I’m going to be sending my Migoto Cutlery Mini Cleaver to a couple friends / KKF members for a few weeks in GTA as I’m preoccupied with some other matters and won’t be able to enjoy using it myself. I’d consider them to be quite well-versed with cleavers (they even helped design/spec some cleavers for a “brand” I won’t mention), so am interested to hear their thoughts on the mini cleaver!
I’d share my thoughts, but I can’t articulate them nearly as well as @toishigram did on Instagram – I agree 100% and couldn’t say it better:
toishigram @migoto_cutlery mini cleaver hitting it out of the park. Tall but thin without being in the slightest way effete or flimsy. Mini cleavers can be a tricky little niche between traditionally smaller nakiri and bigger chukabocho cleavers as they can sometimes miss on both fronts and lose what’s good about the smaller form of a nakiri and the bigger form of a chucka bocho and leave you stranded in no man’s land. This knife somehow inverts that dilemma and captures what’s good about both, namely the nimbleness and thin edge of a nakiri and the height and authority through the cut of a cleaver. Veg prep feels like cheating. Onto specifics for the nerds - this knife is the slightly tougher blue 2 as forged by master Yoshikazu Tanaka so the quality and pedigree is beyond reproach and if you ask Migoto nicely, Lee will put one of his vicious edges on for you if you ever wanted to know what a real edge feels like. Also worth mentioning - Lee somehow found a wormhole in the space time continuum and got this delivered from Aus to NZ in 18hrs .