I'm not a chef, I'm not a cook, I'm just a regular person who likes to cook occasionally. My closest encounter to "professional grade" knives prior to starting a collection around January 2011 was probably when my old roommate tried to sell me Cutco knives. I wasn't impressed with Cutco, but that's a different matter altogether. Fast forward several years later, I've always used one of those $20 block knife sets from Walmart and figured those were good enough for me until my parents bought me a set of "professional knives" from QVC or HSN. Those knives did impress me quite a bit, but it ended up that these were generic, stamped, made from China kitchen knives. After about a month's usage, they dulled down to the sharpness of the back of a butter knife. Doing research on knives, I found that the best knives are forged and in regards to regions, great knives come from Europe, but the best knives come from Japan. I've not ever used a Japanese knife, but the general consensus from several chef & culinary forums say that mass produced European & American knives don't hold an edge or are as sharp as a Japanese knife. Regardless of which pro knife you choose, they are all expensive. One good Chef's knife costs the price of 3-4 times more than a generic knife set. Because of the price, I ended up never buying one for myself and just put a knife set on my wedding registry and left it at that. As mentioned previously, I started my kitchen knife collection around December of 2011. Most of my knives are Wusthof Knives that I've purchased myself or got from my wedding registry. Here are some of them: Wusthof Le Cordon Bleu 6 inch Cooks Chef Knife Wusthof Le Cordon Bleu 8 inch Carving Knife While I'm pleasantly pleased with those knives, I always wanted to own a Japanese knife just to see the difference. The problem is Japanese knives, regardless of who makes them (Shun, Global, MAC Pro) are crazy expensive... Plus since I'm not a professional, there's little reason for me to own another knife of the same type (even cook's knives - I own an 8" and a 10"). I just never could convince myself to drop several Benjamins on one until Amazon put this gem of a knife on as a Lightning Deal. Paring knives are typically cheaper and the price on this knife at the time was a steal. While Shun isn't considered the best Japanese knife among popular Chef forums, it is still a Japanese knife made from high quality steel and the fact that all Shun knives have a very cool look to them is just icing on the cake. As for performance, it's a paring knife that is incredibly sharp... sharper than any of my Wusthofs and there's a reason for that. European/American knives are made of softer steel than their Japanese counterparts. Softer steel translates to the facts that you use these knives, the edges tend to "crush" and "bend". An advantage to this is that the use of honing rods regularly can come back to relative good sharpness. The downside to softer steel means that they can only be sharpened to a certain edge sharpness and can never be "thin" or as sharp as Japanese knives. Japanese knives (Shun included) are made with harder steel. Harder steel means you can have a sharper, polished edge because these edges are less likely to bend. The downside is that rather than bending, they are prone to chip or break. Occasional bad reviews of Japanese knives on Amazon complain about the knife chipping. This is because the owner probably tried to cut or mishandled the knife. With that said, I love my Shun paring knife. Having recently expanded my Japanese knife collection, I can honestly say that the Japanese knives are sharper than my Wusthofs. Not to say I don't like my Wusthofs but next time you see a chance to get a Japanese knife at an affordable price, I would advise you to jump on it.
