In New Orleans’s Carrolton neighborhood, there’s a covered purple building down the street from a Mellow Mushroom. Inside lies one of the country’s best curated collection of Japanese chef’s knives.
Coutelier NOLA, about six miles from the city’s French Quarter, is the passion project of former professional chefs Brandt Cox and Jacqueline Blanchard, who met at the city’s Restaurant August, and neither of whom lack chefly experience — Blanchard worked at French Laundry, Bouchon, Blue Hill at Stone Barns and Benu (that’s eight Michelin stars for those counting), while Cox worked under the likes of David Burke, John Besh and Corey Lee.
The shop (which has a sister store in Nashville) carries knives from larger manufacturers like Mac and Tojiro, but specializes at seeking out and identifying the country’s best craftsmen and bringing their wares stateside. Names like Takeda, Takamura, Fujiwara, Takeshi Saji and more fill the walls and lockboxes, all multigenerational bladesmiths (some going back more than 20 generations) making what are, according to Cox and Blanchard, the best knives in the world.
3 photos
“We obviously had a ton of experience with kitchen knives working in kitchens for so long. We’ve cooked with horrible tools and great tools, and, to us, the knives that come out of Japan are just on a different level,” Cox says.
The co-owners travel to Japan yearly to visit and learn from the makers of the knives they sell, as well as scout out newer, less known craftsmen in the country. Cox says, “Our main goal is to only sell knives that perform up to our standards, and maybe shed some light on the quality of work done by makers people wouldn’t get to see otherwise.”
According to Cox, they chose Japanese knives because of what they see as an undying loyalty to performance above anything else. Traditionally, Japanese blades are sharper, thinner and lighter than their European counterparts (read more about this here). Here are three knives, at three different price points, that Cox recommends to chefs new and old.
