show, but just a quick wipe with the stainless cleaner after each meal does it. Same with the granite cleaner.