A Vogue Food Writer Takes a Stab at Finding the Perfect Chef’s Knife
Here is a roster of the knives I own: a ten-inch Wüsthof bought fifteen years ago after a knife-skills class, where I was tricked into believing that extremely large knives are easier to use than small ones; assorted paring knives bought for €9 a pop at markets in France; a heavy, pricey bread knife; a boning knife sharpened to resemble a prison shiv; an eight-inch Global santoku, which I don’t remember buying; and an eight-inch Togiharu, the house brand of the famed Japanese knife store Korin, which was a gift from my brother.
My collection puts me far outside the perimeter of knife geekdom. But several months ago a mild obsession struck. I had just inherited my late father’s set of hunting knives: Bowie knives and fishing knives, survival knives, hand-forged Bedouin knives. Gazing on this menacing array, I found myself wondering, What makes a perfect knife?
It’s not a question I’d considered before, despite being a former culinary professional—a cook. And as any cook will tell you, a knife is an extension of your arm. It determines whether things go well or poorly: A good one holds its edge and turns tasks like brunoise-ing or filleting into mere trifles. Hardened cooks who close flesh wounds with superglue buff their knives with shammies and swaddle them in organic bunting. Chef Russell Moore, of Oakland’s Camino, sharpens his knives 20 minutes a day. I once heard him cooing to them.
I turned to a few good books to review the basics. In A Modern Guide to Knifemaking, by Laura Zerra (best known for her tenures on Naked and Afraid and Naked and Afraid XL), I was reminded that knives are generally made of steel. Steel, in case you have forgotten, is iron plus carbon and can be alloyed with dozens of things for hardness, resiliency, resistance to stain, and so on. David Boye’s 1977 classic Step-by-Step Knifemaking: You Can Do It! offers seventeen informative and incomprehensible pages on the anatomy of different steel alloys. More practical knowledge resides in the mind of Josh Donald, owner of the Bay Area’s cult knife shop Bernal Cutlery and author of a handsome new volume titled Sharp. Over the phone, Donald resolved a vital matter for me: the differences between high-carbon steel and stainless steel. At Chez Panisse, where I once cooked, everyone’s knives were carbon steel, just as everyone’s knife bags were handmade from natural-dyed muslin. But carbon steel stains unless you are obsessive about washing and drying and applying special unguents. Stainless, on the other hand, can withstand neglect. In essence, Donald explained, high–carbon steel knives get sharp and stay that way. Stainless steel has long had a reputation for losing a fine edge quickly. But apparently this is outdated. Newer, stronger, sharper stainless steels have been invented, and careful heat treatment of steel can give stainless the wondrous properties of carbon. Donald also explained that too much ado is made over whether knives are full tang (meaning the steel of the blade goes all the way through the handle) or partial tang (meaning it doesn’t). This is a straw man. Japanese knifemakers often think it’s a waste to use high-quality steel all the way through a knife’s handle, so they don’t do it. Western knifemakers think of it as a sign of quality and durability, so they do.
I had learned a good deal—not least what a gorgeous anthropological kaleidoscope is the universe of knifecraft! Where else do survivalists commingle with Japanese craftsmen, back-to-the-landers, and urban entrepreneurs?
I felt ready for the fine details, the advanced course, the . . . geekiness. I placed a call to Korin, the Japanese knife shop in Tribeca worshipped by New York chefs. Japanese knives are widely regarded as the best in the world, and Korin was known to have a “knife master” on staff, who I hoped could be my Virgil.
When someone answered, I asked, in a reverent whisper, to speak to the master. But Marie, the pleasant woman on the other end of the line, pretended to have a hard time hearing me. I tried again. “Is the master Chiharu Sugai available to discourse?” We went back and forth in such witty raillery until Marie explained that Master Chiharu-san had retired.
Who, then, would teach me? There was a new master, she reluctantly admitted. He was named Vincent. But I could not speak or write to Vincent. I was directed to send a proposed meeting schedule instead.
I decided to try my luck in person. As it happened, Providence smiled on me. The following day, as I stood in the Korin showroom brandishing a $2,300 sushi knife made by a nearly 150-year-old company called Masamoto, I glimpsed an unassuming man of middling height with a shag haircut and thick glasses. He had a subtly authoritative air. Could it be? The master, Vincent! He apologized nimbly. (“I teach a lot of classes.”) He gently relieved me of my fish slicer and asked what I wanted to know.
