D0 you have a chef knife you would recommend for $200 or less Patriot?
Yes! and I don't even have to think about this recommendation for more than 10 seconds because they're so good for the money. Also, I'm biased toward Japanese kitchen knifes because of their center balance, handles, thin blades and shallow cutting angles.
The
Miyabi Mizu and the Miyabi Artisan depending on the style of handle you like. Both come in 8" traditional or 6" compact style. There are many other knives in the Miyabi line up but those are under $200 on sale and both are SG2 core sandwiched steels, which is about the best you can do at that price point. (Note: Neither are damascus but you get the fantastic steel).
The 8" is on sale now. One of my favorite kitchen knives regardless of price.
If you need/want a damasscus Chef knife, the Shun Premier is hard to beat for performance and looks with true, 69 layer damascus, VG-MAX, steel. It still very good steel and where the Miyabi is sharpened to about 10° per side, the Shun is sharpened to a 15-16° per side. It's a little more durable but will still cut through vegetables incredibly effortlessly. They often go on sale and Williams Sonoma has their exclusive "blond" colored, pakkawood handle version of the Premier Series, if you like that handle color. Cutlery and More is out of the 8" version at the moment,
but here's the 6".
The best value out the bunch would be the Enso HD Series, made by Yaxell knives. A 37 layer VG-10, 12° per side edge grind, hammered finish, with Japanese kanji hand engraved on the blade. This would be like the lengthy version of V54 engraving but on the knife blade.
These will go on sale for 2-3 times a year for $120
Here's a little video about how Yaxell knives are made and the Miyabi Factory is very similar in type of production but even smaller than Yaxell.
All that said, I think the Miyabi has tons of character and nearly unbeatable performance.
edIt: one of those shun links was broken but it's fixed now.