What everyday foods do people eat the wrong way? —Sally S., St. Louis
Although the term “wrong” might be somewhat contentious, there are foods that people could consume "more efficiently.” For other items, it comes down to personal preference. I came up with a few in each category and SLM's dining team chimed in, too.
Wrong:
- Sushi rolls/nigiri/sashimi: In short, lose the chopsticks...most of the time. Proper sushi etiquette calls for eating cut rolls and nigiri with your hands; sashimi and ginger are picked up using chopsticks. Turn nigiri fish-down, apply soy sauce sparingly, and place on the tongue face-down. If wasabi must be used, apply a small amount with chopsticks. Do not mix wasabi into the soy sauce. Sliced ginger is a palate cleanser between bites, not mid-bite.
- Yogurt: Some people pour off the liquid (called whey). Stirring it in adds nutrients and creates a better texture.
- Leftover pizza: If you care a whit about quality (and you should), leftover pizza slices (or squares) are best reconstituted in a partially covered skillet over low to medium heat. Doing so gets closest to approximating the crust's original texture (and it doesn't take a whole lot longer than pushing "40 seconds" on your microwave).
More efficiently:
- Hot dogs: As any Chicago dog devotee knows, cup the dog with your hand and consume the pooch "goodie side up."
- Chicken wings: A less messy way to negotiate the two-boned "flattie" is to remove the bones (by twisting, small one first) before eating, thereby creating a boneless wing.
- Cupcakes: There are those who cut the cake in half horizontally, flip the top over, and eat like a sandwich, icing in the middle.
Personal preference:
- Pizza: Hands? Utensils? We covered that one here.
And now this from SLM's dining team:
From dining critic Dave Lowry:
Risotto should be eaten with a spoon. Using a fork digs into the mound of risotto, leaving a gap that helps cool the rice more quickly, whereas a spoon allows the diner to carve off the rice from the edges, gradually working one’s way into the interior while the whole mound stays hot.
Paella should be eaten from the pan, carving out a wedge and working inward. Everyone has his own wedge.
Alas, the days are gone when people knew that eating any soup soupier than a stew should be done by spooning away from one instead of scooping in: “Like little ships cast out to sea/ I tilt my spoon away from me.”
Japanese and Chinese citizens typically pick up rice bowls, but Koreans do not. (Korean bowls are metal, too hot to handle easily, while Japanese/Chinese bowls are lacquer or porcelain.)
From writer Pat Eby:
My younger brothers were quite perplexed with the baby ears of corn in Chinese take-out and did the same thing that Tom Hanks did with them in Big.
In my later years, the little girls I babysat showed me the proper way to eat string cheese. "You don't just take a bite out of it, you pull it into strings, because it’s fun that way." I felt pretty dumb.
When eating cevapi (the Balkan staple), most people try to cut the somun bread and eat it like a sandwich, resulting in pieces of spiced sausages falling back onto the plate. The proper method is to pull off a bit of somun, then wrap it around a sausage. Or eat the bread with the customary onions and kaymak (a dairy product similar to clotted cream) and then a morsel of meat. Loryn Feliciano-Nalic, owner of the Balkan Treat Box food truck, told SLM, ”Don’t eat it like a sandwich,” sending along a GIF: “This is what it looks like when people do.”
From dining critic Ann Lemons Pollack:
There’s the guy who put a scoop of ice cream on his morning oatmeal every morning. Milk? Check. Sugar? Check. Cool down so it can be eaten fast? On yer way, buddy.
And there's the game of eating a dessert with both a fork (left hand) and spoon (right hand), which I finally figured out in a swank Paris restaurant several years ago. When eating ice cream and cake separately, use fork and spoon together, the latter in the dominant hand. The spoon does the work—cutting, slicing (much like a knife), scooping, and maneuvering it to your mouth. The fork is used as a helper and to push food onto the spoon.
And last but not least comes the proper way to eat a Snickers bar, courtesy of Seinfeld (Elaine's query at the end of the clip is priceless):
Follow George on Twitter @stlmag_dining or send him an email at gmahe@stlmag.com. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
