Manu Chandra on travelling around the world in search of the best knives

It was a Misono 440, a hyper-chrome Japanese stainless steel Gyuto chef’s knife, and it took months of savings from odd campus jobs that barely paid $8 dollars an hour. Teaching English to South Korean students, working banquet service, slowly putting together the grand sum of $120. A sum I could not ask my folks for since the culinary school in New York City had already issued us a large set of standard, slightly clunky knives, and that, in theory, was that.

My friend Jasmine drove me to a knife store a mile up on Route 9 in New York on a heavily snowed out afternoon in 2001. I stood over the glass cases filled with shimmering steel, each knife a small dream and most out of reach. My knife skills were already good. I had beaten the entire class in a speed cutting and precision challenge. But the heavy handled German-style knives we were issued felt difficult to manoeuvre and even harder to sharpen.

This was the first real treat I had given myself. The UX10, also a Misono but made with Swedish stainless steel, a dream, but at $350, it was firmly out of reach. I did buy it a couple of years later with my first proper paycheck, and it still holds the same value today.

On one trip to Tokyo, a cook from my team and I travelled across the city on our only free day after an intense culinary competition to visit the knife markets in Minato City. We found a shop that Anthony Bourdain had once visited, which seemed to amuse the elderly shopkeeper.

He disappeared into the back for a moment, then returned with knives from the display cases the way a sommelier chooses bottles. Not asking what we wanted, simply knowing.

I bought a beautiful paring knife with a wooden sheath that holds its edge longer than it has any right to. We had to take a taxi back to the hotel because it was too late for nearly four train changes that the trip demanded. The taxi cost six times the price of the knife. No regrets.

Several years earlier in Parma, Italy, I found Righi, a fourth-generation knife forger on Strada della Repubblica, which became my place for a proper education in the craft of blades. I was there with a famous pasta company to help promote good pasta in India.

The shop felt untouched by time. An old man and his son ran it together. The son almost always had several bandages across his fingers. In the evenings their granddaughter, perhaps eight years old, would carefully rearrange spoons and small objects in the display window of the coltelleria that had opened in 1941.

I bought a few utility knives and some pasta equipment there. They pressed small gifts on me simply for stopping by and staying to talk.

Berlin offered a very different experience. I walked beneath the overhead rail lines in near darkness, occasionally fending off very enthusiastic vendors insisting I sample their goods. Eventually I reached a large night market and after several excellent German gins, I came across a tiny stall run by an elderly couple who spoke no English. They sold knives of unusual shapes.

On impulse I bought a backward bending blade that looks almost like a small scythe. I still have no idea what its purpose is. It now lives in the bottom drawer of my kitchen along with many other knives waiting patiently to be used.

That drawer holds blades from many cities, some engraved with my name. One of my largest splurges sits there as well, bought nearly 15 years after that first Misono, and once again with Jasmine beside me. A limited edition Shun Kramer hand-forged and presented in its own wooden stand. It cost $900. Jasmine watched me staring at it and simply said, go ahead. You are never going to change.

Something happens when a knife truly fits your hand. For a moment the prep list, the noise, and the heat of service fall away. A good knife makes you a better cook. A great one reminds you why you became one.

I always encourage cooks to own and care for their knives. In India many cooks understandably rely on company issued knives that are rarely very good. When they do earn well, the first purchase is often a new phone instead.

I have never been fond of cameras. I prefer living the experience rather than collecting images I know I will rarely revisit.

These knives become my travel stories. They are small pieces of the places and crafts that I bring home with me.

Some days I open that drawer just to look. The strange blade from Berlin still waits without purpose. The Tokyo paring knife rests among others from Japanese markets like Kappabashi. The Shun Kramer stands almost too beautiful to use, and maybe the UX10, seemingly in perfect condition, may make a comeback to the chopping blocks at Lupa.

Each knife represents a version of me I recognise. Restless, curious, more interested in craft than postcards. The drawer is chaotic if I am honest.

But it is the most accurate biography I have.

Manu Chandra is the founder-partner of Manu Chandra Enterprise that owns the restaurant Lupa in Bengaluru and the catering company Single Thread.