By culinary craftsman and designer Dan Bidinger, bringing together so many of the refined attributes for which he has become known, is an extra large, remarkably handsome, high-performance knife for the chef’s kitchen. In AEB-L high-performance stainless steel comes 300mm / 11.8″ of razor sharp edge standing 62mm tall at the heel, providing a blade designed to do it all with efficiency and gusto. Its stunning, silky, hand-sanded satin finish can be overlooked at first glance as Dan’s carefully honed, asymmetrical compound ‘B-grind’ geometry tends be the blade’s stand-out feature, and for good reason. Both sides of the blade offer a concave section above a convex stretch which leads to an especially thin, razor-sharp edge, and on the right side, a second hollow ‘fuller-style’ element is added to further assist cutting performance and food release. The rounded, polished blade spine tapers steadily forward, slimming from 4mm above the heel to barely 1mm an inch from the tip, and further more until it practically disappears from sight, giving the blade versatility and dynamic feel on the board. That taper, along with the blade’s length, and Dan’s precise heat treatment and hardening process, result in a superb degree of lateral flexibility in the forward half: just enough, and not too much. Finally, for comfort, control, and additional elegance, not that more was needed, Dan sculpts a handle from maple wood and two contrasting natural linen micartas, all secured with three flush, oversized copper pins. Between the handle materials, the blade’s full tang extends to the end, tapering, as the blade’s spine does, from 4mm to a paper-thin profile at the back of the Western-style grip, helping balance this large and beautiful tool both visually and in the hand.