Chef Ambassadors
Real head chefs across the UK put Shimeru blades to work on the pass, service after service.
Head Chef at Kiyoto Sushi
London
Head Chef at The Grazing Cow
Telford
Head Chef at Duke of Wellington
London
Head Chef at Niwa Yakitori
Manchester
Head Chef at The Royal Oak
Ashbourne
Head Chef at Hintlesham Hall
Ipswich
Head Chef at 1260 Hoylake
Wirral
About Shimeru
I took on most of the cooking at home. A knife stopped being something in a drawer and became something I picked up every day, and it didn't take long to work out that the one I had wasn't good enough.
So I started reading. I'd travelled to Japan a lot and always loved Japanese knives, but when I properly looked into buying one I hit the wall everyone hits. The good ones are £200, £300, £400 and up. Heritage blades from workshops that have been doing this for generations, and worth every penny if you have it. I didn't.
The alternative was worse. A wall of listings all claiming the same thing: VG-10, 67-layer Damascus, 60+ HRC, £45. A lot of them are the same knife with a different logo on the blade. There's no way for a normal person to tell which is which.
So you either overpay, or you gamble and end up with something that looks the part and won't hold an edge past a month.
That's not really a price problem. It's that you can't tell what you're buying.
A friend of mine lost his job in banking and asked what we could do to make some money. I'd been chewing on this for months. That was the moment it stopped being something I read about in the evenings.
We didn't set out to build a knife brand. I was trying to solve something I'd hit myself, and one of us badly needed it to work.
I own a Miyabi and a Shibata. One made in Seki, one out of Fukuyama. They cost me a lot of money and they are better than anything we sell.
But they're the Ferrari in the garage. Out on a sunny day, for something worth doing properly, then back in the box. Not what I reach for on a Tuesday night with a bag of onions and forty minutes.
A Shimeru is my daily driver.
We're not a centuries-old workshop in Sakai and we don't pretend to be. So I worked out what actually makes those knives good. Steel hard enough to hold an edge. A thin grind. A profile that suits how people really cook. Then we went looking for knives that do that at a price a home cook will actually pay.
We sell around 45 knives. Not 4,000. We can tell you what each one is for and why it's there.
We also write everything down. The knife care guide, the buying guide, the blog. Most of it exists because it's what I was searching for when I couldn't find a straight answer.
There aren't many of us. I read the emails, and most of the time I'm the one replying. If something's wrong with your order, tell us and we'll sort it out.