Clothes don’t affect how you eat.
As for me, I eat out a lot. Generally speaking, the reason why I eat Asian food with chopsticks and western food with western utensils is because Olive Garden doesn’t keep a supply of chopsticks on hand for eating spaghetti, whereas Panda Express can usually be counted on to have them when I ask for them. I don’t have a non-disposable set at home or anything, I just get them for the meal when they’re available.
I dunno. Forks & spoons are tools, and certainly have their uses, but chopsticks, once you get used to them, feel like extensions to your own fingers and feel natural. It’s like eating with your fingers without getting your fingers dirty.
I can command a pair of chopsticks with ease and precision. I use to use them all the time but sometime about 6-8 years ago i stopped. I think it was something about the cheepo wood. All splintery and the drying effect on the pallet. I think what started it was my indulgence in Shushi. I read somewhere that my scraping of the chopstick together to remove the splinters was considered rude. Because a good place would not give you splintery chopsticks, or it is indicative to the habits of a person who frequented a place that had such peasant like utensils. I just quit using them with sushi and use my hands now. Fuck whoever gets offended at this point in my life. But the habit dropped. And now I mostly use a fork, spoon and knife.
And as far an authentic goes and using the correct utensil for flavor and whatnot is crazy talk. I disagree with it. Most ethic food I have been served in America is hardly authentic. It is americanized and thus I use an a standard American utensil if one is offered or easily available ie. buffet. If and when I goto an authentic place or one that gives it a fair go I will use chopsticks if they are good ones or if that is all they give me happily.
I have a few really nice pairs at home that I love to use. They feel good in the hand and in the mouth. A truly different experience.
Let us note Stephen Colbert eating lo mein this lovely evening.
While I would agree with your friend (myself being chinese-american), rice isn’t the only chinese food, you know. And it’s not just chinese people that use chopsticks. We’ve already given at least one example of a food that I feel is really not suited to western utensils. Another one, off the top of my head, might be the “shao lung bao,” which is a kind of dumpling with soup inside. You really need to pick those up gently, usually from the top, or else you will pierce it and ruin it. I’m sure there are lots more. There was also the point about forks often having a metallic taste.
In the end, this is probably a silly thing to argue about. Firstly, note that all asian cultures have always employed some sort of spoon, as far as I know. So there is overlap there. Knives, not so much, because most of the food doesn’t need to be cut once served. So really it’s whether you want to use chopsticks or stick to a fork. And no one is forcing anyone to use any kind of utensil, but for those who don’t like to use chopsticks, it’s simply not true that a fork will be equally utile an all cases.
I can’t believe I just wrote that much just talking about eating utensils.
This is not exactly true about the shovelling part. That’s more peasant behavior or teenage boys. City people in a lot of parts of China including Shanghai where I live, will usually put the rice bowl in their left hand, and use chopsticks to pick up a bite size portion of rice and bring it to their mouth. It’s not common to see a city slicker put the rice bowl to their mouth and shovel it in. It’s not rare, no one would bat an eye but certainly not the prevalent practice.
as for your friend, I’d call bullshit on that unless he’s got some wierd view of what Western people expect (which is certainly possible.)
Sure, I would think it wierd if someone that doesn’t use chopsticks well, eating in a Panda Kitchen or worse american chinese joint, insists on getting a pair of chopsticks when these are normally servered, then exaggeratingly and painfully stabs the doo doo plate portions and eats it like an ice cream cone while loudly proclaiming it “tastes” so much better this way. that deserves a slap down and I would find it obnoxious beyond belief. But I’ve eaten as many dinners with chopsticks in my entire life as I have with silver ware, and would find it freaking strange to go out for Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Viet Namese/Singaporean et al and not have chopsticks available. Frankly, it would be an abomidation.
I stopped using chopsticks at chinese restarants when I went to one in Washington DC with two taiwanese friends and another american like myself. The taiwanese women used forks, we americans used the chopsticks. I felt pretensious using them ever since, like it was some cute american silliness, like sweet and sour pork.
I eat sushi with my fingers.
Now my Sinaporean sister-in-law lives near me, and she uses them; and I’m a little older, and no longer care so much if I appear gauche to some people, so I think I’ll go back.
However, how do you use them for long noodles? Can someone fight my ignorance?
Pick up a stickload of noodles and slurp them into your mouth. You can’t wind noodles around chopsticks like you do with the fork/spoon/pasta thing, but with chopsticks you can grab the noodles between the two sticks so that they don’t slide off. Try that with a fork and the noodles will slither off the fork and drop back into the bowl.
I use a fork & knife at the table only when the food requires additional processing before it can be eaten, such as whole steaks that need to be cut up. But I rarely eat steak at home anyway.
Well, I don’t eat spaghetti or tortellini at all as they seemed to be invariably served with tomato sauce of some sort which would make me seriously ill, and chicken nuggets I eat with my fingers. But perhaps that is nitpicking the question.
If I tell you I have also used chopsticks when cooking to manipulate food in the pot or the frying pan even when the food is definitely “western” would that answer the spirit of your question? (Should I mention I own two woks?)
