2010-03-18
By Barbara J. Moseley (Rock Hill, SC United States)
I bought this as a gift for my son, so asked him what he thought. He replied 'oh, it's wonderful. cuts veggies like I've never seen before. not great on big chunks of meat, but I suspect there are specific knives for that. and it looks great too! I'm really very happy with it.' There you go.
2009-02-13
By B. Desrosiers (Florida USA)
Excellent product. It was a gift for my daughter and she is thrilled with it. The quality is very high and the feel of the knives when working is wonderful.
2010-05-07
By T.K. (JAPAN)
I bought this knife set from Japan. Global knives are famous in Japan and We can buy Globals in Japan, but We can't buy this knife set. Because I bought it from the U.S. amazon.
I think, these knives to buy top quality products personally use. The blade quality is not an amateur, took the knife feel, in the past I used to use is the best feeling well.
It seems that the GLOBAL is focusing on overseas sales to sell a knife, but I think even for a good assortment of local in Japan.
Amazon.com, thanks to for the Japanese ship.
I am in poor English may be difficult to understand, sorry.
Global 3-Piece Hollow Ground Santoku Knife Set
2009-11-13
By sergio b porto
Today, November 12, I received the knives I bought on a 3-5 day shipping in September.
Because of this delay, I will have to pay for shipping international, about $80.
2009-01-09
By N. Nguyen (California)
Just a warning, this review will contain some graphical descriptions of injuries. Definitely not for the squeamish people.
The knife may have some additional desires, but overall, it's the best set you can sink your teeth into, and of course, blow a few hundreds on. I paid a total of $90 at Bed Bath and Beyond, but worth every penny. Here's why:
Looks and Feel:
To most people, a knife is just a knife. To those who actually use knives on a daily basis, a knife is a blade designed for specific tasks, and not any knife will act as a universal knife for all tasks. The full one-piece blade-to-handle is the exact type of knife that one should look into. A knife with an attached wooden or plastic handle will cause stickiness, deterioration, and sanitary issues later down the road. I know first hand, since I have a drawer full of knife types. The way the knives are made, the handle actually balance with the blade when you place the middle finger into the groove, and start cutting. The proper cutting technique is placing the middle finger in the groove (the bolster), while the thumb and index fingers' tips are place on each side body of the knife for stability during quick action chopping. The balance is slightly off if you just attempt to balance the knives on your index finger just being curious. When you cut, take a notice of your fingers, palm, and wrist strains. Too much pressure on your thumb and middle finger, the handle is too heavy. Too much focus on your palm's heel, the blade is too heavy. Either will cause a bit of a wrist strain after 5 minutes of cutting.
But these knives are perfectly balanced, and eliminating the strains. The handle is excellent in so many way. The dimples actually created slight suction if you wet your hand with warm water, while maintaining the handle clean from oily and meat fluids. Once there's an oily film on the handle, no knife's handle will maintain the proper grip.
The blade:
5.5-inch blade is perfect for cutting small fruits, small veggies, and of course, great for people with small hands. The women in the house love to use this blade to cut pretty much everything. When it comes to cutting partially frozen meat, they switch up to the 7-inch santoku. Once again, be very cautious of this blade. It may be small, but the damages it can cause is as bad as the 7-inch. Same amount of fingers, a few more people, and a few left and right palms to boost. It's not we were being careless, but we applied too much pressure during the cutting, or the people who have never use these knives before underestimate their sharpness. For me, my habit for cutting too fast in meal preparation is my downfall. It claimed my left middle finger's nail and meaty tip, cut through my ring finger's blood vessel, my wife's middle and index finger's blood vessels, my friend's middle finger's tip, my wife's mom pinky finger's blood vessel. Let's just say that the knife made its mark on our bones. That's how sharp the blade is right out of the box. The 5.5-inch is excellent when it comes to making fancy decorations with large veggies during food preps. Fish filleting is nothing of a wonderful thing when it comes to this blade. Forget those serrated flexible knife for filleting. This blade out do those knives 10-to-1. Forget the so-called "flexible blade". Tilt the blade about 3 degrees above the middle spinal column of the fish, and you'll get your halves of the fishes. Level your knife out, and you'll get even thinner slices of fish fillets. Why invest in a separate fillet knife?
