I recently received these four project knives I'd bought off BST. They're not massively fancy, just decent quality, workhorse-y, stainless numbers, built to withstand the rigours of a professional kitchen.
Nevertheless I was surprised they didn't sell relatively quickly, because they weren't expensive, and the bottom two in particular are really quite interesting. I got these from @minibatataman, who was an absolute pleasure to deal with, and until recently a chef at quite a smart restaurant in the Netherlands. The two wooden handled knives - Professional Sabatier and F Dick - were given to him by his head chef, who in turned had been handed them down by his previous head chef, Paul Bocuse. Now perhaps a lot of people don't know who that is, so here's a quick history rundown...
Bocuse was probably the most important and influential chef of the c.20th. At the time of his death in 2018 he had held three Michelin stars at his Lyonnais restaurant L'Auberge du Pont de Collognes consistently for 53 years, which is still by some distance the record for any individual.
He was also the originator and leading exponent of what became known as La Nouvelle Cuisine. To call it a 'culinary movement' would be something of an understatement; pretty much every dish in every fancy restaurant in the world, and much of what people cook at home too, owes considerable amounts to the revolutionary ideas of New Cooking. It's basically impossible to overstate Bocuse's impact on the way that we in the west eat today. Having a Sabatier that once belonged to him is like having one of Escoffier's Sabs.
Maybe it's only me that finds that quite cool and interesting, but anyway - hopefully I can do it justice, doesn't look too difficult does it?
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The handle needs some love, and the profile is a little peculiar, with a heavily upswept tip almost more like an Opinel than a Sab. But no problem, because it's also slightly tipped and if I fix that just by removing material from the spine then it will automatically lower the tip and correct the profile. I'll also probably want to thin it a bit, correct the finger guard, and get the scratches on the blade face out. All very easy. Will take less than an hour to have this knife looking great and performing excellently.
Or at least it would have, but there was something else which I didn't clock originally...
Eeeeep!
[TBC]
Nevertheless I was surprised they didn't sell relatively quickly, because they weren't expensive, and the bottom two in particular are really quite interesting. I got these from @minibatataman, who was an absolute pleasure to deal with, and until recently a chef at quite a smart restaurant in the Netherlands. The two wooden handled knives - Professional Sabatier and F Dick - were given to him by his head chef, who in turned had been handed them down by his previous head chef, Paul Bocuse. Now perhaps a lot of people don't know who that is, so here's a quick history rundown...
Bocuse was probably the most important and influential chef of the c.20th. At the time of his death in 2018 he had held three Michelin stars at his Lyonnais restaurant L'Auberge du Pont de Collognes consistently for 53 years, which is still by some distance the record for any individual.
He was also the originator and leading exponent of what became known as La Nouvelle Cuisine. To call it a 'culinary movement' would be something of an understatement; pretty much every dish in every fancy restaurant in the world, and much of what people cook at home too, owes considerable amounts to the revolutionary ideas of New Cooking. It's basically impossible to overstate Bocuse's impact on the way that we in the west eat today. Having a Sabatier that once belonged to him is like having one of Escoffier's Sabs.
Maybe it's only me that finds that quite cool and interesting, but anyway - hopefully I can do it justice, doesn't look too difficult does it?
---
The handle needs some love, and the profile is a little peculiar, with a heavily upswept tip almost more like an Opinel than a Sab. But no problem, because it's also slightly tipped and if I fix that just by removing material from the spine then it will automatically lower the tip and correct the profile. I'll also probably want to thin it a bit, correct the finger guard, and get the scratches on the blade face out. All very easy. Will take less than an hour to have this knife looking great and performing excellently.
Or at least it would have, but there was something else which I didn't clock originally...
Eeeeep!
[TBC]
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