Meet Chef Tamás (Tamás Várhalmi), a real head chef, and Gerzsi, his cartoon beaver apprentice.
🦫 Checked that the chef is real? He is. Now the beaver has a question.
Gerzsi works the front desk of this site, and he asks every visitor the same thing: are you shopping for yourself, or for someone who cooks? (His own kit is two front teeth and a carrot. Chef Tamás is working on that.) Pick a door:
- Giving a knife for Christmas: the Hoshanho 8″ High Carbon Chef Knife comes with a magnetic wooden sheath in the box, so it’s ready to wrap. Powder steel at 62 HRC, list price $61.98 when we checked on November 3.
- For a cook who carries their knives to work: a Pikore leather knife roll, made to order in small batches. The Chefs Knife Roll starts at $120, the Professional’s roll (3 to 16 slots) at $170, as listed on October 29.
- Just curious what a head chef cuts with? The knives Chef Tamás uses on his shifts (Rösle, Wüsthof, F. Dick and Kai) are listed in the 7-Knife Challenge, next to the seven budget knives he is putting through real service.
We haven’t had the Hoshanho knife or a Pikore roll in our kitchen yet; the details are the makers’. Chef Tamás read the Hoshanho spec sheet and worked out how many slots a roll needs. Affiliate links (Hoshanho and Pikore via Awin). Black Friday prices may be lower; tap for today’s price.
The chef
Tamás Várhalmi has spent 25 years in professional kitchens: à la carte restaurants, hotels and even the galley of a river cruise ship. He trained at cooking school, has cooked in Hungary, Austria, Germany and France, has worked in event and large-scale catering, and once ran his own business. He has been a head chef for more than ten years. Today he runs a restaurant kitchen with a daily menu and an à la carte menu, cooks for events and catering, writes weekly, monthly and special-occasion menus, and trains apprentice cooks. On a shift he leads a team of five to ten.
His home ground is hearty cooking: meats, grilling and roasting; soups, stocks and sauces; Hungarian and Central European classics like goulash and pörkölt; casseroles; and simple, honest cakes. Two rules run his kitchen. Nothing good gets thrown away (scraps become stock). And the result on the plate matters more than following a recipe to the letter.
What he does best: Hungarian cooking, above all pörkölt and soups; meat, grilling and steak; getting a lot of plates out fast and right; running the kitchen itself, from processes and purchasing to leading the team; and teaching apprentices.
In the press: Délmagyarország podcast, January 2026 (Hungarian) · LinkedIn
“For me, cooking is relaxation and creation at the same time. I like trying new flavors, and I’m happy to make dishes that bring people together.”
Chef Tamás
The beaver
Gerzsi is the apprentice. Beavers are nature’s builders. They choose their materials with care, waste nothing, and expect whatever they build to hold up. Gerzsi is eager and curious, and he still sometimes tries to prep carrots with his teeth. Chef Tamás is working on that. Gerzsi and his kitchen stories are made up and just for fun.
How we pick products
- Every factual claim is sourced. Specs come from the manufacturer; performance claims come from named independent testers, always linked.
- The chef’s notes are real. Anything marked as coming from Chef Tamás is his own professional experience, kept clearly separate from sourced test results. We never claim he tested a product he didn’t use.
- The funny stories are fiction. The beaver mishaps are made up to keep things light. The product facts never are.
- No paid placements. Brands can’t pay to be included or ranked.
- Illustrations, not photos. Our pictures are drawn. Product illustrations show the type of product, not the exact item; the buttons take you to the real one.
Some links on this site are affiliate links. See our Affiliate Disclosure for details.
Chef-picked. Beaver-approved.
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