Stailess or carbon doesnt matter IMO.
The individual knife matters. The geometry, the heat treat, etc. My nr 1 is shiro, nr 2 is r2 stainless. The former is medium thickness for a gyuto, the latter is an ultra laser.
My recommendation is to get a gyuto rather than a western style chef's knife and just avoid bone/frozen with it and use a beater on the latter. 200 is about the entry price for a decent one, IMO. I like Wakui for not too much money. I'd stick to the 240mm length; this gives you adequate height without being too long. For me 210s are almost all too short and 270s tend to be too long. Also IME a lot of kanto area knives run long so 270s start pushing yanagiba territory for length.
One thing to note is most good knives are ground and sharpened asymmetrically and require some skill to sharpen. I really despise system sharpeners for these knives even though they can produce astonishingly good results on pocket knives or western knives. I have tried knives that had sharpness beyond what I can do by hand (which is not too shabby if I may stroke my own ego) but they steer noticeably after coming off a wickedsharp or whatever. I stongly prefer Japanese natural stones and my personal favorite that I use a ton ton ton is a shobudani that's capable of porduicing edges that rival 8k synthetics.
The individual knife matters. The geometry, the heat treat, etc. My nr 1 is shiro, nr 2 is r2 stainless. The former is medium thickness for a gyuto, the latter is an ultra laser.
My recommendation is to get a gyuto rather than a western style chef's knife and just avoid bone/frozen with it and use a beater on the latter. 200 is about the entry price for a decent one, IMO. I like Wakui for not too much money. I'd stick to the 240mm length; this gives you adequate height without being too long. For me 210s are almost all too short and 270s tend to be too long. Also IME a lot of kanto area knives run long so 270s start pushing yanagiba territory for length.
One thing to note is most good knives are ground and sharpened asymmetrically and require some skill to sharpen. I really despise system sharpeners for these knives even though they can produce astonishingly good results on pocket knives or western knives. I have tried knives that had sharpness beyond what I can do by hand (which is not too shabby if I may stroke my own ego) but they steer noticeably after coming off a wickedsharp or whatever. I stongly prefer Japanese natural stones and my personal favorite that I use a ton ton ton is a shobudani that's capable of porduicing edges that rival 8k synthetics.
