Thanks Christina. I love it as well. My wife and I both love natural materials. When we remodeled the kitchen, my wife found and picked out the countertop.

Ironically, the knives closest to you are Henckels. :-) I just purchased that block because I wanted something in bamboo that could hold a fair number of knives and that is what I was able to find.

However, I've been replacing the Henckels with Shun knives (there are some in the block as well) which I like much better. Actually in a German knife, I like the Messermeister Meridian Elite.

The Shun is really only a mid-range Japanese knife, but I'm happy with it because the price is about the same as the German knives but they use harder steel with a finer cutting angle. That equates to better cutting.

So, eventually, I'll proably end up with all Shun knives and a single 8 or 10" Messermeister Meridian Elite chef for heavy duty work.

Here are a few Shun pics. Most are only so-so, but you can really zoom in on the top one to get a good feel what the Shun knives are about.

I found Fred at foodieforums.com to really be informative about Japanese cooking knives. This old review is still pretty cool. On sharpening. Intro to American style Japanese cooking knives.

Here's a few pictures of the remodel which has some detail pics of the granite under different lighting condtions (it's hard to get the color quite right). If you are curious, the whole story is here.

Off topic, I know. But at least I now feel Equipped To Cook (tm). :-)

-john