This is the sixth installment of The Cutting Edge’s new article series: Hot Kitchens, Hot Knives! Cooks and foodies almost love geeking out about their knives as much as they love food (and at times, even moreso!), so we’ll be sitting down with chefs, kitchen crews, and bloggers all across the world to ask them about their knife collections and the culinary workhorses that they know and love. Check out this series every Tuesday if you want to find out what kind of heat the guys and gals in the kitchen are packing in their knife rolls.
Thousands of San Franciscans have lost their minds over Chef Hiroo Nagahara’s innovative gua bao, or Taiwanese bun sandwiches, which his crew slings out of a bright red truck called The Chairman. Their take on the traditional street food showcases premium ingredients like Muscovy duck terrine, house-pickled daikon radish, and crispy miso-cured tofu. Even the buns are gourmet: they’re locally handcrafted and baked with yeast cultures imported from China. Nagahara, a former executive chef at Charlie Trotter’s Bar Charlie in Las Vegas, successfully combines the best techniques and flavors from the world of haute cuisine with the humble trappings of Asian street food. (And at $3.75 – $6.75 a pop, his bao are an incredible deal!) And, as it turns out, he’s a knife fanatic.
Read on to see Chef Nagahara dropping some serious knife knowledge! Continue reading