Early this year, Mario Cortez at the SF Chronicle sent the shop an email asking if we could shine any light on the popularity of sheepsfoot knives with chefs at restaurants here in the Bay Area. This email was forwarded to me, and I was initially a little flummoxed. Was I missing some new trend? Honestly, I thought possibly the...

Tatara smelting is a traditional Japanese technique for producing steel from iron sand. It began in the 6th century in Kibi Province—now Okayama Prefecture—where craftsmen developed low, box-like furnaces called tatara. These furnaces produced tamahagane (“precious steel”), renowned for its use in swords and tools. The intense, three-day process gradually spread across the iron-rich Chūgoku Mountains, becoming central to Japanese...

Takagi Shoten is a fish processing company based in Ibaraki prefecture that has been operating before World War II.A few years ago, Takashi Takagi-sama became the 6th-generation CEO in his family to run the company. Takagi-sama’s primary goal is to use the highest quality fish in his products.Each can offers consumers the ability to track exactly where the fish they...