Show me your knives and I'll tell you what kind of chef you are.
I'm not joking. You can learn more about someone in ten seconds of looking at their roll than in a whole trial shift. Not from what they've spent — from how they've kept them.
What you actually need
Starting out, it's simpler than people think. Four knives and a couple of bits:
A chef knife. The one that does eighty per cent of the work. A bread knife. A petty knife for the fine stuff. A tomato knife — the small serrated one, and if you've never used one properly you're missing out. Then a good peeler, a pen and a Sharpie.
That's the foundation. The rest builds over time — your saucing spoons, your tweezers, a mandolin, the fish tweezers you'll definitely lose twice. Those matter just as much once you've got them; ask any chef to lend you their favourite spoon and watch their face. But the four knives are where you start, and they're what you'll carry from job to job for the rest of your career.
Japanese or Western — the question everyone trips on
This is the one that slips most people up, and everyone will give you a different answer.
I'd go Japanese. Quality of material, craftsmanship, and edge retention that nothing else touches. A well-made Japanese knife holds its edge through a service that would have a Western blade dragging by the second hour. That difference compounds over a career.
Mine are Sakai Takayuki, both in Damascus steel. I've had them over ten years and they're still in my case. If I'm honest about what drew me in at the time, it was the pattern — that rippled Damascus finish caught my eye before I knew anything about steel hardness or bevel angles. But they've earned their place since, many times over.
The counter-argument is real, though. Japanese blades are harder, which means they hold an edge better and chip more easily. Drop one, or use it on a bone, or leave it in a sink, and you'll know about it. They ask more of you. If you're the kind of chef who throws everything in a tub at the end of service, buy Western and save yourself the heartbreak.
You don't have to spend a fortune
Here's the bit that gets lost in all the knife-nerd talk: expensive doesn't mean better for you.
My bread knife is a Victorinox. I've had it since 2015. It cost a fraction of what my Sakais did and it has never once let me down. A serrated edge doing serrated work doesn't need Damascus steel — it needs to be sharp, well-shaped and reliable, and that one is all three.
Spend where it matters. Your chef knife is the one you'll hold for hours a day, so that's worth investing in. The rest can be good, solid, unglamorous kit that does its job.
How you keep them is the real tell
Knives are meant to be used. Anyone who keeps a pristine, never-touched blade in a case isn't cooking. But used isn't the same as neglected, and the goal is keeping them as good as they can possibly be while they work for a living.
No rust. No dents. Clean, always — washed and dried by hand, never left sitting, never in the machine. And sharpened often.
That last one isn't just about performance. A sharp blade is safer than a blunt one. A blunt knife slides off what you're cutting and into your hand. A sharp one goes where you point it. Every cut I've seen in a kitchen from a dull blade was avoidable.
Sharpening — do it properly
Whetstones. Always have been, always will be.
I learned the way most of us did: some very strange technique early on, a lot of YouTube, and — more valuable than either — good mentors who took the time to show me. If you've got someone in your kitchen who knows what they're doing with a stone, ask them. Ten minutes of someone correcting your angle beats ten hours of watching videos.
I keep a honing rod with me at all times, which is a different job — it straightens the edge between sharpenings, it doesn't create one. And once in a while I still send my knives out for professional sharpening. Not because I can't do it, but because someone with proper equipment will bring them back to a standard I can then maintain. There's no shame in that.
So what do your knives say about you?
The chef with three battered knives, all razor sharp, is someone who knows what they're doing and doesn't need to prove it.
The one with a full roll of expensive blades and a dull chef knife is someone who bought an identity rather than built one.
Rust tells you everything. So does a blade that's been sharpened at the wrong angle for years — it means nobody ever showed them, and they never asked.
None of it's about money. It's about care. And a chef who takes care of the things they're responsible for tends to take care of everything else too — their section, their team, their food.
That's the whole tell.
Stefano Camplone is a chef and the founder of Edit Studio London, making sustainable workwear for professional kitchens. He writes From the Pass, a weekly newsletter for chefs — kitchen news, industry stories and one thing worth your time, every Thursday at 7am. Join here.
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