And they all moonlight as ninja assassins, of course.
I will say that in high-end restaurants, on the whole, knives are a rather bigger deal than they are in the West. But on the other hand, they're not generally much like knife nuts imagine.
Where the fetishization of Japanese chefs and knives has it all dead right is in the centrality of knives. Pots and pans are nothing, nobody cares. Big money is going into the dishes, which you hope will last more or less forever, but those aren't kitchen equipment as such. Hotpoints and equipment are fairly trivial, because they're really not used all that much by comparison to a Western line: remember, no saute station in Japanese cuisine.
I don't think it's really fair to Western chefs to say that they don't care about it. It's just that the Western chef's focus is rather more dispersed. I suppose you could say that if you take the Western chef's total interest in almost anything in the kitchen that isn't actually food, and focus just about all of it on knives, you have the traditional Japanese chef. Already probably 1000 years ago -- I mean that literally -- the chefs who cooked for elite households were commonly referred to as hochonin, or "knife-men." By the early 17th century, there was a definite distinction between hochonin and itamae, guys who stood "in front of the board." The former were well respected on the whole, the latter not so much. But notice how both terms are about cutting. That's what chefs are, in older Japanese thinking: guys who cut.
You know how "to cook" basically means to heat things up, or anyway that's sort of the first connotation? So in the West, a cook is basically principally associated with fire and heat, deep down. In Japan, it's cutting instead. That's both very different and not very much so: lord knows both all Western cuisines and Japanese cuisine are about a lot more than fire and knives. But there's a grain of truth in it. And I think that's much of why Western chefs test technique with things like omelets and Japanese ones do it with knife skills.
I will say that in high-end restaurants, on the whole, knives are a rather bigger deal than they are in the West. But on the other hand, they're not generally much like knife nuts imagine.
Where the fetishization of Japanese chefs and knives has it all dead right is in the centrality of knives. Pots and pans are nothing, nobody cares. Big money is going into the dishes, which you hope will last more or less forever, but those aren't kitchen equipment as such. Hotpoints and equipment are fairly trivial, because they're really not used all that much by comparison to a Western line: remember, no saute station in Japanese cuisine.
I don't think it's really fair to Western chefs to say that they don't care about it. It's just that the Western chef's focus is rather more dispersed. I suppose you could say that if you take the Western chef's total interest in almost anything in the kitchen that isn't actually food, and focus just about all of it on knives, you have the traditional Japanese chef. Already probably 1000 years ago -- I mean that literally -- the chefs who cooked for elite households were commonly referred to as hochonin, or "knife-men." By the early 17th century, there was a definite distinction between hochonin and itamae, guys who stood "in front of the board." The former were well respected on the whole, the latter not so much. But notice how both terms are about cutting. That's what chefs are, in older Japanese thinking: guys who cut.
You know how "to cook" basically means to heat things up, or anyway that's sort of the first connotation? So in the West, a cook is basically principally associated with fire and heat, deep down. In Japan, it's cutting instead. That's both very different and not very much so: lord knows both all Western cuisines and Japanese cuisine are about a lot more than fire and knives. But there's a grain of truth in it. And I think that's much of why Western chefs test technique with things like omelets and Japanese ones do it with knife skills.
