The Grail

If you who have been reading GG long enough to remember this post from early in the year, or perhaps this or this post from last year, then you know that I have what some might call an unhealthy interest in kitchen cutlery and a genuine fetish for weird and exotic knives of the east. I won't deny either of those statements because I can't and keep a straight face.

Anyway, back around the time of the Ping! post I got hot and bothered over a relatively esoteric knife maker from the Kowloon section of Hong Kong called Chan Chi Kee or CCK for short.

I heard tell on food and knife message boards from one side of the web to the other of a sort of fabled and rarely sighted knife, spoken of in hushed tone by people who had been lucky enough to stumble upon one in some unmarked shop on a back Chinatown street. These vegetable cleavers were rumored to be The One: finely made of great steel, free of the usual questionable prison labor workmanship seen in a typical cleaver, known to take an edge and keep it even if used to disjoint the occasional chicken, more than all of these things they were rumored to be so cheap that one could purchase 3 or 4 for the price of one middle of the road doosh-knife.

How could I, the Grocery Guy, not own one of these perfect chopping machines, one of these clear signs that God did in fact exist, one of those metaphors for what is right and good about Globalism? I began to scheme.

Step one in my plan to land one of these unicorns of the culinary West was to contact the people who make them and attempt to woo them with my status as the buyer of a New York specialty shop. My email was not returned no matter how many times I resent or edited my syntax.

Foiled, crestfallen and depressed I stewed and brooded over my failure until one day I remembered that Gary and Natasha, my favorite Aussie-Gretchies, had lived for quite some time in Hong Kong and that, furthermore, they must have friends that still live in HK.

Eureka! All I had to do is wait for Gary to ease into his third or fourth Chimay and then nonchalantly slip it into our conversation that maybe, if he had some friends in Hong Kong, would he mind sending them an email asking if they could slip over to the other side of town and pick up a couple knives for me that I had heard about. Gary took the bait and after talking cooly for a few minutes about the nature of said knives I might, maybe, want to get a hold of, I ended descending into evangelical mayhem. I ranted and raved about their legendary qualities. I claimed that they cured cancer, removed stains from silk garments, re-grew balding patterns and killed bugs dead. In the grand tradition of all geekdom I sketched an image of the CCK cleaver as the Jesus Knife.

By the time we had had a few more drinks the deal was sealed and I floated home on a cloud of titties shaped like a black, late model Lincoln Towncar.

Then the wait began.

Every time I saw Gary in the shop or even riding his bike down Broadway I had to forcibly stifle my urge to grab him by the lapels and demand to know the fate of my hallowed blades. Instead I chose to wait for him to bring it up so as not to appear like the gear obsessed, degenerate kitchen perv that I knew myself to be.

First he let me know that he had "Hey, I emailed my friend about your knives."

A month went by then "Hey, my friend in Hong Kong said that he would pick up those knives"

Another month and "Hey, my friend got those knives and he's coming to New York but he's afraid of freaking out the customs guy so he's not bringing them."

Then, for a long while, silence. We talked about Liberty, their cute new baby. We spoke at length about politics, cycling in the city, stretching routines, how mean Natasha was but not a word on my knives.

I began to lose all hope and slowly slipped into a dark and hopeless place that only small children, who realize that a pony is not a viable option as a Christmas present, and men such as myself go when faced with the loss of such an object of irrational desire.

Just as the darkness had finally passed and I had accepted that a life without a magic cleaver was still worth living a chipper and smiling Gary walked into Marlow to get a snack and to let me know "Tom, I got those cleavers in the post last week."

I grinned and politely thanked him for getting them for me. I might have said many things but I don't remember because I had entered a fugue state and also crapped myself. To know that they were only a few hundred feet away, waiting only to brought across the street to me on some golden morning very soon was enough to sustain me through the days ahead. "Hey Tom, sorry I still have to give you those knives. I knicked a couple for myself though." Like J. Mascis, I felt the pain of everyone and then I felt nothing. Nothing but the warm knowledge that the focused energy of all my earthy wants was so quickly going to be mine. If Gary wanted to cop a few beautiful cleavers for his trouble I certainly couldn't blame him.

I have to admit that I'm proud of my own restraint and general mellow-ocity that I showed in the weeks that followed. While I did pine like no man has pined for these things they were, after all, just things and things that I would get so long as I didn't do something rash like saying "Look mate, bring the fucking steel over or I'll cut your goddamned cabbage!"

This is my way of saying that the day that the beat up, smallish looking box with the airmail stamps and the Chinese writing all over it did actually arrive in my hands, lo these six months and change later, I was as surprised and filled with joy as if I was a gone junkie and he was giving me a kilo of heroin.

Quite the preamble to introduce two vegetable cleavers when I think about it. Whatever the retarded odyssey was required to bring them into my life these knives are certainly worth it. The difference between the two cleavers and the rest of the cleavers I have beating around the house is pretty stunning. While my TFS #1 required a good amount of work with some sandpaper and a waterstone to get into shape to use, the CCK's only required being run over a sharpening steel a few times before they were ready to chop. This here is the CCK 1301 which means that it is the biggest cleaver (the 01 in the code standing for "number one") in it's particular type and shape. What this shape was originally used for I have no idea but I do know that it came sharp enough to shave with and with the thin blade and gradual taper toward the edge that make you think you could mince and atomic particle.

All the technically elements aside, this is one really good looking and well finished knife. While it's no highly polished Japanese knife that was made by the gnarled but experienced hands of a former swordsmith for the emperor it is a knife that says to "use me like a two dollar hooker" which I think is important in these precious times.
This beast (the 1102, which means the #2, or slightly smaller version of the biggest vegetable cleaver they make) my not be quite as dressed up looking as the 1301 but it's the bad uncle you go to when you need some front money for that first quarter pound of weed. What? Yeah, it gets shit done without the bullshit or the hassle. Please refer back to the Ping! post as to why big, tall knives are so good at chopping the fuck out some onions.

Some may look on these gianormous blades and simply sigh and make a penis joke but please, I beg you, do not dismiss these paddle-sized knives before you try them. Bittman can talk all he wants about the various qualities of a 10" Forschner from the Bowery but when you simply MUST plow through a cubic ass-ton of vegetable prep a questionably large, sharp veggie cleaver is the only way to go.