Kamikoto knives must be stopped!

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Frugal Utilitarian Church of Kamikoto, has a nice ring to it. They must have an Evangelical Regiment.
 
ian said:
To be fair, it’s a little too much to say that someone is unable to evaluate Kamikoto knives without having experience with the top tier knives you list. They are not the correct comparison. One should be listing knives in the $80-$150 range, e.g. asking how they compare to a Tojiro DP, a Gesshin Stainless, or something... I mean, a Kamikoto set of three knives is $260 on amazon.

+1 to all the complaints about the business practices, though, of course.
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I'm not comparing Kamikoto to these knives. I'm identifying a level of experience that I would like to see from a member before their review has sufficient credibility with me.
 
On another forum a few folks acquired the Kamikoto set either out of gross ignorance or a curiosity as to whether their "crap-meter" was accurate. Consensus amongst both these types of buyers was essentially that the Kamikotos made German stainless look very good, in every way imaginable. I personally don't bother wondering whether their were folks so poorly arranged in their parts as to buy the set at $1400, or have ever felt that my own crap-meter needs any testing here.

What's to really get a chuckle out of is that even the pictures on their website made the knives look like crap.
 
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From the experience sharpening customer's Kamikoto the nakiri, yanagi and parer sets of 3

- the handle is super heavy and all three is unbalanced. Even the parer handle is sooo unbalance.

- they design as a single bevel but no ura/flat only surface and theres a secondary bevel on both side. I end up sharpening them as asymmetrical 90/10 knife. Some micro bevel on the flat side

- it has ugly factory mill finish above the secondary bevel on the shinogi surface and they still claim it was hand forge

- the steel just like cheap stainless. It takes good edge after sharpen but no idea about the edge retention since i already given back to customer

conclusion: hmmmm.......
 
loqman026 said:
From the experience sharpening customer's Kamikoto the nakiri, yanagi and parer sets of 3

- the handle is super heavy and all three is unbalanced. Even the parer handle is sooo unbalance.

- they design as a single bevel but no ura/flat only surface and theres a secondary bevel on both side. I end up sharpening them as asymmetrical 90/10 knife. Some micro bevel on the flat side

- it has ugly factory mill finish above the secondary bevel on the shinogi surface and they still claim it was hand forge

- the steel just like cheap stainless. It takes good edge after sharpen but no idea about the edge retention since i already given back to customer

conclusion: hmmmm.......
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Cheap stainless has no edge retention. The edge will roll pretty quickly after use. However, most home cooks won't care, so for someone used to $5 knives, this one probably seems okay.
 
Cyrilix said:
Cheap stainless has no edge retention. The edge will roll pretty quickly after use. However, most home cooks won't care, so for someone used to $5 knives, this one probably seems okay.
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that's so true. when it seems to have decent handle design and a wooden box with cert, its a premium knife!!
 
Was trying to quote but guess i messed up disregard post.
 
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playero said:
Rachel sold tons of knives with her program
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dwalker said:
And she didn't have to lie to do it.
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True story.

Racheal did not know squat about knife technique when she started her first Food Channel "show". They sent her to knife school.

Wusthof supplied her and most of other "chefs" with knives in the beginning when funds were sparse.

After enjoying some success, Racheal went to Wusthof and told them she wanted to be paid (a lot) to use Wusthof products.

(As a side note she helped popularize the Wustie 6 inch santoku - as a rocker)

She launched her own line of Racheals Really ****** Knives.
 
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Jville said:
Not sure what exactly you are trying to say or infer. Perhaps, you are simply just stating info?
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Yes. Just sharing some experience after sharpening them as it was sent to me. While not everyone get to hold the knife themselves. Nothing special to say about the knife
 
For INVESTORS in a business, all that matters is that their investment are making them sufficient profits.

Not product aesthetics or higher than the minimum needed to be salable levels of quality, let alone a rigorous pursuit of perfection for its own sake.

