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Classic Chef Knife

Are Shun Chef's Knives considered "French" Knives?

Hi, I am getting ready to start cooking school and the class requires an 8" chefs knife. It reads as this "8 inch Chef's Knife(French Knife)" So what I am wondering is if I buy a Shun 8 inch chef's knive will I be meeting the requirement or will I piss off my Instructor right off the bat? It looks the same as the other classic french style chefs knives so I figured it is the same but I'm still not 100% sure. I want to buy this brand because I worked as a Prep/Line cook for a while and the Executive chef allowed me to use his beautiful Shun knives and I fell in love with them at once. Any help would be great thanks

Unless your instructor is extremely cranky person you shouldn't have any problems with that knife. Most of the chef's and non-knife people can't tell the difference between those two either.

That description on the sale site isn't correct.
French and German chef's knives refer to blade geometry of the chef's knife.

If you want the specifics, then the answer is no, Shun's aren't French as per definition.
Shun chef's knife is classic German style chef's knife. It has much more pronounced "belly" than the french chef's knives do.
I've had that for a while to review, and even without that looking at its photos you could tell that.
Belly is the upwards curved section of the blade starting somewhere mid-blade on German chef's knives. The belly is much shorter on the French style chef's knives, curving starts closer to the tip, approx. first 1/3 of the blade length.

To compare - Shun which is German style chef's knife http://zknives.com/knives/kitchen/ktknv/shun/shungy200.shtml

And Akifusa, which isn't really french, but Japanese, however blade geometry is typical French chef's knife, except it's thinner and cuts a lot better than French or German knives - http://zknives.com/knives/kitchen/ktknv/akifusa/akifusag240.shtml

One thing I can tell you is that, if I were you I wouldn't bring expensive kitchen knives to the culinary school. They tend to get "accidentally lost" there from what I hear.
So, if you still decide to bring that to the school, make sure it's secure.

If you want cheaper solution, which is what I'd take to that school, then 40-50$ Forschner which has the same X50CrMoV15 used in Wusthofs and Henckels and many other expensive knives, at the same hardness btw... Just costs much less.

For home/personal/pro use obviously Shuns are much better knives compared to Forschners, that is if you know how to take care of them.

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