Food - Drink
Why You Shouldn't Ask For Chopsticks At A Thai Restaurant
By CC GOURDEAU
Some food and utensil pairings have automatic associations that are hard to break once they've entered into the cultural consciousness. When it comes to “Asian” food, many automatically think of chopsticks, and while many Asian countries do use these utensils, Thailand has one simple chopstick rule: Don’t ask for them.
Chopsticks first appeared in China four millennia ago, but when the Chinese tried to spread them to Thailand, the effort was quickly quashed by the Thai monarchy. Then, when either King Rama IV or II was hosting the British consul for dinner, he was so taken with forks and spoons that he made them the norm in Thailand.
Knives were shunned since they had the potential to be used as a weapon, so they adopted the fork and spoon alone and used them in their own way. The fork is used as a shovel with the left hand to move food onto the spoon in the right and then into the mouth, and chopsticks were reserved for Chinese-style dishes, like noodle soup.