Kevin Kent puts a sleek Japanese number in my hand the moment I walk through the door. He does this with every customer, because he knows that's where the addiction starts.
"Don't talk, just cut," he says, slivering a potato into papery slices, then micro-julienne strips, while launching into tangents about Japanese folded steel, the Rockwell hardness scale, Yanagiba versus Kaisaiki slicers, and the families of artisan knife makers who have been crafting these precision tools in Japan for centuries.
The beautiful Ohishi Tsuchime I'm wielding is sharper than anything I've ever used before.
I draw the blade effortlessly through a tomato, creating a perfect slice, then another. The knife is light, the stroke is smooth and silky - I'm hooked.
Sharp steel is Kevin Kent's calling and he's religiously spreading the word at his Calgary hamono-ya (knife shop), Knifewear. He's the city's - and possibly Canada's - great prophet of Japanese knives. This is the high-performance stuff: the kind of hand-crafted, precision blades that have morphed over centuries from samurai swords to kitchen tools (and range in price from about $75 to $1,000).
On knifeforums.com, the Web forum for "intelligent knife discussion," Mr. Kent has been called Canada's answer to Dave Martell, the revered sharpening expert in the world of high-calibre knives. His customers are no less admiring. Chef Justin Leboe, of Calgary's upscale Rush restaurant, says Mr. Kent's shop is equal to any he's seen in New York or Japan. He estimates the chefs in his kitchen own "20 or 30" knives purchased from Mr. Kent.
Mr. Kent was a chef, too, until his knife habit took hold.
The self-described culinary "idiot savant" studied at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology culinary program in Calgary, where he graduated as the top apprentice, despite an admittedly debauched college lifestyle. His cooking career took him from top restaurants in London (he was sous chef at St. John under nose-to-tail guru Fergus Henderson) to Calgary's River Café.
But his addiction to sharp soon eclipsed working behind the stoves.
"I met a Japanese knife maker in London and he turned me on to high performance knives," he says.
Back in Canada, Mr. Kent couldn't find a source of the Japanese "super blue steel" knives that he loved. So he began to import a few from his London mentor, hauling them around in a backpack and showing them to local chefs. Last year he hung up his whites to open this knife-lover's nirvana.
"I never tried Japanese knives until buying them from Kevin," says chef Paul Rogalski of Calgary's Rouge restaurant, "but I absolutely love them. He's passionate about these knives and they are all pieces of art, functional pieces of art."
The difference between Japanese and European knives is the steel - the former made with harder steel that can be sharpened to a finer edge that stays sharp longer. The trade-off is strength and durability. While never as sharp, softer steel is more flexible and less likely to break.
Still, knife enthusiasts are drawn to the pure precision that comes with sharper Japanese blades.
Many of Mr. Kent's Japanese knives are made of folded steel, a technique not unlike making puff pastry, which creates a rippled watermark pattern he describes as "waves striking the beach at moonlight." Others have carbon steel cores, sandwiched in stainless Damascus steel.
Mr. Kent tosses back his mop of jet black hair and lifts a handmade chef's knife reverentially from a shallow glass case lined with polished blades.
"I'm going to get a tattoo of this knife," he says, holding a large, hand-hammered Aogami steel blade created by Shosui Takeda, still blackened from the forge. "It's sharp and black and scary. I love it." He already sports a tattoo of a fish skeleton where a wedding band might be
With its striking red walls, graphic Japanese imagery and 15 metres of glass-topped cases displaying an impressive collection of knives from 25 Japanese artisan makers, Mr. Kent's hamono-ya is like a jewellery store for sharpened steel. Some customers who stumble upon the long, narrow store along the city's historic Inglewood shopping strip ask if it's a museum.