Who OWNS Kamikoto? Who owns Cutco? (The businesses, not these brands of "knife shaped objects")
 
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Cyrilix said:
Cheap stainless has no edge retention. The edge will roll pretty quickly after use. However, most home cooks won't care, so for someone used to $5 knives, this one probably seems okay.
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Maybe just semantic, but typical German stainless steel is not necessarily cheaper than typical carbon used in Japanese knives. It's just chosen and heattreated in a way to withstand maximum abuse :) could be easily hardened a lot higher too. Sorry for ot
 
Eloh said:
Maybe just semantic, but typical German stainless steel is not necessarily cheaper than typical carbon used in Japanese knives. It's just chosen and heattreated in a way to withstand maximum abuse :) could be easily hardened a lot higher too. Sorry for ot
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Even German steel has variations in hardness. I think the ones that are 57-58 are respectable. The cheap stainless tends to be even softer. At the end of the day, heat treated for abuse means poor enthusiast performance. It may mean better mass market performance, but that's not my metric. I care about how fine my edge can become and how long it lasts with proper use, not how much I can bash it against the wall and have it not chip.
 
jmacie said:
I own some of these knives. I like them. They were recommended by a James Beard awarded friend. If your opinion of any knife is based on only secondhand info from people that have never owned one, then you have a possibility of being mistaken. Since I own some, and LIKE them, that's all that's necessary for ME. I defend them because I can. I don't ridicule for the sake/fun of it
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Being recommended by someone with a James Beard award means nothing. Being a professional chef doesn't give you some innate knowledge of knives. I've sharpened a few Kamikoto (not mine) and they're universally trash. Like was mentioned above, they market as single bevel knives but have no or ill-defined ura. The ones I sharpened were severely bent at the base of the spine, likely due to a weak-spot from the welding. During sharpening it was like rubbing an eraser on my stones. Harder stones like Debado SNE or Shapton Glass didn't feel quite as bad but it was instant, thick mud and massive dishing on the Cerax 1000 that I tried it on. I would recommend Kiwi, Chicago Cutlery, Ikea, Farberware or quite literally anything else over these.
 
Eloh said:
Maybe just semantic, but typical German stainless steel is not necessarily cheaper than typical carbon used in Japanese knives. It's just chosen and heattreated in a way to withstand maximum abuse
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I think there is a lot to be said in favour of German knives for an average household. If I'm after a knife that works better than the cheap stamped supermarket ones, but I'm not a knife geek, a German knife is a really good answer. It's tough, easy to sharpen, can take a lot of abuse, and cuts well enough to delight most people who are not knife experts. It doesn't rust, not even if it sits wet on the cutting board for hours.

Below is a picture of my 18 cm Wüsthof chef's knife. That knife is over thirty years old. It has been used thousands of times. It's been dropped dozens of times. It's been through the dishwasher a few hundred times. (That was before I knew better.)

A Wüsthof will handle the dishwasher just fine. The blade and the scales don't even notice. I stopped putting Wüsthofs into the dishwasher once I noticed that, over time, the detergent etches out the rivets. So, on that chef's knife of mine, the rivets are now recessed maybe a tenth of a millimetre, and not as shiny as they were originally. But, if "well meaning" guests help clean up and put the thing into the dishwasher, it's no big deal.

I still like using that knife, especially when there are bones around, or hard seeds and the like. I don't have to worry about chipping, and I can get that knife razor sharp. Sure, it doesn't hold its edge quite as long as a knife made from harder steel. But it doesn't mind getting abused either. And a hone will keep it sharp for a surprisingly long time.

For an average household looking to upgrade without going all out into Japanese steels, this is a fine option.
IMG_2797.JPG
 
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Barclid said:
Being recommended by someone with a James Beard award means nothing. Being a professional chef doesn't give you some innate knowledge of knives. I've sharpened a few Kamikoto (not mine) and they're universally trash. Like was mentioned above, they market as single bevel knives but have no or ill-defined ura. The ones I sharpened were severely bent at the base of the spine, likely due to a weak-spot from the welding. During sharpening it was like rubbing an eraser on my stones. Harder stones like Debado SNE or Shapton Glass didn't feel quite as bad but it was instant, thick mud and massive dishing on the Cerax 1000 that I tried it on. I would recommend Kiwi, Chicago Cutlery, Ikea, Farberware or quite literally anything else over these.
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Wait, if there was such a thing as innate knife knowledge (there isn’t but anyway) being a chef should neither add nor subtract from that knowledge. I guess you mean that being a chef does not entail being a knife expert. That seems true. Despite this being so, it is not unreasonable to regard professional chefs as (at least potentially) good assessors and advicers of kitchen knives. Sure, there are others with authority - not the least sharpeners, blacksmiths, vendors, enthusiasts etc. If I would take a guess, it wouldn’t surprise me if the answer to ’which knives are good/the best’ or at least ’best value for money’ varied a lot from category to category.
Cannot say who I would trust. Like finding out for myself.

