Misen Knives On Kickstarter Make Affordable Chef's Knives

We're pretty obsessed with This Thing Now. Here's how to get it into your life.

We're knife nuts here at Tasting Table. A sharp blade is the most important tool in our kitchens other than our hands. A good knife is an investment piece, usually starting around $100 and running into the thousands. For most people, it can take years to fill a complete knife block. Avid home cooks Josh Moses and Omar Rada were frustrated by that, so the pair, along with designer Peter Müller, are launching knife company Misen. They plan to start selling their high-quality, but moderately priced, knives early next spring with the help of a Kickstarter that's active right now.

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Think of Misen as the Warby Parker of knives. The stylish and well-made eight-inch chef's knives are ordered online for $65 each, cutting out the middle man and his markup. The knives borrow design features from classic German and Japanese knives like a bolster (Western) and a thinner blade (Japanese). For now, the eight-inch is the one-and-only knife being offered, but Moses says the team is working on other options to be released down the line. The same goes for the color of the knife handles: For the moment, it's only gray and blue, but, hopefully, they'll come in black soon. Like all good knives, these carbon steel babies will require some upkeep. Fortunately for you, they're offering a lifetime of free sharpening.

The team is still in its Kickstarter days (a $55 pledge buys you a knife from the first run), but it's already well-funded, so knives should start rolling out in March next year. Get chopping.