# The Miyabi Kaizen



## ez13 (Mar 9, 2012)

I had a credit at Sur La Table and decided to use it on an addition to my knife roll. I am a working Chef in NYC and knife snobbery can run quite high in most kitchens. I had a solid set up already and decided to use the credit on a Shun Nakiri ( I needed a new nakiri and Shuns are slightly acceptable in the eyes of NYC kitchen knife elite as long as they aren't Ken Onions). As the woman was going through the boxes to find the Nakiri she pulled out the Miyabi Kaizen and for some reason it caught my eye. Its a beautiful knife, fits in the hand great and was damn sharp out the box. I knew nothing about the Kaizen Line, knew Miyabi, Henkels owned, Morimoto, the Birchwood one was nice but their damn logo is hideous. I remember working in a high quality restaurant and seeing the head chef pull out a Birchwood Miyabi and thinking what the hell is this guy doing with that joke knife. This may make me sound like a snob but dont tell me the reason people buy expensive Japanese Knives or Kramers, Ealy's, etc... along with quality is the writing on blade, the demascus pattern, wa handle or some visual shit about the knife and the Miyabi logo & crappy font look like a design on the back of one of the outfits in the final tournament in The Karate Kid. I bought the damn knife because it was an extra knife anyway and it felt damn good in my hand so I wanted to test it out more. This god damn knife is amazing, gyuto style shape, smallish handle that fits the hand just right, light but with a good feeling of sturdiness to it, beautiful handle design/pin/demascus cladding. I would break it out in the privacy of side private chef jobs and the damn thing would put in a full day of solid work and still be sharp as shit slicing newspaper like nothing but I was still ashamed to break it out in the real kitchen where everyone has their knives from Korin or any other J Knife supplier or their Globals which still get a pass. Shit, there isn't anything barely written on the Kaizen line besides people asking if anyone has it and one guy asking how to scratch the logo off some other miyabi. So what do I do, I take a green and yellow sponge and a t shirt, dampen the sponge a bit and start going to work at the nasty boil on the face of this beautiful knife and the black part starts coming off, the Japanese text that looked like a 30 dollar Jersey shore tattoo comes off quite easy, the miyabi script in all its poor font choice glory fights a bit and then it disappears, I rinse off a bit and its only the rising sun left to rid of. The red circle took a while but I finally got it off and the demascus pattern was left fine (before and after photos attached). So thats my review of the Miyabi Kaizen, its a good fuckin knife, some people may prefer a bigger belly on their blade but its fine by me just get rid of that logo, the writing on the other side is fine. I've had it for 2 months now and its a sharp workhorse and is third in my kit behind my Kikuichi TKC and a Kramer Utility. Thoughts? Any of you have this knife, share my thoughts on the crappy logo, think I'm crazy for writing so much about it.


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## wagstaff (May 30, 2011)

Knife looks good.  I'd have left the logo, but it looks better without.  Good job.

I've never used a Miyabi, but at first glance they seem like they ought to pass the NYC Kitchen Snob Test with no problem. Unless they have something against damascus (damasc-oid) in work knives.


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