Re Kamikoto, no experience, no idea, but given the bad press here, I will not rush to buy one (but that doesn’t mean much in itself).
 
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Chefs should know about sharpening? Yeah, they SHOULD.

I have cooked in 3 different restaurant kitchens.

I met only 3 other people out of ALL the kitchen workers I knew who could do any sharpening whatsoever. Most line chefs and prep chefs I met didn't even know how to use a steel, those cooks largely got by on house knives which were either serrated or dull as a hoe.

I had to keep MY OWN knives out of the other staffs reach or they would dammage them being stupid.
 
This.

Kitchen pros are not much more likely to know or own decent knives than civilians. And like civilians most don't know squat about sharpening.

But the ones that do know, do own, do sharpen, can be considered to have some expertise.
 
Bert2368 said:
Chefs should know about sharpening? Yeah, they SHOULD.

I have cooked in 3 different restaurant kitchens.

I met only 3 other people out of ALL the kitchen workers I knew who could do any sharpening whatsoever. Most line chefs and prep chefs I met didn't even know how to use a steel, those cooks largely got by on house knives which were either serrated or dull as a hoe.

I had to keep MY OWN knives out of the other staffs reach or they would dammage them being stupid.
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Not disputing that at all. In the kitchens I worked chefs generally had no clue about sharpening. I can only come to think of one guy who even owned a pair of stones (I wouldn’t know if he knew how to use them).
 
Chefs/‘cooks’ by and large are no better at knowing how well a knife works compared to a non ‘professional’ in my experience. The amount of cooks I’ve worked with that were equal parts poor in both technique(be it general knife skills, maintenance etc), and understanding of what makes a knife work well is far more than the ones on the other side of that equation sadly. Granted it’s just my experience, but I’ve had and seen enough conversations on this topic to be able to state with some surety that slapping a ‘Chef Approved’ sticker on a knife is complete and utter ********.
 
Makes sense to me. I only cook at home, but I have to say that my cooking isn't much better now than when I only used Shuns that I had sharpened at a local shop once a year. (Or rather, my skills are significantly better now, but it's because I'm older, not because of the knew knife knowledge.) Sometimes the knife obsession even makes me a worse cook. "Ok, the dish is now perfectly balanced, but I really want to chop another onion. Couldn't hurt to put one more in." Maybe the precision of my current cuts adds a bit of something to the dishes I make, but I doubt anyone could really tell...
 
brainsausage said:
Chefs/‘cooks’ by and large are no better at knowing how well a knife works compared to a non ‘professional’ in my experience. The amount of cooks I’ve worked with that were equal parts poor in both technique(be it general knife skills, maintenance etc), and understanding of what makes a knife work well is far more than the ones on the other side of that equation sadly. Granted it’s just my experience, but I’ve had and seen enough conversations on this topic to be able to state with some surety that slapping a ‘Chef Approved’ sticker on a knife is complete and utter ********.
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Ah, OK! My experience is the exact opposite. But, coming to think of it, I have mostly been in high end kitchens working with very skilled chefs. They are not a representative sample.

I guess it comes down to who to trust. I have no answer.
 
ian said:
Makes sense to me. I only cook at home, but I have to say that my cooking isn't much better now than when I only used Shuns that I had sharpened at a local shop once a year. (Or rather, my skills are significantly better now, but it's because I'm older, not because of the knew knife knowledge.) Sometimes the knife obsession even makes me a worse cook. "Ok, the dish is now perfectly balanced, but I really want to chop another onion. Couldn't hurt to put one more in." Maybe the precision of my current cuts adds a bit of something to the dishes I make, but I doubt anyone could really tell...
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This appeared to be an interesting observation but I didn’t get the opening ’Makes sense to me’. What do you refer to, what makes sense?
 
Carl Kotte said:
This appeared to be an interesting observation but I didn’t get the opening ’Makes sense to me’. What do you refer to, what makes sense?
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I just meant that there’s not necessarily a strong correlation between knife obsession and culinary skills, past the basics of how to use a knife competently, so it makes sense to me that there are many professionals who get by just fine with mediocre knives and without learning how to sharpen.
 
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