How about convenience? If a meal is served with chopsticks I am comfortable enough that I feel no need to order a fork. If it is served with a fork I can eat it that way, too.
But with so many foods that could, really, be eaten with either what does it matter? Should my eating utensils be dictated based upon whether or not I possess an epicanthic fold? Well, perhaps if my eyelids were involved in eating! I don’t understand why people have issues with this in the first place.
Not a crackpot at all. I don’t care for cheetos but I do eat Doritos with chopsticks. I handle art as part of my job and one day I had a junk food craving whihc would not be denied. Even though I wear gloves when actually touching the art I didn’t want Dorito residue trapped inside my gloves, and there were chopsticks left from my partner not eating her chinese food with them because she prefers a fork. I have done it this way ever since. Doritos AND clean hands. Yay.
Most of the restaurants don’t give chopsticks out as a matter of course, I imagine to save people who don’t really want to use them spoiling a pair. It’s probably not much but I imagine those things cost money. I ask for them with takeout and at the buffet. In a nicer sit down restaurant I probably wouldn’t ask for them but would accept and use them if they were offered. I also use them at sushi places.
I am Sparticus. Wait, no, I am not a crackpot. I eat apple sauce with chopsticks. Actually, I eat everything I can with them. Tonight I ate my official Swanson meatloaf TV dinner with chopsticks, then finished off the salad with them. At home and work I rarely use a fork or knife with a meal. Especially at work, it’s much easier to wash, dry, and store the chopsticks.
I’m not Asian, nor had a tradition of eating Chinese/Japanese/Korean food until I lived in Japan. I had problems with regular chopsticks in my big gaijin paws until I got the long square metal Korean chopsticks. My favorites have sort of a crease in the middle so I keep my grip on them at the far end instead of my fingers ending up near the business end. My technique isn’t the greatest, but I don’t fling food on myself, the table, or other guests.
I’ve been to Japanese restaurants which don’t give spoons for soup. You eat the stuff in the bowl with chopsticks, and drink the rest straight from the bowl.
I only learned to use them when I started working, but I enjoy eating with them as a change. We went to Chinese restaurants in Queens all the time when I was a kid, but I don’t remember them being even offered. Just as well, probably.
Yeah, this is true too. No one I know actually does the shoveling thing really. Maybe at home sometimes, but never when eating out. And I will use chopsticks to eat rice off a plate as well, but then in this case it’s hard to make the argument that using a spoon or fork wouldn’t be at least as effective, practically speaking.
I can agree with this. When I spent five months Rizhao I learned to eat like the locals. I shovelled rice into my mouth, and fish bones were spit out into a small pile next to my plate, hey, when in Rome, right? Then on the way home I had a weekend layover in Shanghai. Halfway through dinner I glanced up to find most of the restaurant staring in incredulity at the westerner who was eating like a peasant. Welcome to the big city, lao wei.
Yeah, miso soup is generally eaten without a spoon. But the bowls are small. If you have a meal-type soup like tempura udon or something, the bowl is too big to handle without risk of spillage. Spoons are generally used for that.
Ha! you spit into a neat pile? you’re hanging with some high faluntin’ pretencious peasants! where is Rizhao? laowai probably to you and country bumpkin (xiangxiaren mandarin/ shawunin shanghaiese) 
Yes I use them, often enough that I keep a fairly attractive set for five, plus spare disposables. I often take sticky rice and steamed veggies for lunch, so I just grab a set of cheapies. I guess I could mooch them off the noodle restaurant on campus, but seeing as how the disposables are about $1 for a bag of fifty, I think I’d rather not publicly expose myself as a cheapass.
As I read this thread, I remembered the scene in The Last Dragon in which the hero is watching a Bruce Lee movie in a theater and eating his popcorn with chopsticks. He wasn’t a weirdo, he was just ahead of his time. 
I’m another non-Asian who enjoys eating Asian food with chopsticks. I learned to use chopsticks in college, around the time I realized I liked sushi, and have gotten good at using them. My daughter can use them also, but not as well. The last time I took her to Little Tokyo, I bought her a pair of Pokemon chopsticks, which she insisted on using to eat her teriyaki chicken at lunch. She made a mess of herself and the table, but she loved it. I’m still too embarrassed to eat there again, though.
Forget the Chinese. I’m Korean, and I can tell you there are plenty of dishes in Korean cuisine that lend themselves to chopsticks. Especially since it’s not necessarily polite in Korea to lift your bowl to your mouth.
People underestimate how often spoons are used in Asian (at least Korean) cuisine, too. Some days, I’ll eat 3 full meals having used nothing more than a spoon. Using a fork in 80% (statistic pulled from somewhere dark and smelly) of these situations would lead to frustration.
Bringing a fork to your mouth with properly prepared Korean food is an incredible hassle. Too much just tumbles off the edge.
If you’re arguing that the fork is somehow a superior or all-purpose utensil 100% equivalent to a set of chopsticks, you’re dead wrong.
I’ll also side with what others have been saying about sushi and sashimi.
Yes, it’s fun and it adds to the overall experience.