Quo Vadis 100

Description

Why Choose This Set

A set of four knives designed with Jeremy Lee MBE, Chef Patron of Quo Vadis, for the restaurant’s hundredth birthday in 2026. The four blades he reaches for most: a paring knife, a slender carver, a heftier chef’s, and a chopper-style mid-size. Made in Wiltshire from handles in London Plane, all from a single tree that fell in Soho Square in April 2022 – five minutes from Quo Vadis’s door, and never to be made again. Same CATRA-rated blades as all our knives, top 2.5% globally, hardened to 60 HRC and sharpened to fifteen degrees a side.

Dimensions

Paring: Blade 10cm | Overall 21cm | Depth 2cm | Weight 100g.

Nakiri: Blade 18cm | Overall 31.5cm | Depth 5cm | Weight 240g.

Carver: Blade 24cm | Overall 37.5cm | Depth 3cm | Weight 135g.

Chef’s: Blade 27cm | Overall 40.5cm | Depth 5cm | Weight 270g.

The Story

Quo Vadis turns a hundred this year. The restaurant on Dean Street has had four sets of owners in its century, the last of them being Sam and Eddie Hart and, since 2012, Jeremy Lee MBE as Chef Patron. Laurie and Sam have known each other for over thirty years.

In April 2022 an old London Plane fell in Soho Square – made the BBC News, mostly because it nearly took out Paul McCartney’s offices. Westminster Council, who would ordinarily have had it burned, instead gave nine tonnes of trunk to Fallen and Felled, a London mill that gives the city’s salvaged timber a second life. The boards have been drying ever since. The handles on this set are from that one tree, five minutes from Quo Vadis’s door.

We worked with Jeremy on his ideal set, the four blades he reaches for most. We turned the drawings into mock-ups, then prototypes, then refined the handles to his hand. His knives are substantial workhorses, and the London Plane has been stabilised using an extensive process that renders it immaculate as a handle material, in terms of both function and looks.

Performance

CATRA – the global authority on cutlery performance – rank our knives in the top 2.5% of all blades ever assessed for initial sharpness and edge retention. Each blade in the Quo Vadis Centenary Set is hardened in-house to 60 HRC using a nitrogen atmosphere process, taking the steel from 1080°C to -75°C in a controlled cycle that maximises carbide formation, edge stability and corrosion resistance. This set uses conventional blade geometry – and is unique amongst our custom knives as a result. Each knife is sharpened to 15 degrees per side.