MAC MTH-80 review: twelve years on the line

I bought my first MAC in 2014, on a tip from a Thai sous chef in a Soho kitchen who told me — without elaboration — that it was the only blade he’d ever owned twice. He meant it: he had two of them, in case one ever got nicked. Twelve years later I have only ever owned one, and I’ve cut everything in this kitchen with it.

This is the knife that made me stop spending money on knives.

The blade

What separates the MTH-80 from a Wüsthof or a Henckels — the German shapes most home cooks default to — is the steel and the geometry. The core is VG-10, a Japanese stainless that takes a sharper edge than European steels and holds it longer. The grind is 15° per side rather than the German 20°, which means the food parts more cleanly and you do less work to get through it.

The blade is 2.5mm thick at the spine. A Wüsthof Classic is 4mm. You wouldn’t think a millimetre and a half makes a difference until you’ve spent twenty minutes brunoise-ing a shallot and noticed that the thinner blade isn’t fighting the food the way the heavier one does. The thinner the blade, the more the food behaves like food. That sounds precious, written down. It isn’t, in the kitchen.

The handle

It’s pakka wood — laminated hardwood impregnated with resin — and it’s the most boring part of the knife by a mile. It’s not pretty. It’s not warm. It does, however, sit in the hand the way a hammer sits, which is to say correctly, every time. The bolster is half-tang and curved, so a pinch grip lands on metal rather than wood. The balance point is right where your thumb meets your forefinger. After ten hours of prep, your wrist still works.

I’ve watched plenty of younger cooks buy expensive Japanese knives with octagonal magnolia handles because they look beautiful. They look beautiful for about a week, until the wood swells from a wet hand and the geometry stops working. The MTH-80 is ugly and right.

What it’s not

It’s not a chopper. The spine is too thin to lever a chicken backbone or split a butternut. For that, the Wüsthof Classic Ikon is on a separate magnet on my rack, and I reach for it twice a week. The MAC is the eight-hour-shift knife. The Wüsthof is the brute.

It’s also not a knife you can be lazy with. The thin blade chips if you twist it through bone, the carbon in the steel rusts if you leave it wet on a board, and the dishwasher will eat it. None of this is a problem if you remember it’s a tool, not an appliance.

After twelve years

The factory edge lasted me about six months of restaurant use. Once that went, I bought the Shapton Pro 1000/6000 and learnt to sharpen on a wet stone in twenty minutes. Once a month, ten minutes, the edge resets to where I can split a tomato skin with the blade’s own weight. There’s no other tool I own that responds to ten minutes of attention with that level of upgrade.

The blade has lost maybe half a millimetre of width in twelve years. I will give this knife to my daughter when she leaves home, and she will sharpen it for another forty.

The MAC is the eight-hour-shift knife. The Wüsthof is the brute.

Should you buy one?

If you cook three nights a week and want one knife to do 90% of it — yes. The £155 is roughly what a half-decent Wüsthof costs. The MAC outperforms it on every metric except heft, and heft you don’t actually want when you’re working at speed. The only reason not to buy one is if you’re going to leave it in the sink overnight. In which case, please, buy something else and let this one rest.

The 8″ MTH-80 is the right size for almost everyone. There’s a 9.5″ for tall people with big boards; if you’re under six foot or your kitchen counter is normal-sized, ignore it. Bigger blades are not better blades — they’re just bigger.

Where to buy

Direct from MAC’s UK distributor. Amazon UK lists them but the supply chain has had counterfeits in 2023; pay the extra £10 and buy from a knife specialist. Mine came from Borough Kitchen in Hampstead and has the original receipt taped to the back of the box.