Misen Chef’s Knife, from Kenji’s review on Serious Eats. The knife is now available at a nice discount on Amazon.
A kind reader corrected our use of “walla” to convey “there you have it” when executing a culinary tour de force. The correct spelling/usage is “voila” and of course we know that. We use walla in solidarity with all the home cooks who employ this phonetic rendition on Facebook etc. to convey their excitement about a dish. Also, did you know that “walla” is actually a technical term in motion picture sound to describe background crowd noise? You didn’t? Now who’s the charlatan in this scenario?*
Walla is the perfect term to introduce this article, which exposes the dark/mischievous side of culinary icon/gadfly Kenji Lopez-Alt. Called “The 18 Knives Kenji’s Collected Over the Years”, it describes each knife with its origin story. Some may say 18 is way too many: you have a favorite chef’s knife, paring knife, a flexible boning knife, a bread knife… so what are all these other knives? Well, with a couple exceptions they are products you can buy at a link in the article. Kenji is delivering clickbait, in other words.
We are in general big Kenji fans and have followed him since his early days on Serious Eats. His writing combines the scientific precision of Harold McGee with the passion of an enthusiastic home cook. We love how he breaks a recipe down into steps, each of which can be performed in different ways with varying results he is happy to share before announcing the best way at the end. But he doesn’t always use his superpowers for good, as when he took us in a wild misdirection during our search for the secret recipe for Halal Guys white sauce. [Update: the Reddit entry has been edited and is not as egregious as it used to be.]
And our question about this article is… what happened to the Misen Chef’s knife, which Kenji called “the holy grail of inexpensive chef’s knives. Incredible quality and design, high-end materials, perfect balance, and a razor-sharp edge”? That review (or an earlier version, since this one is dated June 2023) caused us to try Misen knives after a satisfactory experience with their skillets. And we’re glad we did and now have 2 Misen chef’s knives and a paring knife in daily use while our heavier Victorinox sits idle in the block. (By the way, Misen products like the chef’s knife and skillets are now available on Amazon [affiliate link!] at a substantial discount plus you don’t pay for shipping if you’re a Prime member.)
I don’t want to think that Misen was omitted from the more recent roundup because they didn’t pay up for a link. But, walla, the evidence is there.
*Bonus points if you recognize this quote from A Bug’s Life, one of the greatest movies ever made. And why was there not a Bug’s Life 2?
Does Kenji López-Alt has much to do with his endlessly recycled content on SE?
That article. Updated by SE or ? Was Misen “…omitted from the more recent roundup because they didn’t pay up for a link….) ? Yep.
Viola is a musical instrument. Walla describes an occupation in Indian/Desi terms, I think…. A techwalla is a technician. In this comment I am a cutandpastewalla. Ob food: A Dabbawala delivers lunch boxes.
I should have noted the “walla” or “wallah” reference from various Bollywood movies. On the other hand will reject any plays on words involving misspellings such as viola.