The story Chef & a knife
Some things stay with you from childhood. For Cris, the founder of Chef & a Knife, it was the fire.
Growing up in the Gaucho culture of Southern Brazil, food meant churrasco — the open-fire barbecue tradition that is less a cooking method and more a way of life. Slow, communal, unhurried. And at the centre of it always, a good knife. Not sharp for its own sake, but a tool that respected what it was working with. Cris didn't learn that from a book. He learned it standing next to a fire with people who had been doing it their whole lives.
Two Decades in Sydney Kitchens
When Cris arrived in Sydney and began working as a professional chef, that early instinct got tested properly. Professional kitchens have no patience for equipment that doesn't hold up, and over twenty years he worked through a lot of knives looking for the ones that genuinely could.
That search led him deep into the Japanese makers, their obsession with steel purity and edge geometry producing something that felt almost unfair to use. Then the German craftsmen, whose knives balanced so well you forgot you were holding one. Then the old French houses that had been producing exceptional blades for over a century and hadn't changed much, because they didn't need to.
By the time Chef & a Knife launched in 2019, Cris wasn't just a chef who owned good knives. He was someone who understood them.
The Vintage Discovery
In late 2020 Cris came across something that changed the direction of the store entirely, a rare French carbon steel knife from a renowned maker, sitting neglected in a collection nobody was paying much attention to.
The steel was extraordinary. With the right attention it came back sharper than most new knives straight out of the box, with a balance and feel that modern manufacturing hasn't quite managed to replicate.
Cris began sourcing rare vintage knives from collections around the world and restoring them beyond their original condition. Old blades reground and honed back to life. New handles shaped from quality timbers, fitted with quality rivets, balanced properly to the blade. Working with GT Edgeworks the result became our Premium Vintage range; a collection of one-of-a-kind pieces that no other store in Australia carries.
Each knife is unique. Each one has a history. And each one performs better today than the day it was made.
What We Carry
The Chef & a Knife range spans the full breadth of two decades of searching: Shun, Wüsthof, Tojiro, Sabatier K and Messermeister alongside the vintage and restored pieces that remain the heart of the store.
Every knife has been chosen because it belongs in a kitchen and deserves to be used. Whether you're preparing a full Brazilian churrasco, breaking down a whole chicken on a Sunday afternoon or slicing through a sourdough loaf that took three days to make - the right knife makes it a different experience entirely.
These are tools built to last decades. In most cases, considerably longer.
Get in Touch
Cris personally oversees every knife in the store and is always happy to help find the right one for you. For product questions, gifting advice or brand partnership enquiries, reach out at info@chefandaknife.com.au