Do you eat Asian food with chopsticks?

[Windwalker]

@Montgomery Burns

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).

The problem with the scoop method is that stuff can often fall from the fork if you tilt it the wrong way. With chopsticks, you can have firm control all the way, if you want. I can’t imagine picking up pork ribs (the Chinese, bony style) with a fork and being comfortable. To be fair, I only use the chopsticks to get the ribs from the communal dish to my bowl; from there, I use my 5-fingered utensils.

Fork clearly does have its advantages for certain dishes, including loose rice, corn and peas, and really soft tofu. They’ll usually bring you a serving spoon if you ask, though, and it’s easy enough to “drink” the food from your bowl (with chopstick help) once you get it there. Using the spoon to actually eat it from your bowl is also effective, obviously, but seems… barbaric.

[Jayn_Newell]

Part of it is just that it’s fun, and besides, if I’m at an Asian place the chopsticks are right there–a fork isn’t. I also find that it’s generally easier, especially for noodles of any sort, as I never really got the hang of twirling long pasta around a fork.

Granted, I also picked up how to use the things very easily, and there was never a whole lot of awkwardness for me. I know some people have a lot of trouble learning to use them.

[Student_Driver]

I’m another one who eats lots of foods with chopsticks, not just Asian. Most bite-sized foods are easier for me to eat with them; macaroni and cheese, steamed veggies, home fries, salads. Plus, I can keep packs of chopsticks at the lunchroom at work and no one steals them, so I’m always guaranteed to have utensils.

[levdrakon]

Yup, I use them even when I don’t have to. I learned to use them when I was young, but when I was in college I worked at an upscale Chinese Restaurant with all Okinawan chefs and they showed me the “right way” to hold & use chopsticks “like a man.” My graduate exam was to pick up a single grain of rice and not look like it was any effort. I passed. Now I love chopsticks and they’re pretty natural to me. I even ask for chopsticks in Thai restaurants even though they don’t use them, I guess.

[anu-la1979]

1. I eat with chopsticks because it’s fun. Also decreases the rate of shovelling since it requires I concentrate.

2. I eat rice and curries with a spoon but

3. I eat anything involving a chapati/indian flatbread with my hands as the entire point is to scoop with the bread. However, a spoon (or in an Indian restaurant, a fork) scoops as well as my hands but doesn’t get the turmeric under my fingernails.

So the answer is

a) I’m fastidious

b) I still approach food and eating with child like glee.

Hope that helps for your survey

[Patty_O_Furniture]

Chopsticks feel like an extension of my fingers. I feel like I’m eating with my fingers but my fingers aren’t getting all foody!

Besides, ever jab yourself in a dental filling with a fork? I just like to keep metal out of my mouth if at all possible. I also use those really broad, deep asian spoons even when eating plain old tomato soup.

If I need to eat anything (western food or otherwise) I always reach for chopsticks first.

[sachertorte]

@minlokwat

I eat Cheetos this way. You know the puffier kind. I pour some Cheetos into a bowl, use chopsticks and in that way I don’t get that orange, powdery residue on my fingers.

P.S. I am not a crackpot.

I do this too.
Also with cheese-flavored popcorn.

I’d use chopsticks with buttered popcorn too to avoid the greasy fingers, but I don’t like buttered popcorn.

[John_Mace]

I also cook with chopsticks a lot. If you have a bunch of things to turn over in a pan, it’s often easier to do so with chopsticks-- especially if you don’t want to pierce them. Tongs work similarly, but I find the chopstick easier in instances where the things to be turned aren’t too big.

They also make great tools for fishing things out of the garbage disposal that shouldn’t be in there-- like beer bottle caps or pieces of aluminum foil.

[coffinjumper]

@minlokwat

I eat Cheetos this way. You know the puffier kind. I pour some Cheetos into a bowl, use chopsticks and in that way I don’t get that orange, powdery residue on my fingers.

P.S. I am not a crackpot.

This may be the most brilliant idea I’ve heard in years, I’m totally going to do that!

[Miss_Mapp]

a. It’s fun.
b. It’s a skill that takes some practice for persons of cultural backgrounds where chopsticks are not the norm, and there’s a certain amount of pride in the accomplishment of eating this way and not getting food all over the place.
c. I like to show off holding shrimp by the tails with chopsticks and nibbling down without dropping them.
d. It’s part of food experience, like using the correct forks and spoons at a formal dinner.

[Miss_Mapp]

@sachertorte

I do this too.
Also with cheese-flavored popcorn.

When I taught my Mom and Dad how to use chopsticks, we used popcorn–carmel-coated, and orange cheesy, and yellow “butter” flavors from one of those big holiday tubs–for practice.

[LVBoPeep]

Just checking in to say basically the same thing…

Non-Asian, I eat with them because its fun and tastes better. I have really good childhood memories about learning to eat Chinese food with chopsticks and I definitely lose alot of enjoyment if I’m forced to eat most Asian food with a fork.

[ShibbOleth]

@Pullet

Thai food is traditionally eaten with the fingers, although the fork got popularized quickly after contact with Europeans (according to my dad, who lived there for the first 16 years of his life, but he’s been wrong before).

Thai food is typically eaten with a fork and spoon, but you use the fork to push the food onto the spoon. Fingers are still used for some dishes, like papaya salad and sticky rice. Sticky rice doesn’t really work well with forks, spoons or chopsticks.

