Originally Posted by Gibby
I am learning a lot here.

My birthday is next month. My wife and kids are already asking what I want. I want a good Japanese (15 +/- degree) chefs knife. But I would like a 7" size instead of 8" for the same reasons mentioned previously. Plus easier I think for my wife to use. It seems that the choices are limited from my research. Any ideas?
I would like to keep it under $250.00 if possible.

Gibby;
Good evening to you sir, I trust this finds you well and you all kept cool enough.

As you can sorta see from the photos, we try a few different brands of knives at our place - and our daughter and her husband have a few more different one too.

They've got a Kai santoku which is about the size of our Mcusta in the photo and they've also got a smaller MAC Santoku with the Granton relief slices like our Victorinox 7" Santoku - 5th knife down on the right in the kitchen knife photo.

One thing I've always watched is when there's a bunch of folks at a get together doing food prep - say Thanksgiving or Christmas - is what knife folks will gravitate towards. Hands down at our place the 7" Santoku gets grabbed first. So much so that our youngest who has a good German made Henkels 8" Santoku asked for a Victorinox 7" Santoku for her birthday this year.

She articulated that it's lighter in hand, thinner blade makes cutting easier and just makes for less work overall.

Our eldest daughter likes her MAC for the same reason.

The Victorinox is way under your budget - Amazon link here. https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Fibrox-Santoku-Knife-Granton/dp/B008M5U1WM

I believe this is the same knife as the eldest's MAC - https://www.macknife.com/collection...-series-8-chefs-knife-with-dimples-th-80

Honestly it makes for good conversation sometimes to talk to new guests who are a bit taken aback with the knife selection at our place, but if forced to choose between the Mcusta and the Victorinox, I'd take the Victorinox every time and yes I can buy 4 or 5 of them for what I've got into the Mcusta.

Anyway sir, I hope that was some use or interest to you or someone out there tonight. Happy birthday in advance and all the best to you folks this summer.

Dwayne

The most important stuff in life isn't "stuff"