Taking the latest British-made knife for a chop and a slice 🔪
Founded in 2018, Katto are a small company in London making knives by hand, focussing on individuality and celebrating craftsmanship. They asked me to give one of their knives a whirl so here we are. The ‘Nala’ Katto chef’s knife.
My day-to-day knife is a 22cm Victorinox Rosewood chef’s knife and I absolutely love it. It’s been solid for nearly ten years now and for about ÂŁ40 it has been an absolute trooper. But the enthusiast in me always does wonder how a more expensive knife would drive. And it’s a complex world where serious knives get real pricey real fast.
It comes in minimal but statement packaging and Katto endeavour to ‘speak to all customers’ which is a lovely personal touch which seems to be part of the company ethos. It arrived with that new knife caution of ‘shit… it’s really sharp’, so I tested it on a tomato — the bane of any chef’s knife — and it managed those wafer-slithers you see on those insanely-priced, high-maintenance blades. Good start.
Disclaimer: I’m just a cooking enthusiast, not a pro chef. Not gonna be doing heavy lifting on a 12-hour shift with the knife, just using it for routine home kitchen tasks like chopping, slicing, general cutting and the occasional butchery/misc. task. I’ll update this post in six months or so with long-term thoughts.
I like the design of it overall, it’s got a bit of je ne sais quoi, with santoku-esque burnished styling. I definitely prefer a flat handle rather than the rounded design of the Katto, but it’s not proven problematic to gripping or using the knife like I thought it might. What’s it been good at? Well it may well be because it’s still razor sharp, but for the last few weeks, I’ve grabbed it for every kitchen task going rather than my trusty Victorinox, which says a lot.
I’ve cooked a few things recently which had up to a kilo of veg in them, so a perfect test test drive for the Katto.
It’s made a particular mockery of blazing through herbs, with little to no bruising or smearing on the board. Totally solid and efficient on kitchen workhorse tasks like chopping onions, carrots, other veg, too. It’s a thinner blade (width), and relatively tall and completely inflexible, but I feel comfortable butchering meat, or using the tip for finer work. The site does somewhat ambiguously say ‘Asian-made blade’ which feels a little disingenuous (is that China?), but as an ‘enthusast-level’ cook, it doesn’t particularly bother me as much as it seems to others online. Those guys are tetchy.
The top edge of the blade is slightly mottled in a santoku-effect, so I do find there’s a little less annoying sticking of ingredients than my other chef’s knives. Makes it a tad easier to clean too, which is always nice. And I’ve gotta shout out for the free sharpening service which Katto provide. If there’s one thing you can do to enjoy your home kitchen prep experience a bit more it’s to keep your knife sharp, so there’s a huge intrinsic added value in that for me.
If you’re still just struggling along using a paring knife for everything in your kitchen, or looking to make your cooking a little easier and really step up your game, you could do a lot worse than choose Katto. If you’re gonna buy one size fits all/utility knife, get a chefs’ knife. And consider Katto in your search 🔪
Contact: https://katto.shop
Chef knife from ÂŁ100 / Santoku knife from ÂŁ110
* Disclaimer: Katto sent me a knife for free in return for this post and a link to their site. My policy on this here.
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