Opinel Le Petit Chef Set

We all know some of the best cooking techniques come from the French and we are pleased to present the perfect introduction to kitchen safety straight from the kitchens of France.

Carefully designed for teaching children how to cook in total safety, the set is complete with one stainless steel round-tipped knife, a vegetable peeler, and a plastic finger guard. With learning rings to position young hands for perfect slicing and peeling, this set is just the thing for the growing "petit chef". With varnished beechwood handles on the knife and peeler, the finger protector serves as both a safety measure and learning tool, guiding young hands to adopt the "claw" position while cutting - an essential kitchen practice and secret of the masters!

From France, the "Le Petit Chef" kitchen set comes to us from Opinel, a name synonymous with the highest quality cutlery.

Knife measures 8" x 1 3/4", Peeler 5" x 2 1/8", Finger Protector 2 3/8" x 2 1/8". The Opinel company was founded in 1895 by Joseph Opinel.  It all began with his now-iconic wooden handled pocket-knife, which has been manufactured ever since in the town of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne in the Savoie region of France.  Originally sold as a working man's knife, an Opinel knife has become emblematic of French culture, with Pablo Picasso reportedly using one of the company's knives as a sculpting tool.

The construction of Joseph Opinel's famous pocket knife is very simple, consisting of only four components: the blade, the wooden handle, a metal band with a rivet on which the blade pivots, and a locking collar that holds the blade in place when the knife is open - preventing the blade from accidentally closing in use.

The Opinel knife has long been a feature of everyday French culture. In fact the word Opinel has even entered the French language, with its recent inclusion in the Collins–Robert French–English Dictionary. In 1985 the Victoria and Albert Museum in London published its “Good Design Guide”, a collection of the “100 most beautiful products in the world”. One of those products is the Opinel knife. It is also exhibited in New York's Museum of Modern Art as a masterpiece of design, alongside other industrial objects which have defied time. The simple but ingenious design, which has remained virtually unchanged for a century or more, is widely felt to have made the Opinel into a design classic.