Not every cook wants a full-size chef's knife (and not every task requires one). Goyon-Chazeau's Le Grand Tradi is the bigger sibling of the P'tit Tradi, and what makes it unusual is the blade: just 12.5cm long, but tall like a chef's knife, so your knuckles clear the board as you chop. Think of it as a chef's knife for smaller hands, or what a Japanese knife shop would call a petty. It's our pick for chopping herbs: long enough to rock through a pile of parsley, small enough to stay quick and easy to control. It has the same flat stop in front of the handle as the P'tit Tradi, a natural place to rest a finger for control. The wooden handle comes in ebony with sapwood, olive or walnut (from top to bottom in the photo), so you can match your P'tit Tradi or not.
Use it for slicing shallots, trimming chicken thighs, halving citrus, cutting a wedge of cheese, or slicing steak at the table.
The blade is Sandvik 14C28N, the same Swedish stainless steel as the P'tit Tradi. The steel is fine-grained, so it sharpens to an edge like a Japanese knife, but it's tough like a German one and won't chip easily. When it starts to dull, give it a few passes on a honing rod or fine stone and it's back. It runs full tang through a riveted handle, so with a little care, this is a knife built to last decades.
Goyon-Chazeau is run by Magali and Vincent Soucille, the third generation of the family, from a small workshop just outside Thiers, the heart of French knife-making for centuries. P'tit Tradi owners kept asking for a larger version for the jobs a paring knife can't handle, so the workshop made one.
Hand wash only. Made in France.
12.5cm blade, 23.5cm overall.
