Does the position of the chopsticks matter? I thought I had learned somewhere that placing your hands further away from the ends you are picking up food is considered classier.

i just hold it in a position i can grab food with tightly so it doesn't drop. then again i don't hold chopsticks properly either

I don't hold them properly, plus I use my left hand. That's two strikes against me. Thank god my mother didn't harp on it. The fact that I beat out everybody at the annual church picnic bean picking contest may have helped. I beat out a long time champion, who happened to be my mom's friend/rival.

They all laughed at me at the beginning until I took first place. Eat that, you old hags.

Speaking of forks and shit. I learned the proper way to eat spaghetti from my wife years ago. It's when you spin the noodles with fork on a spoon. Also, never cut the noodles. Apparently, that's not cool.

^That's actually the proper "North American" way. I hear it was due to our abundance of sauce ingredients that necessitated use of a scooping device. As opposed to the poor peasants in the old country that couldn't rub two tomatoes together to make a bolognese. Somehow that's translated to us spinning fork on spoon.

In Italy, presumably the aforementioned old country, no spoon is used and you just spin your fork on the plate. Also they eat pizza with a fork and knife. Go figure.

As long as you're not holding the chopsticks at the middle (that's what children do) then you'll be fine. If you hold them at the very end then you're basically show your l33t chopstick skills

Life goals:
https://media.giphy.com/media/VC7ZwWReqieWI/giphy.gif
https://media.giphy.com/media/5sVxXBVghAlVK/giphy.gif

BUT ITS SUPREEEEEEEEEMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEE

if you're holding them "properly", you actually get a bit more leverage by having your fingers higher up, making it easier to grab stuff. i'm sure there's some sort of chopsticks physics behind this.

Chop sticks are stupid. Fuck.

It's actually surprising how little people nowadays know about table etiquette, and this goes for both Western and Eastern society.

I learned both versions because 1. my family is strict in this shit (eastern) and 2. I had a fucking class on this (western).

I guess people nowadays simply don't know or don't bother with them. But that's what fucking bothers me. Table etiquette is something of a second nature. Once you learn it, you never stop. It's not that hard to begin with. Certain details might be tedious and no longer practiced as much (such as standing up when people arrives/leaves, and button/unbutton your jacket if you are in one).

If one doesn't want to look cocky doing all these shits, they can at least do the common sense ones: no double-dipping, place your napkins and god forbid, no talking with food in mouth.

Moms side of the family is Italian and we had the typical massive dinners at least once a month with 20+ family members. Spoons were given to us as kids until we were able to do it on our own without making a mess. Once we could do that it was frowned upon using a spoon as its only for kids.

Mixing wasabi in soy sauce is bad? I've always done that with the thought that it's an even taste all throughout compared to slapping a small mound on each item. Oh well...at least I can kinda use chopsticks haha.

Usually wasabi is put into the sushi before it's given to you. The custom is to dip the nigri meat side into the soy sauce. Here there's a bunch of customs that's overlooked, no one cares because it's not Japan.

Thanked for Maria.

wow you guys are getting whiny these days

https://imgflip.com/s/meme/Back-In-My-Day.jpg

Good ol' Canadian gal............ such good manners. Slid that nigiri ever so gracefully into her mouth.

That post just made this thread more interesting. Thanks.

I wouldn't have even clicked on the video if that name wasn't mentioned.

I can stand almost everyone but one thing I absolutely cannot stand is someone smacking their lips and chewing loudly with there mouth open. Cannot properly eat when I sit at a table with someone eating like that.

I watched that video without sound to find out who this Maria person is. Not bad.

Following that, there was a guy cooking Korean bbq. I noticed he used his chopsticks to pick up raw meat and later used the same chopsticks to eat the meat. Is there not a food safety risk in doing that?

yeah...me too..just found out :pokerface::pokerface:

lol people that freak out when you eat sushi with soy sauce and have a heart attack, ill take a shit on the sushi and eat it. It is my food. Sushi snobs.

napkin on the lap is a must imo opinion and don't eat like a slob, pretty basic shit

i do that at hot pot but you are also putting your sticks in super hot broth

what about people who stuff hot almost burning food in there mouth and make stupid Air sounds to cool it off in they're mouth.

Went to a high end sushi restaurant in Maui a while back, and the wife and I sat at the bar. I got in trouble from the sushi chef that I was eating my sushi too fast.

FailFish

He was kind enough to explain the finer points of his sushi though. How you need the tuna to hit your tongue before the blah, blah, blah.

It was really good sushi though.

Yeah, chefs like that used to bother me, but it shows they are passionate about their craft. And 99 out of a 100 times, they're creations are really good.

What? No mixing of wasabi and soy sauce?

I guess that's if one's in a very delicate japanese restaurant.

I've grown used to Taiwanese approach to sashimi/nigiri... absolute fresh fish, white radish with (preferred) freshly ground horseradish mixed lightly with soysauce (a 3:1 mix is my preference).

The horseradish gives you the kick, white radish the texture and finishing with the sweetness from the sashimi. :sweetjesus:

If you have never had sashimi this way... you should. It's beyond awesome!