Cut Above the Rest
Coutelier knife shop connects cooks with their ideal blades
When Jacqueline Blanchard started culinary school at the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, she was issued a standard chef’s knife kit. The problem was, at about five foot nothing, Blanchard wasn’t a standard-sized chef.
“Everything was too big for me,” recalled the chef, who went on to work at Restaurant August in New Orleans, the French Laundry in Napa and the Michelin- starred Benu in San Francisco. “I’m smaller in stature, I have smaller hands. But I was graded on knife skills using a ten-inch Henckel. That’s just crazy.”
To a chef, the heft, weight, and slicing power of the right knife is critical. Blanchard, a native of the small Louisiana town of Napoleonville in Assumption Parish, discovered the agility and power of hand-forged Japanese knives in culinary school and learned more while working in San Francisco with her partner, Brandt Cox, also a chef, who hails originally from Oxford, Mississippi. The pair met at Restaurant August in 2010 and moved to San Francisco together. When they were ready to come back to New Orleans, the idea was to open their own restaurant.
“But the more we thought about it,” she recalled, “the more we felt that the market was oversaturated and the financial risk was great. What New Orleans really needed was a great knife shop.”
The couple opened just that, Coutelier, a French word but a wondrous homage to the ancient craft of Japanese knife-making as well. Knives of all shapes and sizes are displayed on the walls in this gorgeous little shop on Oak Street Uptown. Everywhere you look, shiny blades splay out in bold rows against beautiful cypress boards Blanchard’s uncle harvested from Lake Verret. Hand-forged cookware, professional barware, locally roasted coffee, Louisiana-made bitters, and Coutelier branded knife rolls and backpacks handcrafted by Nola-based Tchoup Industries round out the store’s displays.
The shop repairs knives and also offers Whetstone knife sharpening—their recommended method—onsite starting at $10 a knife. They’ll show you how to sharpen correctly on a steel too, which takes a minute to get the hang of but can easily be done carefully at home. This year the couple opened a second location in East Nashville, with Blanchard taking care of business in New Orleans and Cox holding the fort down in Tennessee. “It’s a little hectic now, but we are building slowly and it has to be right.”
Blanchard throws around Japanese words—for towns, names of family knife dynasties, blade styles—with the ease of a mother bragging on her favorite son. Her depth of knowledge on a subject she virtually knew nothing about five years ago is astounding. “I forget that sometimes,” she said with a laugh, as she gave a recent tour of her shop. The partners deal directly with the rock stars of the Japanese world, families like the Moritakas, who founded their cutlery business in 1293, producing high quality blades for thirty-one consecutive generations. Originally sword makers, the family switched to making kitchen knives five generations ago. Blanchard and Cox journey regularly to Japan to meet with the makers, an extra mile (or so) that is key to their business success.
Blanchard throws around Japanese words—for towns, names of family knife dynasties, blade styles—with the ease of a mother bragging on her favorite son.
“The relationships we have with our knifemakers is everything,” she said. “It’s very important for us to see the process, so that we can better explain and help our customers. These knives aren’t cheap. It’s like making an investment in a good pair of shoes or a bag. They are so quality driven—really nobody does it like the Japanese. And we want to do our part in preserving this historical craft.”
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The differences between German knives and Japanese knives are all about angle, shape, weight, thickness, and type of steel. German knives are culinary workhorses: heavier, stolid, and multi-purpose in scope. Japanese knives are task-specific, more specialized, and lighter weight. The blades are thinner allowing for a sharper edge. German knives are typically machine honed, while Japanese knives are almost always forged by hand. Japanese knives are ideal for precise work, which makes sense when thinking about the delicacy of the country’s cuisine and the artistry involved in expertly slicing sashimi into transparent ribbons. “Chefs are really leaning toward Japanese,” said Blanchard. “And if you’re going to spend hundreds of dollars on a knife, you don’t really want to order it online. You really need to feel it in your hand.” That being said, about twenty-five percent of their business comes from online orders, with a map in the back office pinned to the far-flung locations they’ve shipped to, from Iceland to Australia and Malta.
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Coutelier knives start around $40 and go up to the $500–$750 range. The blades, of carbon and stainless steel, are brilliant, some shiny and smooth, others hammered and etched with designs that conjure up rushing water in a clear stream. Each is a work of art, with carved wooden handles of various hues, some in rosewood, some burled, all beautiful.
When they first started forging relationships with Japanese makers, Blanchard was very conscious of it being a patriarchal, male-dominated world. Although women do some quality control and handle making, it’s men that do the actual knife making. “I was worried in the beginning that they wouldn’t want to do business with a woman,” she recalled. “That was me, in my head. I decided to abbreviate my name to Jacq—which is kind of ambiguous. Some of them didn’t find out I was a woman until we made our first trip. I was nervous … but they were surprisingly elated. We’ve found them to be the greatest people on the planet, most polite, helpful, hospitable. It’s a lovely culture of respect for themselves and for others. It’s like they’re always trying to out-respect each other. Their sense of honor is truly ancient.”
A stunning, razor-sharp Japanese knife dazzles as a gift, whether for a wedding, holiday, or as a special gesture to a talented home chef. At Coutelier, Blanchard ably recommends what kind of knife will do best for a certain situation or setting. “It’s all about weight, balance, and size. And carbon vs. stainless steel.” Carbon steel needs extra maintenance, must be hand-washed then coated in a thin layer of oil before storage, and must be sharpened more often (though it’s easier to sharpen than stainless); if you do take care, the knife will last forever. Stainless takes all that out of the picture—it’s not inferior, just a different animal.
The blades, of carbon and stainless steel, are brilliant, some shiny and smooth, others hammered and etched with designs that conjure up rushing water in a clear stream.
If you’re going to shop small, these three knives will cover a broad range of needs: a seven to ten-inch chef’s knife; a Santoku, an all-purpose kitchen knife great for cutting meat, fish, and vegetables, but not bone; and one of Blanchard’s favorites, a six- to seven-inch bunka, also a lightweight, versatile slicer. Blanchard and Cox keep their hands in the kitchen, trying out knives at regular pop-up dinner parties they throw at the shop as well as at Paradigm Gardens in New Orleans.
“Best is to come in and try out different knives, see how they feel,” said Blanchard. “Every knife is different in a person’s hand.” And as she well knows, the right-sized tool in a chef’s hand is everything.
Don’t miss the “Bladesmiths” section (couteliernola.com/bladesmiths), which shares the stories of fourteen knifemakers from whom the shop sources.