So is the consensus "high-carbon" over a "carbon-stainless" for high quality kitchen knives?
Bearing in mind that this is not your average home-cooking forum, we probably should have asked what YOU consider "high quality", beyond your original requirements. One man's trash is another man's treasure, as the saying goes. My Wusthof Grand Prix knife set, which I considered treasure when I bought it, meets all of your stated requirements although the manufacturer
still recommends hand washing those knives. The fit-and-finish on them is unsurpassed. The steel, while rather soft by Japanese standards, is of excellent quality and quite stain resistant. The designs are classic European geometry. Most people would consider them high quality knives, and rightly so. And it may be all you need.
However, you have wandered out onto one of the fringes of cooking, where people obsess over knives to a degree that most people would find excessive. Welcome to the world of Knife Geekdom.
Here, the standards are not quite the same. Edge keenness and retention are the priorities, here, and some people here love caring for and sharpening their knives more than using them. After all, you only use a knife for a few minutes a day in a home kitchen, so all the fussing let's you spend more time with your knives. And Japanese steel manufacturers are now the leading developers of so-called "super steels", as you've seen, and all of those are carbon steels. So, most of the recommendations you'd normally get here would be for Japanese hand-crafted knives, but they almost always come with wooden handles and most of them use some (or all) carbon steel. They are fantastic knives, but not everyone needs or can even appreciate the qualities that make them the ultimate geek knives.