The history and characteristics of Japanese knives, of course! The master proceeded with a charitable show-and-tell. For most of history there were four traditional Japanese knives: a deba, for fish butchery; the nakiri and usuba, for vegetables; and yanagi, for slicing raw fish. There was no “chef’s knife” in Japan until the Meiji Restoration (1870s), when previously forbidden red meat entered the Japanese diet. (I learned, returning to Josh Donald’s Sharp, that gyuto, the Japanese word for “chef’s knife,” means “cow sword.”) The popular santoku—“three virtues”—is a similar mash-up invention. The exquisite traditional knives Vincent showed me were sharpened on one side—called a “single bevel.” (Gyutos are usually sharpened asymmetrically, with a sharper angle on one side of the blade, and German and French knives are sharpened to the same angle on both sides.) Was one of those traditional four, perhaps, the perfect knife? Unlikely, said Vincent, though not in those words. Unless one is doing traditional kaiseki or sushi preparation, either a gyuto or its Western equivalent is more practical.
What about knife sharpeners? Never ask a knife master this question. The answer, once Vincent had composed himself, was: It is nearly impossible for “pull-through sharpeners” to sharpen a knife’s true edge. They simply wear away at the steel. Buy sharpening stones and watch Korin’s videos on how to use them, or send Vincent your knives once a year, and for $15 each he will sit at a low bench and sweep them against a series of stones until they have edges like diamonds.
I had come to a decisive moment. Which knife, I asked, did I need? “That depends on you.” Was this some sort of master’s riddle? No! Vincent meant that I should subject knives to my own tests. So I returned home and spent several days acquiring enough culinary cutlery to outfit a reenactment of an Iron Age skirmish.
The knife start-up Misen, which, along with several other new companies, offers high-quality steel knives for about half the price of Korin’s mid-range knives, shows the company’s founder slicing full plastic bottles of water in half like an ancient samurai. Gramercy Tavern’s chef, Michael Anthony, advised that I embark on more practical trials: Slice and dice a Korean pickle; do some basic butchery; thinly carve seared meat. I decided on an oi-sobagi recipe involving delicately scoring cucumbers and then julienning an eternity of carrots and scallions; plus, I would prepare a large Moulard duck breast, a rib eye, and a number of chickens. Mac’s MTH-80 chefs’ knives ($175) were impregnably sharp and comfortable to hold. Miyabi’s chef’s knife, with its birchwood handle ($230), had a beautifully fine edge. Two Zwillings held their own. An Aura knife ($745), whose design I would call neo-medieval, was impeccable at julienning but almost bounced off crisp duck skin. Conversely, a flexible Sabatier cuisine massive ($125) could barely cut a scallion but sliced duck breast and steak like a skiff through flat water. Direct-to-consumer companies Material and Misen, both of which use state-of-the-art steel ($75, $65), were impressive: inexpensive and exacting.
A number of domestic knives from small cultish manufacturers ranged from truly excellent to perfectly good but very beautiful. A $4,200 handmade Maumasi Fire Arts knife shredded whatever crossed its path with barely a touch on its Indonesian amboyna burl handle. A $1,000 chef’s knife from BloodRoot Blades, and other handmade knives from Nora Knives & Cutlery and NHB KnifeWorks and Nafzger Forge ($250–$400), were sharp and, most of all, pleasurably personal to use. But Vincent had assured me I could get as good a knife as I could ever need for under $150. So for this particular quest, I set them aside.
The next morning, I rose with the sun and purchased a five-pound bag of potatoes and another of onions. I then dug into a dusty countertop corner for my secret weapons and truest tests: a menacingly hard loaf of stale bread and a butternut squash.
I promptly chipped a Yoshikane SLD Wa-Santoku Suminagashi Enju Double Horn ($424)—borrowed from Donald—on the squash. The Zwillings held steady. The affordable Material and Misen knives managed. I wondered if any knife would distinguish itself. Then one slid through a large Idaho potato as through heavy cream. It turned squash into pudding. It was a Swedish stainless-steel santoku made by Ashi Hamono, a small company in Sakai, Japan. It cost $225, but at this point its feats seemed unlikely to be matched.
And then they were. By a plain-looking knife, with a barely discernible convexity behind its edge and an unusually fine, perfectly consistent asymmetrical bevel. A look through my notes revealed that it was a Tojiro R-2 powder-steel knife, among the hardest and toughest used in knifemaking. It costs $148 and, as far as I can tell, can do anything.
(P.S.: Nenohi, a tiny Japanese company, where each knife is handmade by a master craftsman, lent me a traditional deba [$950] and yanagi [$1,400]. They were so beautiful I could not bring myself to use them until late one night when I finally cooked four previously neglected chickens. The deba’s blade effectually atomized the chicken bones. Guests rose from their seats to watch. I have never seen a knife so strong or sharp. If I ever have to break many bones at once and want to do it in style, the Nenohi blue-steel #2 Kasumi Ai-Deba, ideally forged by Yoshikazu Ikeda, is the only knife for me.)
