Wooden Cutting Boards, made the old way

Quick guide: maple is the classic — light, hard, the professional kitchen standard. Walnut is the dark, handsome one that hides stains and flatters food. Cherry sits between, and mellows into a deeper amber with use. Olive wood is the character piece — dramatic Mediterranean grain, best for boards that serve as much as they cut. Bamboo is the budget-friendly workhorse. All take daily knife work; choose by the kitchen it's going to live in.

If meat, roasts, or juicy fruit are on the menu — yes, the groove earns its place, catching what would otherwise reach the counter. For bread, vegetables, and everyday prep, a flat board gives you the full surface. Plenty of kitchens run one of each; the flat board preps, the grooved board carves and rests.

Three habits, one rule. Hand wash with warm soapy water, stand it upright to dry, and rub in food-grade mineral oil about once a month, or when the wood starts looking thirsty. The one rule: never the dishwasher — heat and soaking crack wooden boards. Yours arrives already oiled, so care starts at "maintain," not "fix."

The traditional boards — maple, cherry, walnut, and standard olive wood — are joined from carefully matched panels, which is how quality boards have been built for centuries; trees simply don't come counter-wide, and slight panel variation is the signature of real wood, not a defect. The exception is our live edge olive wood line: each of those is one piece, bark edge and all, and no two are remotely alike.

The part of the tree it came from. Trunk wood carries that vivid, marbled grain across the whole surface — both faces, edge to edge. Branch wood, which is far cheaper and very common in olive boards, gives you grain on one side and plain, pale wood on the other, or a half-and-half face. We cut retail boards from the main trunk only, Grade A, no fillers — so the board looks like the photos from every angle. The full checklist is on our wood standards page.

Maple, cherry, and walnut boards are made in the USA from wood sourced at sustainable US and Canadian forestries. Olive wood boards we make from Mediterranean stock — Italy and Tunisia, where olive trees grow old enough for that grain. Bamboo is the one line produced abroad (bamboo doesn't grow here), built to a higher edge-grain standard than the flat-grain boards big-box stores carry.