This Chef's Favourite Spoon: Gray Kunz

Chefs like spoons as much as they like knives—there, I said it, the secret is out—different spoons for checking seasoning, stirring, plating, basting, flipping, making a quenelle, sauce drizzling, or swooping puree across a dish. What if, like Sauron’s ring forged in Mount Doom, there was one spoon to rule them all?

1991 — Lespinasse, New York City, Gray Kunz at the stove producing some of the best food, and future chefs, the world will taste. Chef Kunz developed what he considered to be the perfect spoon with a 9” handle and 2 ½ tablespoon bowl, ideal for butter basting, saucing, and plating. Legend tells that when he first had the spoons developed, only currently employed cooks could use them. The spoons were numbered and signed in and out; when you left Kunz’s kitchen, you gave your spoon back.

Luckily, someone somewhere convinced someone else that the rest of us deserve better spoons and they started creeping across North America in the late 90s. When I was a young cook in Ottawa, pouring over Art Culinaire back issues, reading the food section in the Times and working hours that I couldn’t dream of pulling anymore, owning one of these was a rite of passage; only the best cooks owned one. Friends visiting New York to stage always came back with a Kunz spoon. One chef I worked for kept his in a locked drawer; it only made appearances during service and was never touched by anyone else.

The same thought and craft that goes into a hand-made kitchen knife is apparent; the brushed stainless steel and delicately stamped “Gray Kunz”, the narrow balanced handle, and slightly tapered edges direct your demi-glace just so. Just holding onto it feels powerful, the weight in your hand tells you that this is a tool destined for great things.