I’ve felt a little guilty ever since bashing chopsticks-users pretty handily way back in the very first Eating Styles post. Since then, I’ve come to see that us fork-users aren’t so different from our nimble-fingered brethren, and that we should come to accept and love each other.* So for today’s eating styles post, I want to know which side of the divide you’re on, So Good readers. When you’re eating at a restaurant that has chopsticks, do you use them? Or do you stick with your fork?

Pros: being authentic, looking cool, ability to use them at home with your Annie Chun meals.

Cons: difficult, possibly becoming (or being perceived as) pretentious.

What do you think about chopsticks, So Good readers? Do you use them? Shun them? Find them too difficult? Turn to a different utensil entirely? Choose your answer and explain in the comments.

[poll id=”234″]

*My animosity towards using chopsticks actually has less to do with its perceived pretentiousness and more to do with the fact that, like Guitar Hero and two-fingered whistling, chopsticks are going to go down in history as one of the few skills I will never, ever, ever, master.

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Sam

My name is Sam and all I care about is food.

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8 Responses

  2. stacey@Havoc&Mayhem

    It depends. Usually I end up with a mix of chopsticks & fork. I can eat many things with chopsticks & I can pick up a single grain of rice with a chopstick. But I cannot manage to get even close to a mouthful of rice with chopsticks & since the rice is usually on my plate & not in a separate bowl, the ‘shoveling method’ of rice eating is impossible. So I use a fork.

    Reply
  3. Cynthia

    While I voted for chopsticks, because they are fun to use….they are only fun for a while, then I give up and go for the fork.

    Reply
  4. Cathy McBride

    Of course I use chopsticks!). Not out of pretense but because it is fun and if one day all the forks in the world disappeared, I would still be able to eat. Which, I think, is a very important survival skill.

    Reply
  6. Eugene Kan

    I used to think a fork and knife were much more efficient for eating than chopsticks, but after pretty much using ONLY chopsticks the last 5 years, I hate using a fork and knife. There are obvious ones that need due to cutting requirements, but you can pick food up in a much more articulate manner with chopsticks.

    With chopsticks you can grab from the side/top/angle but with a fork you can really only stab it from the top. And well if you’re eating Asian food, once you shovel it into your mouth (ie a piece of gailan) you can quickly re-adjust the chopsticks further down whereas you can’t re-stab something with a fork once it’s off the plate.

    Reply
  7. Jamie Oliver

    I only use them if asked to demonstrate how to use them. They dont work all that well with our western table manners. They work better in aplace where its ok to pick the plate up and snowshovel the food across the edge of the plate in to your mouth.

    Reply
  8. HollyKath

    There are a lot of items I would cringe using a fork on. Ex: sushi, sashimi, poke, pho.. The list goes on. Just feels wrong for metal to go anywhere in or around said items.

    Reply

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