The Artisan: San Francisco knife maker Galen Garretson

Galen Garretson has always been passionate about knives. After being given his first penknife at the age of five, his collection quickly grew to several dozen blades. A former chef and now the owner-operator of Town Cutler, the 32-year-old is probably the city’s most notable knife maker.

When Garretson quit three-Michelin-starred Quince to open his ochre-walled atelier in San Francisco’s central Nob Hill neighbourhood in 2011, he stocked Japanese and German brands – go-tos for professional chefs – but it was always his goal to make his own. Inspired by Bob Kramer – who Garretson describes as the poster boy for American knife making – and master smith Aaron Wilburn, Garretson would spend offhours developing shapes and tooling around, riding his motorcycle five hours north to Wilburn’s Redding workshop whenever he could, to refine the techniques he was gradually teaching himself.

“Afterhours, I’d shut downand close the door, grind on some steel and work on some handles – just whenever I had time to play around,” he explains. His approach was to make blades of his own design, combining the precision of a Japanese knife with a more robust Western shape. Once the outlines are removed from sheet steel produced in American and Swedish foundries, Garretson heat-treats the metal so it’ll hold an edge, sharpens it and shaves both sides of the blade to the requisite width for each design, before adding the initial bevel. “We do all that freehand on a grinding machine, so we can feel the temperature of the steel,” explains Garretson, who now has a team of four. “If it gets too hot to hold, we know that we’re changing the grain structure.”

Then the blades are shuttled from the Oakland workshop to the Nob Hill shop. Convenient for the city’s myriad restaurants, it has developed into something of a hub for both home and professional cooks. This was always Garretson’s intention – to the left of the door as you enter, there’s a blackboard grid labelled “Window of Opportunity”. During my visit, job listings for sous chefs and line cooks for lauded restaurants Atelier Crenn and Michael Mina were scrawled in white chalk.

Knives have a turnaround of two to three weeks. Half of the orders are for custom-made knives, with the client choosing their preferred handle, from boxy fingers of buckeye burl or blue and green elder box burl, to Borneo rosewood and curly redwood. “ Choosing the handle is part of the romance,” says store manager Nik Page, deftly switching between polishing a utility blade and adding coats of sealant to a rack of knives, peeling off his black latex gloves whenever a customer pops in.

Michelin-starred Sons and Daughters has a full set of Garretson’s steak knives. Chef Michael Tusk is also a big collector and supporter – it was partly late-night discussions about antique knives with Tusk in the Quince kitchen that inspired Garretson to leave the restaurant trade and pursue his passion for knives full-time. Garretson is planning to launch two more lines of knives by January: a utilitarian collection – with no bolster and that isn’t hand-finished, making it more affordable – and a Japanese-inspired contemporary line. “Town Cutler is for everyone – home cooks, professionals–anyone that wants a really good knife,” he says. “It’s the last knife that you’re ever going to buy.”

How to visit
Town Cutler knives cost from $140 (￡107). Town Cutler is found at 1005 Bush Street, San Francisco and open 10.30am-6pm, closed Sundays.