EDIBLE ARTISANS: SECRET WEAPON

Knife sharpeners are some of the most valued,
yet seldom sung heroes of our local culinary world

At your service:
Top: Sean Joseph, Bottom: Craig Chadwick and Terry Beach

BY PATRICE VECCHIONE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PATRICK TREGENZA

The solo electric guitar a young man is playing at the Old Monterey Marketplace Farmers’ Market on Alvarado Street on a late Tuesday afternoon sounds like a dull knife against a hard surface. But this doesn’t distract knife sharpener Sean Joseph. Standing in front of his portable knife maker’s belt grinder, Joseph is focused on bringing back the sharp edges of actual restaurant and household knives. Almost dancing, his entire body moves back and forth with grace as he sharpens blade after blade.

No matter how digitized our culture has become, no matter the distance much of life may take us away from practical, hands-on activities, the knife remains one of our most basic tools. Could we get through a single day without having a hand on at least one? For chefs, knives are especially critical.

“A sharp knife is the most important tool in your kitchen—next to your hands,” says Mo L’Esperance, who until this past summer was the chef at Santa Cruz’s Suda restaurant, and is now at The Lodge at Tiburon in Marin County. But unless knives are sharpened, the more we use them, the duller they become.

Knife sharpening is a very old trade, an essential skill since knives were first developed. Prehistoric people invented a method for sharpening stone knives at least 75,000 years ago. Moletas, Italian knife sharpeners, arrived in the United States in the late 1880s. They could be found on city street corners wearing their floppy hats, sharpening knives with pedal-operated grinding wheels.

After sharpening a knife, Joseph performs what he calls “the threefinger” test to determine if it’s sharp. He lightly touches the blade with his fingers, causing me to shiver and look away. “If the knife is truly sharp, my fingers will feel the edge bite into the pads and prevent me from moving them anymore,” he says.

When Joseph was a child, his father owned a restaurant and he sharpened his own knives. When Joseph was old enough his father trained him to take over that task. Joseph initially chose construction for his own profession, and did not turn to knife sharpening until about five years ago, when he met a chef who was looking for someone to do the job. Recognizing a business opportunity, Joseph started his Monterey Peninsula-based business, Blade Tech, and he’s been busy ever since.

Most of Joseph’s business comes from the roughly 60 chefs and 200 cooks for whom he regularly sharpens knives, often right in their restaurant kitchens. His client list reads like a who’s who of some of the best restaurants in the region, including Basil, Bernardus Lodge & Spa’s Lucia, La Balena and the InterContinental’s C Restaurant. But like his colleagues in the small and gregarious community of knife sharpers in the Monterey Bay area, Joseph keeps a booth at area farmers’ markets—in Carmel Valley as well as Monterey, where he enjoys getting to meet all kinds of home cooks and professional chefs in need of a sharpening.

At the Alvarado Street market, I watch as person after person comes up to say hello. Joseph greets them all. “How’s the baby?” he asks one woman. “That’s what I like about the market,” Joseph says, “the people.”

In the first half hour, seven people drop off their knives. When a chef from Lallapalooza comes back to pick up the knives that he’d left earlier, he runs his finger delicately along one blade, smiling, pays what’s due, and adds a nice-sized tip.

At this rate, Joseph will be quite busy till the market closes. This is a bustling trade not only for him but for the next two knife sharpeners I meet, Craig Chadwick and Terry Beech.

At the Friday Monterey Bay Certified Farmers’ Market at Monterey Peninsula College, Chadwick sets up his Restoration Edge Sharpening Service stall long before the bell clangs to welcome shoppers. Though he’s happy to chat as he finishes sharpening knives for those who’ll pick them up today, his focus is primarily on the work before him. This sharpener who mostly takes care of home cooks’ knives tells me, “Hey, I’m enjoying myself and making money at the same time! It’s an opportunity to meet people, and I like to yak.”

Chadwick works this market and others in Scotts Valley and at the Carmel Barnyard during spring and summer. He also shares the Cabrillo College market with the last tradesman I meet, Terry Beech, founder of Sharp Quick.

The godfather of the local farmers’ market knife sharpening booths, Beech is the first of the group who began sharpening locally and working the markets.

His wife Patti gave him the idea, knowing this work would be perfect for him. Beech likes that his craft is in the spirit of recycling and reuse, and he thinks knives should be well cared for, like family heirlooms, “so you can leave them to your children.”

As is true for the others, Beech came to knife sharpening as a second career, and both Joseph and Chadwick tip their hats to Beech for his generosity in helping them get set up at the markets. (Beech still does three of them, Downtown Santa Cruz and Felton as well as the Cabrillo market he shares with Chadwick.)

The Cabrillo Market is swarming with shoppers ogling the goods, though it doesn’t even open for another hour. Beech is a popular guy; one after another people drop off their knives, and though I wonder how he’ll get all this work done by closing time, he is as calm as can be. “It’s all muscle memory,” Beech tells me. In addition to cooking knives, he takes care of gardening tools, hunting knives, woodworking tools and scissors. More than 40 local chefs rely on his services.

One home cook brings her knives to Beech, and before dropping them off, says, “I have a sharpening stone at home, but I don’t use it because I’m afraid of ruining my knives. Better to bring them to Terry.”

