NKD: Watanabe Pro 180mm nakiri (review in comments)
Posted Feb 2, 2019, 10:27 PM UTC
4120
Shinichi is bae.
and that nakkiri is baller, i have one and its amazing. /review
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Shout out to the Tojiro bread slicer. <3
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Seconded.
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Yeah, it's an incredible knife for the price.
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Oval handle? How did you decide between that and the D-shaped? How do you like the handle choice in comparison to your other knives you have pictured?
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I have both oval and d-shaped handles on 2 different Watanabe Pro knives. Both of the handles are comfortable to use and I would have no problem accepting one or the other. The one on the nakiri is oval shaped and it's a soft ho wood that easily absorbs water. I like both of these handles better than the typical Western handles.
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Awesome. Good to know. Thank you!
I think I’ll go with oval as well then since it looks like I can’t go wrong.
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Yeah, I got the oval, mostly because I have some left-handed family. Honestly, my pinch grip is aggressive enough that the handle geometry doesn't matter a lot--I only have a couple of fingers touching the handle anyway.
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The handle on my Anryu gyuto is oval and I love it. I have heard octagonal is better for grip, but have had no slippage issues with my predominantly pinch grip.
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What’s the long blade second from the left?
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Assuming you mean "second from the right", that's a cheap slicer I use when I smoke brisket. It's... adequate, now that I've given it some attention with my stones, but with what I know now I wouldn't buy it again or recommend it.
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Ugh, sorry I meant second from right. I’m in need of a new brisket slicer and it looked the goods, was just curious.
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I thought the pro line was clean not ku, I have the ku gyuto 240. Pretty great overall work horse
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The gyuto and suji are polished finish, the nakiri is kurouchi.
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Huh, interesting. I know my buddy got a clean nakiri/polished. Google doesn't help lol, I just didn't know
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I've seen someone get a polished nakiri as well, but I think that's a custom ask. I'm not sure if the grind changes with different finishes.
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I'll have to ask my buddy, I know he ordered it with a custom handle, and I also could be wrong about the finish on second thought. The deba he got was for sure grinder/polished bevel.
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After getting my Makoto Ryusei 240mm gyuto a few weeks ago, I caught knife fever! The Makoto is miles ahead of the Victorinox Forschner I was using before, but it has enough belly that it struggles a bit with chopping large bundles of vegetables, so I figured a nakiri should be the next addition to the family.
After reading lots of discussion here, I settled on the famous Watanabe Pro nakiri, which is sold directly by Shinichi Watanabe from his forge in Niigata. Shinichi-san is very responsive to email and shipped my knife quickly, getting it my hands in the eastern US five days after I first contacted him. CONUS shipping added JPY3100 to his posted price.
The knife is fantastic in the kitchen--it flies through thick carrots and celery but also does very well on thin herbs and greens. I did see some wedging when cutting through whole large onions, but I expect this would happen with any tall nakiri. The OOTB edge is excellent.
The front of the blade is rounded quite a bit, so the knife isn't great for tip work like prepping mushrooms, but that's why I have a gyuto! There's a large flat spot at the heel, as expected. Interestingly, the line of the blade tilts up slightly relative to the line of the handle, but this ends up feeling very natural on the board.
Compared to my gyuto, the knife feels pretty heavy, even though it actually weighs a bit less. This is probably down to the thicker grind and blade-forward balancing. (The balance point on mine is about 5cm forward of the ferrule, around the middle character of the chiseled signature.) Where my gyuto feels like a scalpel in my hand, this knife feels a bit more like an axe (in a good way!).
Fit and finish are also very good. The lacquered kuroichi finish on the faces is extremely smooth. There's a tiny bit of roughness on the choil, but not enough to bother my hands; I'm sure it could be sanded off if needed. The ho wood handle and buffalo ferrule are flush, with no noticeable gap or step. The Blue #2 steel at the edge is already showing some nice blueish patina after just a couple of meal preps--much faster than the AS in my gyuto.
So that's my new knife! Time to go finish prepping this chowder :)
Looks like you got in before Watanabe's 15% price increase to his entire pro line coming up on March 1st. I got this nakiri a little more than a month ago and it is the highest performing knife in my kitchen when it comes to vegetables by quite a noticeable margin. It will wedge on taller product because it gets reasonably hefty at 30mm+ in height but unless you go for a flimsier laser nakiri, that's the trade-off. It still feels like a laser on anything that isn't really tall and dense, and that's really most of what I cut.
That said, I could imagine getting a specific knife just for tall and dense product...
Hadn't heard of the impending price increase, but I'm glad I got in when I did!