Compact Chef

Description

Why choose this knife

The smallest knife we make that genuinely functions as a chef’s knife: it has the rock, the knuckle clearance, and the heel depth that smaller knives usually sacrifice, built from the bones of the Agile Yeoman with those shortcomings fixed for those who want to work it hard on a board.

Dimensions

Blade 15.5cm. Overall 28.1cm. Depth 4cm. Weight 116g.

The Story

The Compact Chef started life as a bespoke commission from someone who liked smaller knives but was frustrated by what they could not do. We took the Agile Yeoman, added roughly a centimetre of depth at the heel, and found ourselves with a genuinely different knife. The character had changed. It had rock. It had knuckle clearance. It worked, but still retained much of the spirit of a smaller utility knife. We have made a lot of them since, and the lesson we took from the process, that a centimetre here and half a centimetre there can transform a blade entirely, has informed how we think about the whole range.

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. The Compact Chef 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. The blade is ground to a unique concave profile – a geometry that reduces drag and improves slicing performance without sacrificing rigidity. Each knife is sharpened to 15 degrees per side.