Calphalon Contemporary 5-Inch Santoku Knife

 (25 customer reviews)

I always just used the flimsy cheap 5" knives that were given to us prior to this purchase. This was my first "nice" piece of cutlery. The difference is amazing. Chopping vegetables takes half the time that it used to with the cheaper knives. I particularly like the heavier feel of the santoku over other specialty knives I have used in the past. If you are looking for a general purpose knife to handle your daily chopping needs, I would highly recommend purchasing this.

We have used this knife regularly since we bought it about 9 months ago. It handles wells and is comfortable to use. The blade maintained it's sharpness every time we honed the knife. We took good care of the knife as we had hoped to keep it for a long time, Stored it properly, cleaned it after every use, never dropped it before, etc. In general, we really enjoyed using this knife while we had it

However, just yesterday, while we were doing the dishes, the knife was accidentally knocked off the counter. Our initial fear was that we ruined the tip. When we picked it up, the knife was split in half between the blade and the handle. We were incredibly surprised because the knife was made with one continuous piece of metal from the blade and through the handle. Apparently the metal at the tip of the handle had rusted through (even though we dried the knife before storing it). We wonder how long the knife would have lasted even if we hadn't dropped it.

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Personally: the 5-inch blade is perfect for my soft vegetable (e.g., tomatoes) food-prep operations, because it allows me closeness to the work and precise leverage of my hand and arm to perform slicing.

Objectively: Like a straight-razor, any fine/thin bladed cutting tool loses its edge of sharpness very quickly (This is normal; please do not cast aspersions upon the instrument.). If You cannot abide frequently, lightly sharpening its edge, then the Santoku Knife is not for You. Before becoming a Computer Science Professional, I was a Licensed Barber; keeping the edges of my straight razors in hair-splitting condition was a pride to me and a pleasure to my patrons.