Thais do use chopsticks for the large bowls of noodle soup (which you almost never see on the menues of Thai restaurants here).

[Gangster_Octopus]

I have tried and tried to use chopsticks and I just cannot do it.

[MikeG]

I eat a LOT of Chinese and Thai food, they are my two favorite cuisines. Thai food I eat with a fork and spoon becasue all my Thai friends eat that way. Same for Chinese. I tend to frequent places where English is practically non existent and/or I am the only white guy there. It just feels right and good rice is easier to eat with chopsticks and a bowl rather than a spoon all glopped together with the sauce.

[Bosstone]

@John Mace

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.

I can’t speak from experience, but I have been taught that when taking from a communal bowl, you’re supposed to flip the chopsticks around and use the thicker ends that aren’t used to eat.

And I most certainly do eat Asian food with chopsticks. I learned when I was a teenager, so it’s hardly like one needs to learn the skill as a child. As others say, it makes for a better experience; I get takeout from the local Japanese shop when I want to have a leisurely, enjoyable lunch rather than scarfing a sandwich.

[lizardling]

I still remember being one of two people (both Asian - Indo-Chinese and Filipino respectively) who asked for chopsticks at a PF Chang’s in Colorado plus a bowl for shoveling the rice in.

PF Chang’s is VERY American Chinese. Actually, I’d be shocked if it didn’t skew to more the American idea of what Chinese is. :dubious:

I eat rice Chinese style when a bowl’s available for the most part – pick up bowl, shovel rice in, scrape last bits in. Nom nom nom. Sushi gets fingers or chopsticks. And I was a bit surprised at a local Thai place that provided chopsticks, so yeah, fork and spoon for Thai for the most part.

What **Bosstone ** says about flipping chopsticks around is generally true, unless the group is all related and doesn’t care about food based cooties.

[Polerius]

@Broomstick

I learned to use chopsticks as a child. I use them with almost as much ease as knife, fork, and spoon. Much Asian food is suited to eating with chopsticks. So why not use chopsticks?

A lot of Western food can be eaten with chopsticks (spaghetti, chicken nuggets, tortellini, etc). Do you eat those with chopsticks or western utensils?

To me, it should be about what utensil is best suited for a particular food, not how the natives of that particular food choose to eat it.

So, if you eat chopstick-suited foods with chopsticks and fork-and-knife-suited foods with a fork and knife, without regard to what the origin of the food is, I would get that.

But, to decide to use chopsticks on Asian food and fork-and-knife on western food, regardless of the chopstick-worthiness of the food, that I don’t get.

[Polerius]

[QUOTE=Noone Special]
[list=1][li]It’s part of the eating experience. I wish I got more chances to participate in really authentic “table” settings, but most of the time, using the cuisine-appropriate utensils has to do.[/li][/QUOTE]

From the many responses, it seems that one of the main reasons is “it’s fun”, and it’s part of trying to have an “authentic” eating experience.

The way I see it is as if you went to a country where everyone dressed in Chinese clothes whenever they went to a Chinese restaurant, or whenever they ate Chinese at home.

If you grow up and do this all your life, and everyone else does so also, then yes, I guess it would feel strange to show up at a Chinese restaurant wearing western clothes or eating Chinese at home wearing western clothes.

I would understand the attitude, but, clearly, someone that is a foreigner to the above country would find it a bit strange to change clothes just to eat food from a particular country.

That’s somewhat how I see the use of chopsticks by westerners when they eat Asian food. It’s part of the experience, they’ve always done it, and everyone else does it, and it feels weird not to do it, but when you get to the bottom of it, the utensil you use need not reflect the culture the food came from, just as the clothes you are wearing don’t need to, either.

[QUOTE]
[li]It’s actually easier. Chinese food is designed to be eaten with chopsticks.[/li][/QUOTE]

First, I always use a fork, and I am just as dexterous at picking up any Chinese food as any Asian or non-Asian chopstick user, so it’s hard to see the use of chopsticks by westerners being based on an advantage in ease of eating Chinese food.

Second, from what my Chinese former roommate and some Chinese friends tell me, Chinese people do not use chopsticks to pick up rice from the plate and carry it to their mouths, like westerners who use chopsticks do. They put the bowl of rice up to their mouths and use the chopsticks as a shovel to scoop the rice into their mouths. So, it’s not like chopsticks are “ideally designed” for Chinese food, since you can use any utensil to just shove rice from your bowl to your mouth.

In fact, a Chinese friend today mentioned that, when he eats with other Chinese people, where it is considered OK to shove rice into your mouth, he uses chopsticks, but when he eats in the company of westerners, where shoving rice into your mouth is not considered very polite table manners, he uses a fork, because, for him, it is easier to carry rice from the plate to the mouth using a fork, than using chopsticks. So, again, I’m skeptical of the use of chopsticks “because they are ideally suited to Chinese food”.

[pulykamell]

@Polerius

So, again, I’m skeptical of the use of chopsticks “because they are ideally suited to Chinese food”.

OK, but using the Japanese nigiri sushi example, it certainly seems much easier to me to either use fingers or chopsticks than a fork. I can’t think of a way to dip my sushi fish-side first into the soy with a fork that doesn’t involve several steps or the complete destruction of my sushi rice.