10/14 - The Four Most Useful Knives And Where To Buy Them
And Jay-Z picks the wrong robotic pizza truck
From the website:
-In the second installment of Ryan’s Reviews, our resident restaurant reviewer – whose name is Ryan – reviewed Lucien in the East Village. Famous people eat there. Ryan also eats there. The fries were cold. Read the full review here.
-Cousin Nell, who moonlights as RA’s chief coolness officer, completed her dissertation on the self-thrown-birthday-party. Read it here
Jay-Z Picks The Wrong Robot Pizza Truck Venture:
Stellar Pizza, a company placing pizza making robots into delivery trucks, raised $16.5 million in a funding round backed by Jay-Z’s Marcy Venture Partners. The actual pizza looks exactly like what it is: a soulless aggregation of optimized components. A pie from Stellar Pizza evokes the same uncanny horror as a Stepford Wives automaton – it’s so perfect it’s foul.
If I’m getting robot truck pizza, I want it to be cheap, appropriately shitty, and made in the back of a 2022 IIHS Top Safety Pick. I want the Tundra Pie Pro. In short, Tundra Pie Pro is Spotify; Stellar Pizza is Tidal.
The Four Most Useful Knives And Where To Buy Each For Under $100:
As always, start with the basics:
I love a 7Cr17MoV workhorse that has a real deal bowie styled tip designed to handle aggressive prep. Unsurprisingly, the marketing for Guy Fieri’s “Knuckle Sandwich Knife” reads like a commercial for a Ford F-150 that swept JD Power and his associates right off their feet. While that is badass, please - please - never buy a knife that is this desperate for attention.
Some general advice: when buying a knife, boring is best. Avoid celebrity endorsements and anything that looks like a Game of Thrones murder weapon. Those knives are not necessarily bad, they’re just overpriced.
A good knife is a knife you feel comfortable with. That is the only criteria. What typically creates comfort? In my eyes – it's a knife that holds its edge (stays sharp for a long time) and feels sturdy in your hand. You don’t need to spend much to find a knife that does both.
To cook well, it helps to have good knives and it helps to have the right knives. In a perfect world, your knives are both: good and right. So let’s make that happen. Here are the four most useful knives and where to buy them for under $100:
Chef’s Knife:
The workhorse! A chef’s knife isn’t just the most useful knife, it’s the most useful piece of equipment in a kitchen. Dice an onion, trim a turkey, slice a finger off - a chef’s knife will do it all. Because it’s so important, the chef’s knife is a hotbed for predatory kitchen brands. We’re looking at you, Guy!
Luckily, Misen sells a no-frills chef’s knife with a great blade and even better handle for only $75. Every time I use one, I realize how silly I was to spend nearly three times as much on a chef’s knife that isn’t half as good. If you’re looking to revamp your knife collection, start here.
Serrated Knife:
Cut loaves, bagels, and - especially - tomatoes with this. A halfway decent serrated knife will do its job for years. You can’t sharpen a serrated, so it’s best to buy one that has some longevity. Still, even the best, most expensive serrated knife will lose its edge. General rule: anything more than $50 is a waste of money.
Serrated knives with an offset handle look cooler and work better (the blade reaches the board before your hand). I have this one from F. Dick. It’s $40 and it’s perfect.
Japanese Vegetable Knife:
A good vegetable knife makes chopping garlic something to look forward to. The vegetable knife has a certain ease to it – it just feels good in your hand. Although it looks like a butcher’s knife, the slightly thinner blade of a vegetable knife is designed to cut – but not crack – any vegetable that might appear on your cutting board.
I have this 6.5 Inch Japanese Vegetable Knife from Mac. I love it. It’s the knife I use the most. It’s $99, but you’ll have it for life.
Oyster Knife:
$8 on Amazon. No one needs one until they need one, and then you wish you had one. Buy the knife, spend $40 on two dozen oysters from a fish market, watch a YouTube tutorial, and teach yourself how to shuck oysters. You’ll be more useful and much cooler.
These are the knives I use now and these are the knives I used as a line cook. What you don’t see are paring knives, “utility” knives, boning knives, or anything in between. Sure, there’s a time and a place where those make sense – but unless you’re cooking professionally, you’d be hard pressed to find yourself in a situation where you really need a utility knife.
If you have these four knives, you’ll be prepared for 99% of home cooking situations. That’s a great place to start from.
As always thank you for reading. This is only getting more fun. Love each and every one of you. Have a great weekend.