There’s happiness in a sharp, handmade blade

Little Collins St business Zan Shin marks its first anniversary in August. The shop’s owner and manager say its Japanese knives and knife-sharpening service can bring customers fun and happiness. Hundreds of five-star reviews suggest they may be right.

When Kazuki (“Kaz”) Hanzawa started working in Australian kitchens in 2010 he was surprised to find that other chefs didn’t seem to sharpen their own knives.

“From the beginning, obviously, I had my stone set and I sharpened my knives by myself,” the 37-year-old tells CBD News.

“I thought it was very basic for a chef, but it was kind of special in Melbourne.”

While at one restaurant the boss paid a mobile sharpener who came every month, the grinding machine they used didn’t suit the finer steel of his Japanese knives, Kaz says.

The knives’ steel is strong but relatively thin and will last longer if sharpened gently with a whetstone.

“So, I started sharing this [whetstone] sharpening with my co-workers, and even started sharpening for customers,” he says.

“That was the kind of beginning of the idea.”

Kaz once dreamt of opening his own restaurant in Japan.

But when he finished his studies, he decided to have a working holiday in Australia.

When he was 16, he had come here as an exchange student and lived with a foster family, and the experience left him feeling like he had family in Melbourne.

“I still catch up with them now,” Kaz says.

In Australia he first trained as a Japanese chef in Gippsland then moved into café work in Melbourne.

Before too long he started liking being in Australia.

“So, I stuck with cheffing and I became head chef and I got permanent residency,” he says.

Wherever he was employed, when Kaz took a trip back to Japan he would get requests from co-workers and friends to bring back knives.

There was nowhere in Melbourne to get authentic ones, he says, and in around 2017 he started a side business selling them online.

Then COVID hit and the lockdowns saw the cheffing work fall off while the knife business got a big boost.

When the city opened up again, Kaz and his wife Kanae, who he had met in a kitchen, opened a “a very small, very cosy” shop in Prahran, Kaz’s Knife and Kitchenware.

It was tough going at first.

“But slowly, slowly, people started sharing about my sharpening, my knife quality,” he says.

Last August he decided to open a second shop, in the CBD, to service customers from the city and the north side of town.

It was something he was only able to do, he says, because he had the good luck of finding suitable managers.

One of them, chef Finn Le, was an early customer at the Prahran store, who deeply respected Kaz’s knowledge and had stayed in touch with him.

“I trusted him about everything – knives, stones and advice on sharpening,” she says.

Finn had moved to Tasmania for a restaurant job and had been working there as head chef for three or four years when Kaz called and asked if she would like a job in the new store.

“Something like this it’s very rare,” she says, of both the shop and the opportunity.

When she first came to Australia from Vietnam in 2012 Finn had worked as a nurse.

Then she retrained as a chef.

In the knife shop she started learning a lot more about the making and maintenance of the implements while taking on a new set of skills.

“We have to learn to talk to customers a lot and be patient too,” she says.

“My temper actually got much better since I worked in retail!”

Knowledge that she patiently shares with Zan Shin’s many visitors include information and advice about different types of steel, knife makers and their regions, single-purpose knives versus all-purpose “santoku” ones, price range – from $150 to well over $1000 – and the benefits of whetstone sharpening.

The shop stocks a huge range of blades, including Kaz’s own Zan Shin brand, sourced from Sakai, Osaka, and other famous knife-making regions such as Seki and Echizen.

All of them are handmade.

“I think I have 150 kinds of knives at the store, so it’s like a museum,” Kaz says.

And while the idea of offering a sharpening service at the shop was initially just about looking after the knives it sold to customers, sharpening has emerged as an important part of the business, with many people bringing their kitchen knives in.

Zan Shin also runs four sharpening classes a week, which are generally booked out a month in advance.

While you might expect Kaz to be pleased about this from a business perspective, it’s clearly the increase in knowledge about knives that gladdens him most.
“For me it’s very nice to see people start to have more interest in looking after their knives by themselves,” he says.

Also, he thinks, “Japanese knives can make your life happier.”

It’s an outlook shared by Finn, co-manager Stefano and the rest of the passionate team at Zan Shin.

“If you choose the right knife it will last for a lifetime,” Finn says.

“It actually makes your cooking job much easier so you will enjoy cooking and everything along the way much more than before.”

“And seeing customers happy when we sell them the right knife is actually bringing a lot of joy to us also.” •