Wil Andruschak

In your Inglewood-area store, is it mainly Japanese knives that you sell?

I have a couple of cleavers from Spain, but the truth is that it is mainly Japanese, yes.

What makes the Japanese ones so good?

High performance. The Japanese use harder steel, which means they will stay sharper longer and that we can make them sharper, which is what you want. The Japanese make their knives really thin, which means they can go through food easier; think of a razor blade versus an axe.

If someone could have just one knife, which one would you suggest they have?

They would want something that is multi-purpose. The Japanese make two: one that in English means cow sword and the other means three virtues because it’s for slicing, dicing and mincing. Both of these knives will do everything you need them to do.

So, why buy a set? Why not just one?

Well, just because a knife will do everything doesn’t mean it’s good at everything. Like, I have an awesome Ferrari but I’m not going to drive it on a four-by-four road.

Do you really have a Ferrari?

No, the knife business is good but not that good.

Your store is pretty cool, with a Japanese feel to it. Is that what you were after?

Yes and no. I wanted to have a store that my mom would go to.

Is your knife shop the only one in Calgary?

No, there are a few others, but we are the only ones who sell Japanese knives. Actually we are the only ones who sell solely Japanese knives in Canada.

How many knives do you personally have?

Well, there’s some. I only brought home 14 of them last year.

What’s the most expensive knife in your shop?

About $1,700.

One class that you offer teaches people to cut and chop like a chef. Could you explain how that goes?

We try to teach how to hold the knife right and how to efficiently use it, and with confidence. It has to do with good technique and practise. It’s a fun class. Rob and I, who teach it, have been chefs forever.

I see you’ve been a chef for about 20 years. How did you get into the knife business?

When I was working in a restaurant in London, I met a Japanese man who had a knife shop there. He had so many extraordinary knives and that’s when I realized what a great knife could do. When I moved back to Calgary there weren’t any knives in the country that interested me, so I started selling them out of my backpack for a while. And then it got out of control and turned into a store.

Do you cut yourself sometimes?

All the time. It’s rarely using the knife when I do that. I cut myself taking it out of the box, or when I’m cleaning it or when a customer stabs me. People are nervous around knives; they don’t know how to handle them, so some stab me when they are handing the knife back to me.

I’ve met people who have phobias about knives. Have you?

We’ve certainly had people in the shop who, well, they shouldn’t have come in because they weren’t very happy. Some come in, look scared, look at the knives, then go stand out in the street and wait for their partner come out and join them. They are frightened of knives, for some reason, just looking at them.

Where did you work in London?

At the St. John Restaurant, the original one. They have interesting menus: yummy pigeon, chitterlings, which are pig intestines, and stinking bishop, which is a cheese, and ox hearts cooked up like little steaks. Yum.

Do the Brits go for that?

It’s a worldwide trend and it all started with Fergus at St. John’s, to be honest. He’s the owner, chef and mad scientist there.

You play a lot of Tom Waits in your shop.

I love him. He is fun and self-indulgent and unique. He does what he wants. He doesn’t really seem to care if anybody likes it and there’s something appealing about that. He is often one of my business mentors, but he doesn’t know it. I often think, “What would Tom Waits do?”

So, is this the end of the road with the knives?

I’ve got a business partner in Hiroshima and together, we have just launched our own knife company, so we are producing knives now. We found four blacksmiths in Japan who will make these knives for us. It’s rather exciting. We launched the brand about a month ago and we’ve got seven lines of knives with seven to 10 knives in them.