Chubby Bunny

The Knife Guard Story

So, during my short trip back home, I went on a mini-adventure of sorts. I instinctively got on the 6 Train, though I wasn’t sure why. And I instinctively got off at Bleecker Street. Again, I wasn’t sure why.

And I just walked. I was going to head over to Broadway, but I saw the kitchen supply store when I was waiting for the light to cross Lafayette.

It occurred to me that I still didn’t open my santoku knife, because I never got a knife guard for it.

While I like to believe I speak decent Chinese, sometimes I’m intimidated, because certain words aren’t in my vocabulary. Like knife guard. And the necessary words for explaining what it actually does.

• Keep a blade sharp.
• Keep me safe when I transport it in my bookbag. (Don’t ask.)
• Keep me safe when I toss it into a drawer for storage until use.

Basically, a knife guard comes in two know varieties. There’s the plastic clamshell case that encases the entire forged blade. Then there’s a thin strip that you slice into every time you’re ready to put your dry, clean knife away covers only the sharp cutting edge and leaves the rest of the blade exposed.

I successfully found the latter on my previous trips to Broadway Panhandler. But I was unable to find the former, which is a lot more convenient and safer for my purposes. (I’d probably slice my hand every time I had to slice the blade into the sheath.)

After walking into the kitchen supply store on Laff, I asked the man who looked like he owned the place if he had a knife guard. Of course I had no idea how to say knife guard in Chinese so all words were in Chinese except for the most critical ones that would indicate what I was searching for.

He wasn’t sure if they carried such things after I explained the purpose of having one. He told me I could ask upstairs. And I did. And it was remarkable, because I thought the guy i was speaking too spoke Cantonese, but he answered in poor Cantonese with a heavy Mandarin sort of accent. And I knew: oh snap, I chose the wrong language. So i answered and re-asked my question in Mandarin. And he had no idea what a knife guard was.

Which leads me to believe that knife guards are more of a Western idea. I mean, as far as I know, Asian chefs either carry their cleavers at their waist or keep their cuttlery out in the open (eg. on magnetic strips) or wrapped up in a snazzy knife kit of sorts.

No luck. i asked where the knives were. There wasn’t anything there for knife storage. I gave my thanks and left.

I was tired from a crazy anti-histamine reaction to mosquito bites I had gotten from a mosquito that raped me on my subway ride into the city. But I hiked over the Broadway Panhandler.

I must be really lucky, because not only did they have all their knife protection accessories in stock in all sizes and materials, but they were having a sale.

So I splurged ~5 bucks and hoped for the best. Retail price $6.95+ tax.

And thus ends the story of how I protect my knife.