Curious about why the three area sharpeners are all men, I put the question to Beech, and he replies, “It’s a macho thing. But knife sharpening requires no human strength. I’ve trained two women recently. It’s all about finesse, and who has more finesse than women?”

Just as I’m about to say goodbye, a mother and young daughter come up and lay their knives down on his table. The little girl looks with wide eyes at Beech and announces, “We’re bringing you our knives so we don’t cut our fingers off!”

Beech smiles and contentedly continues with his work.

HOW IT’S DONE

All of the sharpeners say it’s important to know how a chef likes his or her knives and to be careful to keep the blade edge they prefer. Their methods and equipment may be different but they each take absolute pride in their work.

When starting up his Tormek sharpener, Beech says, “Let’s go, baby, let’s go!”

Both Chadwick and Beech use water-cooled sharpening systems with leather honing wheels to polish the blade edge “to a degree,” Chadwick tells me, “of 6,000 grit.”

For the final part of the process, polishing and putting the final edge on the knife, both Chadwick and Beech use a honing wheel, while Joseph prefers to do the process by hand, first with a Japanese water stone and then a strop—a long leather-wrapped block of wood to which he applies a polishing compound.

Holding one end against his torso and the other end out in front of him with his hand, Joseph runs the blade along its length. The knife takes on a brilliant sheen.

Before watching this magic in action—and before watching other home cooks deliver their knives to the knife sharpeners as if dropping off their prized possessions—I’d not thought much about the knifesharpening trade.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve used a barely effective, metal and plastic gizmo for my own kitchen knives. But no longer will I stand at my kitchen counter cursing dullness.

These artisans—Joseph, Chadwick and Beech—have made a convert of me. Now I too will join the other market-goers and stand in line to sheepishly unpack my unseemly blades, knowing how much happier sharp knives will make my time in the kitchen.

Monterey artist and writer Patrice Vecchione’s latest book is Step into Nature: Nurturing Imagination and Spirit in Everyday Life. For more, go to www.patricevecchione.com.

MORE ONLINE: See web version of this article for additional sidebar, “Chefs and their Knives,” at www.ediblemontereybay.com.

BLADE TECH’S SEAN JOSEPH ON
KNIFE CARE FOR HOME COOKS

• Learn the correct way to use a honing rod—preferably ceramic. They’re the easiest way to maintain a knife’s edge between sharpening. (Joseph offers honing rod demos at farmers’ markets.)
• Do your cutting on wood or soft plastic cutting boards. Avoid metal, stone, glass and ceramic cutting boards at all costs. A surface that is too hard will dull your knives faster than anything else.
• Never put your knife in the dishwasher, especially if you paid a lot of money for it.
• Don’t take your knife to a butcher shop because butcher knives are sharpened differently than chefs’ knives.
• Stay away from cheap pull-through knife sharpeners.
• Take a knife-skills class. Nothing can make you feel more comfortable with your knives than a lesson on how to properly handle them.
• By keeping your knives sharp and practicing safe cutting techniques, you will greatly reduce your chances of injury in the kitchen.

LOCAL BLADE MASTERS

Blade Tech/Sean Joseph
831.917.1330
bladetechusa.com

Farmers’ markets: Su 10am–3pm, Carmel Valley and Tu 4–8pm, Old Monterey Marketplace on Alvarado Street. Also 1st W of the month, noon–5pm, Earthbound Farm’s Farmstand and 2nd Th of the month, 1–5pm, Wharf Marketplace.

Restoration Edge Sharpening Service/Craig Chadwick
831.535.9932
restorationedgesharpening.com

Farmers’ markets: Tu 9am–1pm, Carmel Barnyard; W 2– 4:30pm, Scotts Valley; F 11am–2pm, Monterey Peninsula College and alternating Sa, 8am–noon, Cabrillo College.

Sharp Quick/Terry Beech
831.345.4380
sharpquick.com

Farmers’ markets: Tu 2:30–6:30pm, Felton; W 1:30–6:30pm, Downtown Santa Cruz and alternating Sa, 8am–noon, Cabrillo College. Also M 2–5:30pm, Santa Cruz Whole Foods; Tu 9:30am–12:30pm, Capitola New Leaf and F 12:30–5:30pm, Westside New Leaf.

CHEFS AND THEIR KNIVES

Long before any diners arrive, chef Brandon Miller welcomes me into Carmel’s Mundaka so I can get a firsthand glimpse of his knives.

First he unwraps his bundle of blades. Miller introduces me to his arsenal that include a chef’s knife—an all-purpose knife, also called a French knife—a slicing cleaver, a boning knife, a long straight filet knife that’s used for fish, a large Japanese Santoku knife, a scimitar—a curved butchering knife that’s good for sausage making—and, of course, there’s a paring knife. His favorite knife is one he got from Beech. It’s made by New West KnifeWorks out of the same kind of surgical steel used for hip replacements.

Many chefs have a favorite brand and type of knife, and when they need a new knife, that’s the one they’ll purchase.

Chefs also tend to have intimate relationships with their knives—more than one professional chef has told me, “Blindfolded, I could pick up a knife and know if it was mine.”

Some chefs sharpen their own knives, but it’s common for them to use a professional for the job.

“I have a stone but I don’t use it much. I used to sharpen my own knives but not anymore,” Miller tells me. “I don’t have the time. There are only so many things you can do well.”