Sharpening

 Our main mission is to put sharper, better knives in the hands of Sacramento’s cooks and chefs. Years of professional experience has taught us that sharper knives lead directly to more enjoyment in the kitchen, and a better relationship with your tools makes cooking less like work and more like play. It’s simple- sharp knives are a joy to work with, and dull knives are a drag.

 Knives are not all the same, and require different approaches to sharpening. The way you should sharpen a butcher’s knife is not the way you sharpen a sushi chef’s. A Japanese knife is very different than a German knife. The hardness of and type of steel, the grind, the sharpening angles... All different. Most knife sharpening businesses take a one size fits all approach, using high powered and aggressive machines geared towards doing the work as quickly as possible, with little regard for performance or the length of the life of your knife. Powered grinding can cause heat to transfer into the steel, potentially damaging the temper of the knife and affecting its ability to hold a good edge in the first place. This is not “thoughtful” knife sharpening, and is in many cases downright destructive.

 We offer what we think of as thoughtful knife sharpening. We prefer to do most of the work by hand, on traditional Japanese whetstones, but when we do employ other methods, we do so carefully and thoughtfully in order to keep the performance and life of your tools at their best. Our approach takes your knife’s individual needs, as well as your own, into account.