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Chopsticks


itch22

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Generally speaking, I eat far too quickly. For that reason I enjoy eating with chopsticks. They allow me to eat more slowly and enjoy my food a whole lot better. At home I'll often eat even western type foods with chopsticks to enhance the eating experience. Obviously that's not an option available at non Asian type restaurants.

Porkpa

I get some comments from non-Asian wait staff at Asian restaurants when I ask for chopsticks about how slow chopsticks are, but I find that I am just as quick. I guess if you use them nearly everyday, they indeed become an extension of the hand.

-- Jason

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I get some comments from non-Asian wait staff at Asian restaurants when I ask for chopsticks about how slow chopsticks are, but I find that I am just as quick.  I guess if you use them nearly everyday, they indeed become an extension of the hand.

Are they trying to hurry you in and out?

Actually I really don't like Asian restaurants that don't have like staff. It may be one of the reasons I was completely turned off by my first visit to PF Chang. Guess that sounds prejudiced, but I like to think the staff 'knows' the food. That's not fair, I know. I'm not Chinese, yet I know their food very well.

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  • 2 years later...

According to Mari's blog, Lawson, a big convenience store chain in Japan, is starting a promotion to give away non-disposable chopsticks, referred to as keitai hashi.

"Keitai" is also short for "mobile phone", so I guess these are "mobile chopsticks."

Edited by JasonTrue (log)

Jason Truesdell

Blog: Pursuing My Passions

Take me to your ryokan, please

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Mr. FB was in San Francisco last month. After a meeting he and his associate went into a Chinese restaurant, where they were the only non-Chinese diners. The tables were set with cutlery, and they asked for chopsticks. No one else in the place was eating with chopsticks. After the meal, a (much older) gentleman approached their table and told them, with a huge smile, that they eat more skillfully with chopsticks than he ever did!

"Oh, tuna. Tuna, tuna, tuna." -Andy Bernard, The Office
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I was taught to eat with chopsticks when I was too little to remember

I also taught my kids to eat with chopsticks in the high chair as just another option to get food to your mouth ..they are all proficient in using them not only with great skill but they are very respectful and use them politely..if they had drummed with chopsticks I would have drummed their heads with my hands! ...manners do matter...and varry according to where you are eating.....

I love sharing food and really when you use chopsticks you are not supposed to put your mouth on them just eat the food off the end ..so that way when you dip into the communal dish there is less chance of spreading germs...my girlfriend is from Laos and has this amazing trick of turning her chopsticks so quickly she can serve herself off the communal plate with one side of the sticks then eat off her plate with the other...I have tried to do this but can not flip them with any finess and end up getting food everywhere (I am practicing this in private btw)

I have never been to an Asian restaurant that did not offer them as an option ..not one that I can remember anyway ...maybe this is regional? Here in my area there seems to be the popular offering on the table of most family style Asian restaurants of both the disposable chopsticks as well as the reusable ones...

why am I always at the bottom and why is everything so high? 

why must there be so little me and so much sky?

Piglet 

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Interesting reading, hummingbirdkiss.

I really learned how to use chopsticks in Malaysia, but that was at Chinese restaurants; in Malay and Indian restaurants, chopsticks were not offered, but people ate either with their right hand, with spoon and fork, or with a fork. And if we're considering the Indian Subcontinent to be part of Asia, chopsticks certainly are not prevalent there. They're more of an East Asian thing.

I don't remember ever "drumming" with chopsticks. I doubt I thought of it, despite my musical bent.

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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