By The first struggle of chopsticks use, for those of us who didn’t grow up in an Asian culture or regularly eating Asian cuisine, is figuring out how to hold the bloody things. Struggle number two is picking up food with them. Then comes struggle three: getting said food from the plate to your mouth.
Now it turns out that despite all of those struggles, I’ve actually been using them wrong this whole time… and I wonder if you have, too.
If you’re like me, you’ve always ripped off the paper, split the two wooden sticks down the middle, rubbed them together a bit to pick off any offensive splinters, and then gone to town on your sushi.
However, @bortofdarkness recently tweeted a different, and supposedly the right approach, and it’s gone viral with 3,500 retweets and over 3,300 likes already.
The picture reveals the real use of chopsticks: Instead of splitting them apart where they’re connected at the top, you’re supposed to snap the connecting piece off and use it to rest your chopsticks on, so that they don’t come into contact with the table and get all germy and stuff. It’s like giving your chopsticks their own tiny table.
Mind = blown.
One guy who I’m sure was well aware of the correct usage of chopsticks was the famous head chef of Thai restaurant Blue Elephant. He recently hit the headlines for his brutal reaction to Gordon Ramsay’s terrible pad Thai attempt, if you haven’t seen it yet it’s one of the greatest food videos of all time. Enjoy.