Recommend me a chef's knife

In fact, to a certain extent you can get away with using most cheap knives if you have proper sharpening facilities and don't mind doing it fairly often.

This is quite true. But once you loose the edge it's almost impossible to get back.

In work I use really shitty colour coded knives that get sharpened professionally every other day. I'd never take my nice knives into work.

At home I use Global, my favorite being my GF-33.