Mercer Culinary Final White, 8 Inch Chef’s Knife

Pro Kitchens Depend On These
Like the shape and grip of the handle. The steel is good enough to take a sharp edge and a reasonable commercial kitchen beating. You can get a better handle and better steel. But in a commercial setting, any knife will take a lot of hard use. This one is made to take that abuse without draining the tool budget.
Pro kitchens need sharp chef’s tools that can do all the chef tool jobs. They need to pay as little as possible for them. Mercer Culinary understands this need and produces several lines of low-cost cutlery to meet slightly different needs, the primary one being kitchen tools as a wear item that can perform at chef level without blowing too much overhead on them.
These are easy to sharpen and don’t chip easily. The handles are certified for chlorinated sanitizer sinks. Lots of companies make a tool like this but Mercer outsells them all. You might not want one for your home kitchen where a little nicer tools make sense, but for your restaurant they’re a great compromise between cost, quality, and utility. You can get better everything but for 14 bucks probably not.
My kitchen knife is a Shun with a VG-10 core and mild steel “Damascus” cladding. It has a stainless handle and could work well in a pro setting but VG-10 is notorious for chipping when you’re working on bones. I have a German cleaver for that stuff and the Shun for everything else. My favorite part of the VG-10 blade is the laser sharp edge it holds. But it might be a bit fragile under commercial use.
If a $14 knife chips under hard use it’s no great loss.
Everything about this knife maximizes commercial effectiveness per dollar spent. If that is your priority, this is a pretty good candidate to be your knife. Your kitchen might buy these by the gross.

There is no better budget knife, period
Mercer Knifes always hold there own and this is no exception… I really love their higher end VG10 knifes and own a full set of them. The get babied and for chores I don’t want to put them through I use the stamped millennial knifes. I own most of then and a few of a couple different versions such as the Nikari that I own 3 of and the 6 inch boning knife 3 as well and 3 of the 8in chefs kinfe..
The edges on the higher end knifes are much finer finishes as you would expect but for the low cost the edge is fantastic.
What I do when I get a new one is run a 800, 1500, 3000 and 6000 whetstone treatment on it keeping the exact factory bevel (no need to reprofile as the factory bevels are excellent as they are, I will say on the Nikari I do reprofile it to a 11 degree bevel as the thin blade is just so ultra razor sharp with a 11 degree edge over the 15 degree factory edge that it’s worth the it if you have a set of DMT or other high quality Diamond stones that I go for it and the steel is hard enough to hold up to a 11 degree angle and keep a edge so long as you are cutting friuts and vegs or slicing tender cuts of meat as the Nikari is intended to do) then over a progressive stropping starting with 3 micron Diamond paste on high quality leather then down to 1 micron to half micron then to .25 micron and finishing with .1 micron.
This will give you a edge that will whittle hair even on the thick blades like the 12in chef knife… For most people out the box will be more then good enough as they will shave no problem out the box but I have OCD with sharp knifes and love taking edges to a ultra mirror finish that is literally sharper then a razor blade.
At 15 degrees with the method I use on the chefs knifes the edge will hold up extremely with a simple strop on the .1 micron strop after you are finished with it just 5 or so strops per side and that’s it and your edge will be flawless (this is how I treat all my knifes). Realistically a home cook could simple strop the knifes once a week even with the factory edge and have razor sharp knifes that don’t need to touch a stone for a month or two… If you work edges like I do then the bevel and edge will hold up for an extremely long time with just a few hits on the strop and not need to visit the stones or diamond plates but maybe 2 times a year.
The Japanese steel used in these knifes is fantastic and punches way above its price point and holds its edge well but is a little tough to sharpen if you don’t have the equipment and or skills to do so… Their German steel knifes are deff easier to sharpen with just a 1k and 3k grit combo whetstone but will not hold a edge near as well as the jap steel will so there is a trade off there.
Anyone that’s on a budget and needs excellent knifes… Looking further then these is a waste of time. The steel is excellent, the factory edge is excellent, the knifes performance as a whole is excellent…. A 12 to 15 dollar knife that will hold its own with 100 dollar knifes out the package is exactly what these are.
They aren’t pretty, they aren’t flawlessly balanced but they ARE low budget high performance knifes that leaves very very little on the table performance wise versus knifes costing literally 10x…

I like this knife. The blade is thick, it looks great, the grip is good and the weight feels nice in your had. The knife fits well in hand and doesn’t slip. It cuts well. Knife can be used for a variety of things as blade is sharp. It works in everything I’ve used it for so far. It also comes with a mini sleeve.
Nothing to complain about it.

Há qualidade no aço, bem construída, recomendo pelo custo benefício

This knife has a great feel to it. Light, but with enough weight that it feels solid in the hand. The blade holds the edge well enough, but not great – it is an inexpensive knife, so I wasn’t expecting perfection. However, it is my everyday do to utility chopper! I have found that even with care there are small nicks in blade that occurred through normal use. Overall, still a great value and great knife.