No, you are not. You are brilliant. Why has no one ever suggested this to me before?
Chopsticks for noodles, Japanese food and the occasional Chinese restaurant meal.But for most everyday dishes I’m a one-spoon kind of person, and I use only one plate when eating. I’m Asian, but living in Southeast Asia. They use chopsticks way more often in East Asia.
I always use chopsticks (or fingers when appropriate) with Asian food. The food is made to be eaten that way. Not to mention, using chopsticks forces me to eat a little more slowly and that’s always a good thing. Above all, they’re fun to use too. 
People raised eating primarily with chopsticks switch to fork and knife if eating Western-style, so why would it be unusual for someone raised eating primarily with fork and knife to prefer chopsticks for appropriate Asian cuisines?
Some foods are better suited to eating with chopsticks - the noodles in Vietnamese pho, for example, are just too slippery to manage with a fork and spoon, but can easily be slurped up with a pair of chopsticks for guidance. Even the bean sprouts would be pretty hard to fish out using a fork, but aren’t a challenge at all with chopsticks.
On a similar note, I eat Ethiopian in the traditional fashion, using pieces of flatbread (injera) as an edible scoop. Cutlery would actually impair my enjoyment of the dishes, because I’d end up eating stew and injera separately rather than in one bite as intended.
This is where I disagree. The food doesn’t taste the same either way. When eating with a fork, you do experience some of the metallic quality of the fork. It’s the same with other utensils. When eating East Asian food, I use chopsticks. When eating South Asian food, I use my hands. I consider it an essential component of tasting the food properly.
I am non-Asian, although I am often mistaken for having some Asian blood. I learned to eat with chopsticks before I learned to eat with a fork, and for the first few years of feeding myself only used chopsticks.
When I eat Asian foods, I use chopsticks mainly because it is easier (for me) to do so. Most Asian foods are really easier to pick up with chopsticks than a fork, and most non-Asian foods are all but impossible to eat with chopsticks.
When we go out to the Asian joints around here, I tend to grab a pair of chopsticks or the server recognises me and gets them for me. I own a very nice enameled pair for use at home and my daughter has a couple of very nice wooden ones that she uses when I cook Asian foods at home. My son is just now learning to use chopsticks and my husband varies as to whether he feels like using chopsticks or not. It’s just one of those things at our house.
Count me with the “It doesn’t taste the same on a fork” crowd. I’ll use chopsticks for everything but soup and yogurt. I have packs of the cheapo chopsticks at work and at home. Very useful items.
Every restaurant that serves Chinese food but does not offer chopsticks, in my experience, has been disgusting. Not that offering chopsticks is a guarantee of a more authentic or better meal, but not having chopsticks at all is indicative of food along the lines of sweet and sour pork that is breaded and deep fried. Eeeew. That’s not Chinese food.
I agree with most everything that’s been posted about why I do it: it tastes different (you can taste the metal in a fork or the wood in chopsticks), it’s fun and part of the experience, it’s a habit and it feels more natural to eat that sort of food that way, and finally, why not do it if you know how to use them? I mean, I could eat my mom’s chili with a fork (she makes it really thick) and sop up the leftover soup with a piece of bread–but I eat it with a spoon and crackers. Same sort of thing. I even buy packs of chopsticks at the grocery store to use with some dishes I make at home.
(Oh, and I am not Asian.)
What kind of soup? I don’t know about the rest of Asia, but in Japan, soup is usually served in small wooden (lacqureware) bowls. You sip the soup directly from the bowl, and use the chopsticks to pick out any solids in the soup. Same with noodle soups served in larger bowls (usually ceramic). Personally it feels wrong to eat these with a spoon; it’s as if the feel of metal on my lips detracts from the taste.
But I usually eat chinese food with a spoon. At least the typical Americanized chinese food which consists of a plate of rice with gooey stuff on it. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I make something similar myself all the time. And eat it with a spoon.)
I sometimes eat popcorn that’s been heavily seasoned/flavored with chopsticks; if I’m not using them for noodles/Asian-style foods, it’s because I don’t want messy hands with fork unfriendly foods.
I prefer the non-chopsticks flavors, thank you very much.
I learned to use chopsticks when I was at university, and I often eat Asian food with chopsticks just to keep in practice. Also, many places, you only get chopsticks (plus one of those soup scoops if you’re getting soup).
Moved from IMHO to CS.
I don’t get this business about not using chopsticks to eat soup. I eat mostly Asian style soups, and the best way to eat them is with a spoon and chopsticks. The spoon is for the broth, and the chopsticks are for the stuff in the soup. I’d never be able eat udon, for example, with a spoon unless I broke them up into tiny pieces.
I’m not picking on you Litoris because you aren’t the only person to say or imply this but are you sure you are using a fork correctly? I mean, to pick up food with a fork you a) slide fork under food and lift or b) stab food with fork and lift. I can’t see how picking up food with chopsticks can be any easier. Now it may be just as easy for you to eat with chopsticks but easier? That doesn’t make sense to me.
I first had Asian food when I was in my 20’s and I’m a fork-user all the way (and it doesn’t bother me).
Well, take for example, a piece of nigiri sushi (what do you know, an asian food), which is generally going to involve a delicate clump of rice. Trying to slide your fork under that would probably just scoot the whole thing around and eventually just damage it. Stabbing it would be right out, you would destroy it for sure. Finally, if you did manage to pick it up, it would be perched on top of your fork, and this would make it difficult to dip it in soy sauce. Or to gently pinch off a dab of wasabi from the wasabi clump and then gently smear it on top of the sushi. All these actions would probably be much easier to perform with chopsticks, and this is really just one example (there’s also that piece of lettuce that is stuck to the bottom of your salad bowl – try sliding a fork under that. OTOH, very easy to pinch up and lift with chopsticks).
Having said that, I once saw a Hong Kong movie (“SPL”) in which Simon Yam clearly eats his noodles with a plastic fork, IIRC. So, it’s not like it’s written in stone that asian foods demand chopsticks in this day and age.
I’d agree it’s easier as well. Udon noodles being one clear example already given. With a chopped-meat-and-rice-type dish, chopsticks give me more control, at least with one hand. With two hands (and a knife-fork combination) I agree that chopsticks and knife-fork are as easy. With one hand, chopsticks all the way. With one hand, using a fork, if you try scooping things up, rice starts moving away from you, unless you have pressure from the other end to push food onto your fork. With chopsticks, I could pick up single grains of rice if I wanted to. Could you do that with a fork?
I wish I could say chopsticks slow me down and let me savor and appreciate the food more, but I’m afraid I eat just as fast either way. Oh, and non-Asian for the record.
I think your typical Chinese food could be just as easily eaten with a spoon as with chopsticks, even if a fork might be little more precarious.
But isn’t it also a matter of hygiene? When you eat Chinese food, you are often sharing from the same serving dish, and you pick off the meat/vegetables and place then on your rice in the rice bowl, then eat out of that bowl. You place the food in your mouth, but you don’t like the chopsticks (or at least you’re not supposed to) like you would a fork.
In most Asian restaurants in the US, serving spoons are given for the shared dishes, but I think most Chinese often use their own chopsticks to pick up stuff from the communal dishes. I tend to do it the Chinese way, preferring to use my chopsticks to get the stuff and put it in my rice bowl. It’s much easier to eat Chinese food with chopsticks if you use a rice bowl rather than a plate.
…especially if you want to dip it fish side down into the soy. Try doing that with a fork!