For the remaining meat on the whole turkey, chicken, whole spiral ham with the bone, and any meat that is still on the body/bone of an animal, this knife will take it all off, even in the hard to reach area of the turkey's and chicken's body cavities.
The durability and sharpness:
The knives are truly durable in all ways, but the cutting edges are not. You can drop it, toss, bang it, and pound it to the wood or plastic surface as you can all you want, the knives don't get any dent, bent, or ding. But, the cutting edge, honed at 15 degree, will get damaged if you slam it into bones, hard ceramic surfaces, metal, or any thing hard. I don't think any fine cutlery can stand up to such an abuse. Gentle sliding from front of the blade to the back will cut through pretty much everything, without requiring brute force to chop off your foods. Right out of the box, if you take care of of your blades properly during your days of food prepping, the blades will continue to have the sharpness up to 6 months. You'll notice a decrease of sharpness after the 6 months. If you're continuously cutting through frozen foods, especially meat, you'll notice the sharpness will start to decrease after two months of usages. The sharp edge of the knife will have misalignment, and the uniform edge will now have small imperfect warps. This is where a sharpening steel comes into play. Get a good steel like The Ultimate Edge Model 10NSS Stainless-Steel Handle Diamond Sharpening Steel (600 grit) or the cheaper The Ultimate Edge Model 10W Gourmet 10-Inch Oval Diamond Sharpening Steel (1800 grit people!). After a few sessions with frozen foods, use the steel to realign and sharpen the blade back up. Try to use it after every session, and you'll continue to keep the blades extremely sharp. Otherwise, if you keep neglecting to maintain your blades, you will have to purchase a honing-resharpening device, like the MinoSharp Plus or the whetstones (rough 320 grit and fine 1000 grit).
Cleaning:
The cleaning is extremely easy, after much usages. My knives with the plastic and wooden handles get so dirty and filled with food particles along the handles' edges that I have to toss them away. There's no way to clean them off without destroying the knives. Over time, around a year, the food particles and the oils forms an amber-resin like stain around the handles, disallowing any stain removal agent to get rid of them. The Global's one piece blades remove that issue. The cleaning only requires warm to hot water, and a soapy sponge. How easy is that? I have this set for over year now, and no stain what so ever. If there's caramel or sticky substance on it, run it under hot water for 30 seconds, then clean the entire knife with a hot soapy sponge, and it becomes like new again. Can't even find a bad thing to say about this. Small opinions here and there, but this is the first set of knives I could not find any bad to say.
2009-06-16
By A. Chandler (Austin, TX)
My honey owns a food manufacturing company and so we have done much research on finding knives for both home and work (we are 2 foodies at home too!) that are the best on the market.
Global, in the view of most chefs, is top of the line. In fact, About.com and Food and Wine magazine picked this as their favorite as well.
Japanese knives have long been known for creating real works of art in their knives. These are extremely sharp...but, more importantly, they remain that way. And, whether you wish to use this commercially, or simply for a lifetime of home use, it's a great pick.
Whereas you will often find knives of stainless steel, what's important here is that this is a knife of "cromova 18 stainless steel". Regular stainless will need sharpening far more often and a dull knife won't do you much good. This one remains sharp because of it's make.
The handles are made to last a lifetime as well. Also cromova stainless steel, they are molded to allow a good grip.
Negative: Not that it matters in most cooking instances, but the cromova 18 stainless steel, though mega tough, is not as non-stick as the VG-10 super stainless steel which, if that's important, you will find in Kershaw brand "Shun" knives., also an excellent knife choice and one of our favorites depending upon their use. These blades (Shun by Kershaw) have a fabulous non-stick quality and you'll often see them used on the Food Network by various chefs.
2009-08-26
By Linda (Western Montana)
I use the Messermeister Chantry for my German-made knives and wanted something similar for my Asian edges. This tool really works great. I've used it on my Shuns and my Mac Santoku and plan to hone my Global chef's knife with it. It's great to have something simple that keep those edges really, really sharp.
