About

Kako US is a small publisher based in Seattle, Washington. We started in 2019 after our founder, a former line cook, grew tired of vague knife reviews that never mentioned actual cutting tests. We order Japanese kitchen knives, whetstones, and cookware from US retailers and test them in our Ballard test kitchen. We do not accept free products for review. Every product is bought at retail with our own funds. Our team of three editors writes all reviews, and we publish our testing notes alongside each score. We focus on the kako-us niche: Japanese cutting tools and cookware adapted for American kitchens. Our reviews include fit checks, packaging notes, edge retention timing, and comparison tables. We update reviews when products change. We are not a big media company; we are a desk of three people who cook and sharpen every day.

Reading our coverage

Knife comparisons center on cutting effort, blade geometry and edge retention; whetstone and cookware findings provide the wider kitchen context for the tools US cooks use together.