The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Knives on the Road

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

A cook's knife is their most important tool and Eugene Ong has been obsessed with cutlery for a long time. As a chef, he came to appreciate the necessity of a perfect edge - from there, knife sharpening became a full-time obsession. For 15 years, Eugene has run KNIFE in Toronto, teaching young cooks how to hand-sharpen their gear as well as passing on the lessons of discipline required to maintain blades in peak condition. Now he also drives the Knife Truck to various towns in Ontario to bring his hand-sharpening skills to a broader audience.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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we sell cast iron, cupware. Very Japanese focus, of course. Now, your knife should never really be dull. It should always be in tip-top shape. It's born out of the need of having that perfect edge. People love kind of seeing this thing kind of get going on the road you know. People just assume we're like one of those you know old school guys with the bell in the truck but it's a bit a bit more involved and our sharpening is all done by hand so it's impossible to turn over like just on the side of the road. We have to do it just like we would on by hand so it does take a little bit of time. Once you kind of get the hang of it this truck is actually kind of fun to drive. Our big kind of main spots is always Stratford, Collingwood, Picton is huge, like Prince Edward County.

We're gonna do Kitchener this year, and then we always start in Leslieville. It's been a good little escape from the shop for us, you know? And we get to kind of take our show on the road kind of way. I always kind of tell the story of being a chef first, I guess. You know, we started, I started cooking when I was maybe 18, 17, 18. I loved restaurants. My uncle, when I was younger, was the chef.

And even, you know, I have memories of him holding me in his arms and stirring a pot. I always just loved food. I always gravitated towards the kitchen. So I went to... How does this work here? I was traveling in Asia, and my mother said, get your ass back to Toronto.

Stop messing around. Do something that you love. What do you love to do? And I'm like, well, I don't know. I like cooking. So went to Humber College went to hospitality management dropped out instantly hated it took another year off went back into culinary management where I just fell in love it was it was one of those kind of instant things

just the first moment that knife cut it onion I was hooked that was it it was a good solid decade of cooking pre-knife halfway through that cooking however was knife obsession it was something triggered and I honestly I don't even remember what it was but something happened one day that made me just obsessed with cutlery that was it it was it was sharpening, it was holding a knife, it was everything about that perfectly done, perfect cut of whatever that I was hooked and the rabbit hole continued. I did a bit of traveling, went back to Japan and when I came back to Toronto in 2009 or so, there was no knife shop. There was to nowhere to get my knife sharpened nowhere to get stones i wanted something very specific that was just knives and we opened in 09

on queen street like a second floor tiny little wasn't even a hundred square foot room literally and that was 15 years ago and here we are that That's a long story. We kind of joke with some of the younger kids now. It was there's no YouTube. It was just getting a knife, grabbing the kitchen stone and just messing up a whole bunch of blades. I was being obsessed. I guess YouTube started 15 years ago. Ending the odd video but you would talk to old chefs and they would do it a certain way. You liked it, you didn't like it, but it was just out of necessity. It was just being in a kitchen. Your Nasrudel chef would give you hell for it. So you just sit back there and try to get it as good as you could. It was just trial and error, I think. We're truing a stone. These stones dish

a lot, especially when it's rougher like this. So all we're doing is just flattening it with a diamond plate. Lots of water. They do kind of dish a bit. You kind of see how it dips a little bit there. So we're just trying to keep it as flat as possible. So what we're doing when we're sharpening is we're progressively getting finer and finer as we go. We're developing that primary bevel, primary edge line with the rough stone.

We kind of call this like breaking the burr. There's so many aspects of it because there's the hobby side of it for the nerdery, but there's also the need because we, you know, if you're a cook your knives have to be sharp. It's not just buy a brand new knife, use it till it's dull, buy a new one. So to try to maintain it. In Japan you're in cold water, your hands are freezing and wet and dirty, your fingernails are black at the end of the day. It's not something that most people want to do unless you're truly obsessed with it. I wouldn't call it dyeing at all, but it's definitely not something that's very glamorous. It's really about the food. I mean, you need the

tool, but really who cares? You're not eating the knife. You got to eat that perfectly cut something. I think the smithing side is huge. The creation of something I think appeals to people, whether it's making a knife, whether it's making a cutting board. We deal with a lot of small artisans. I'm taking it from what I see in Japan. So in my visits there, talking to a lot of the smiths there, we tend to kind of put them on a pedestal, that they're these incredible artisans that make this incredible stuff.

And we all love it and we'll spend top dollar for this stuff but I met a lot of people that were just kind of like not that into it they weren't doing it because it was this giant passion it was it was a job it you know and and it was something that you did in a factory it was like cold it was like in a in a forge it's loud and it's like there's molten steel everywhere. I can't see my kids wanting to get their hands that dirty to forge a piece of metal. The sharpening side is the kind of boring side maybe. I think it's the more important side to be honest with you because you can forge a beautiful

piece of steel but if it's dull it's useless. And we've seen some knives just come dull they come with no edge and we're just like where's the edge and then we'll talk to the maker and they're like oh we don't sharpen the knives like how do you sell the knife like that's really weird i think like anything else i mean there's the mass-produced stuff that's easy to get and quick, but making a knife takes a long time and a lot of expertise, and it's not a glamorous thing for people to be hammering steel, so I just think it's slowly kind of fading out. Even in Japan, you're seeing lesser and lesser smiths for sure.

A big part of sharpening is that meditative side of things, because it's that pot of coffee on Sunday, it's the bottle of wine, whatever you do. Sitting down, head down. My wife reminds me, before knife even, when I was still cooking, that it was just the ritual. The knives were still sharp, but it was just that meditative side of it. And knowing that on Monday when you unrolled your kit, that perfect cut just made life easier. It made your day work better.

It made the food look better, taste better even. Herbs is the thing we always kind of use as the example. When you just bludgeon parsley and it's all mulchy and gross, you have to have that sharp knife. all mulchy and gross like you have to have that sharp knife what i try to teach a lot of people in our classes and our demos is the discipline in a japanese kitchen without fail when everything is clean and washed and scrubbed and done the knives and the stones come out you have to keep your knives ready to go there's a mindset of resting the knife before the next day you don't just sharpen it use it right away i try to teach that a lot

especially the the younger generation because a lot of people are just bludgeoning food at in restaurants and it's pretty sad i've seen a change there are a few knife shops in toronto now and between us we're teaching the young cooks that this is how you're supposed to do it. You can't just dabble like if you really want to do it you really do have to focus and you it kind of overtakes all your free time is that not not obsessive I don't want to say like obsess over knives because that's also just weird but you need to put a lot of your free time and energy into it or else it'll just never become something real. I did a lot of this pre-kids, of course, and spent the 12, 15, 18 hour days in kitchens

and sharpening knives before having to run to soccer practice or whatnot. I do a lot of my stuff before they even wake up. I grew up with a huge family. And thinking back with my parents, my grandmother pretty much, I wouldn't say raised me, but she was with me after school. And I ate at her house. And my dad is one of seven, well, six brothers, one sister. And there's always a ton of family around.

So there's kind of no worry. It's also a different era when you didn't worry as much. Hey, where's Eugene? He says, ah, he's somewhere, as long as he's not holding a knife or something. But I probably was, because that's what I did. It's a hard thing to balance, because you want that help

in leaving your kid with aunt and uncle, but you kind of don't, because I want to be a part of everything that they do. Hopefully I can teach my kids to refocus on something and perfect it in that sense. How long that may take, I don't know. I think they say 10,000 hours to perfect anything, but who knows. Thank you.