I second karnaknives' suggestion to get a Tojiro DP (VG10 steel) knife or knife set, with some caveats.
If you have never used before quality kitchen knives, there are two major things you should expect to learn when you upgrade:
1. You have to relearn how to cut with the new knives.
The softer Chinese or German stainless steels you have likely encountered until now dull quickly and you have to exert more force to cut, chop etc.
They are also more forgiving to abuse.
You won't need so much effort to cut with the harder and sharper VG10 blade, and you should avoid slamming the edge into the cutting board.
You will also need a more edge friendly cutting board: avoid bamboo, glass, stone, use wooden, plastic or rubber ones.
Some people say that even teak cutting boards are not good due to the high silica content in the wood.
Maple, cherry, walnut, rubberwood, beech are all OK, the softer "acacia" (actually monkey pod wood, not true acacia) and hinoki (Japanese cypress) are even more edge friendly.
Olive wood might be too hard, but I don't have experience with it, so maybe someone can comment on it is good or not for harder blades.
With the sharper and harder knives your cutting technique will shift from hacking and hard chopping to slicing and finer chopping.
2. All knives will dull with use, the quality blades will do so slower.
You have to learn to sharpen and hone/strop to maintain the sharpness.
Harder steels are easier to sharpen on quality water stones, than on oil stones.
Taz, a member with extensive knowledge and professional sharpening skills can give you excellent advice what stones to get and how to use and care for them.
He gave me some nice advise in another recent thread here. There are other very knowledgeable members too who can help you with excellent advice.
VG10 as treated by Tojiro is not the most difficult steel to sharpen, but not the easiest either.
What might be easy for karnaknives might be somewhat challenging for someone who did not sharpen harder steels before.
Of course once you learn it, it won't be difficult, but don't expect an easy stroll in the park the very first time.
All that said, the Tojiro VG10 is not some super-hard steel, which would require grueling efforts to sharpen, but with quality sharpening and stropping accessories and some modest learning it will reward you with a great edge.
I just recently got my first true Japanese knives, among them 3 Tojiro DP VG10 knives: a 210 mm gyuto, a 180 mm petty and a 120 mm petty.
They are much better than the soft cheap stainless knives I've used until now, and even better than the Victorinox chef knife I got a couple of years ago.
If you are leaning on hard on your knives and prefer to continue to do so, you might want to get the Victorinox rather than the Tojiro.
The Victorinox has a thin blade and is pretty tough, but won't hold its edge so long as the Tojiro. However that might not be a big issue if you are cooking only occasionally.
It will hold an edge for a reasonably long time. Unlike the Tojiro, it responds well to steeling.
Somewhat in between the Victorinox and the Tojiro DP VG10 there is a simple yet excellent knife offered by Chef Knives To go:
The Richmond Artifex II gyuto.
It has a stainless BD1N nitrogen steel blade and G10 bolsterless handle. It has similar hardness to the Tojiro VG10, but it is easier to sharpen and is tougher.
It's edge holding is between that of the Victorinox and the Tojiro steels, closer to the Tojiro one.
It has a simple utilitarian design, with the blade being the main focus. I like it a lot.
I am not a knife or steel expert, but I formed some opinions regarding the edge holding and what it means for me regarding my expectations.
As I understand it (and I might be wrong) and edge can deteriorate due to
- abrasive wear (micro-chipping), my first association would be cardboard or carpet cutting;
- rolling, and
- corrosion.
Cooking rarely involves processing very abrasive ingredients, but increased abrasion will occur when the edge slides into the cutting board.
Rolling is more typical for softer and tougher stainless steel.
Corrosion will affect significantly carbon steel edges if they are not wiped down after cutting, especially if cutting acidic ingredients.
Based on all this for cooking knives I prefer (but not exclusively) either fully stainless knives, or ones with stainless cladding around the carbon steel core.
As a home cook I also do not process tons of ingredients at a time, so my expectations for edge holdings are not extremely high.
My usual cutting involves both slicing and chopping, so I prefer a sharp yet still tough edge and steel, which means a "workhorse" type of knife as opposed to a "laser".
Among the Western knives the Victorinox is thin enough to cut well, yet its softer German steel is very tough and forgiving.
The Richmond Artifex II is even tougher and has a better edge holding.
The Tojiro keeps a good working edge even longer, but it's slightly more delicate, if sharpened at the more acute edges the VG10 can take.
Of course, you can always buy more expensive Japanese knives with ever increasing quality of edge thinness/sharpness, edge holding, fit & finish etc., but from simply functional point of view an average home cook's needs are more than well covered with either one of the above 3 knives.
Finally, I suggest to consider a Chinese vegetable cleaver/chef knife in addition to a European-style chef knife.
You can get a decent quality cheap ones from Asian stores, the Wok Shop or other internet sites. For 20-40 dollars you can get a very usable tool, which will speed up processing vegetables a lot. I like the Kin Lih Taiwan-made slicer (sold as 'Traditional Chinese Kitchen Vegetable Cleaver Knife 7 Inch By TLA' on Amazon), but you can get decent from the Shi Ba Zi or Dengjia brans too.
They come in a variety of thicknesses: the 1.5-2.5 mm ones are vegetable slicers, the 3-4 mm ones are suitable to chop chicken bones too, and the thicker ones are butcher's tools for hacking through bones. Of course, you can always buy more expensive cleavers, but with a cheap one you can figure out if you like them at all in the first place.
A great piece of advice.
