Where have all the knives gone?
On the act of eating in Southeast Asia
It was a hot and humid day in Singapore, as they often are, I’m told, and I was sitting at an Indian restaurant, having some of the best chicken biriyani of my life. I shoveled the food into my mouth after I was allowed to eat it without having paid first. As I got up to the counter with my tray of food I remembered that I had no Singapore dollars and the place didn’t take cards. To say that I was embarrassed is an understatement. “Just eat,” the man told me, “then get money and come back to pay.” “Oh… thank you,” I said, taken aback by this blind confidence in a total stranger.
Fork in my left hand and spoon in my right tear off pieces of the chicken, the fork pushes rice onto my spoon, the spoon carries the food into my mouth. I repeated this motion, mindlessly, several times, as I contemplated the trust and generosity of these people. Then, I was stopped dead in my tracks by a sudden thought “where have all the knives gone?”
It was at that moment that I had the realization I hadn’t seen a knife in the nearly two weeks I had been in Southeast Asia. Not in Thailand, not in Malaysia, not in Singapore. More importantly, I realized I hadn’t needed a knife so much so that I hadn’t even thought about them. Knives had simply not crossed my mind.
I filed this thought under “peculiar things” and moved on with my meal. But the next day, while sitting down for lunch at a different Indian restaurant I caught a glimpse of the cutlery stack on the table, no knives, and I was done. I had to find out what the deal was. So, I did what anyone else would do and fired up Google. Rather than ask something of the search engine, I typed a statement, “there are no knives in Southeast Asia.”
The results were fascinating and spanned the gamut from colonialism to practicality in an attempt to crack the case of the missing knives. For example, someone else who asked about the knife situation on a forum was told that it was cultural assimilation. That people long ago adopted the fork (they already had spoons) as a cultural transfer from Europeans, who were perceived to be more advanced. Even in places like Siam - now Thailand - which were never technically colonized, the person explained. This is true, but with a caveat.
It wasn’t a faithful, wholesale adoption; forks in Southeast Asia are not used like forks in Western countries, British or otherwise. Rather than use the fork to carry food to the mouth, Southeast Asians use it to push food onto the spoon, much like a knife might do onto a fork in Europe and the United States. The spoon then is what goes into your mouth. Southeast Asians adopted the fork how they saw fit to meet their needs.
This transfer of technology between cultures is a reasonable explanation for the adoption of the fork, but it leaves the question of the knives unanswered. Why didn’t they also adopt the knife? For that, the answer is pretty straight forward. Everything on the Southeast Asian plate - sometimes bag, really - is already cut into bite-size pieces so you don’t need a knife at the table. If you still need to cut something even smaller, the side of the spoon does a good enough job. Or there’s always your hands.
This makes sense to me, and I instinctively knew what to do when presented with a fork and spoon only because that is precisely how I was taught to use my utensils as a child. This is just how Cubans (in Cuba) eat. Adults sometimes use only a fork. I have been eating the American way, fork in my right hand knife in my left (and switching back and forth if I need to cut something, but that’s a story for another day), for most of my life now, but old habits die hard. The fact that it was ingrained in me probably accounts for why it took me two weeks to realize the knives were missing.
In this colonialism vs. practicality debate I have to side with the practicality. Colonialism certainly had, and still has, a great influence in this area, and it answers why forks over chopsticks to some extent, but not why no knives. Practicality, however, wins the day. When there is nothing to cut at the table, why bring a knife? That would be like bringing crampons to a beach walk. Sure, you can technically use them, but it’s overkill and might even make things more difficult. The tools we use to eat our food are wholly dictated by the type of food we eat and how we cook it. A fork and a spoon are the better utensils to eat the foods of Southeast Asia, varied as they are.
If you buy cooked food at a street market in Southeast Asia, chances are high you will be given a spoon and nothing else. Why the spoon, and not the fork like in Western countries, became the primary tool with which to bring food to your mouth is also a matter of practicality. Notice that I am writing about Southeast Asia, a rice-eating region, but where rice is not always the sticky kind, especially in places with heavy Indian influence. For types of rice with grains that don’t clump together like those of Japan, for instance, neither chopsticks nor forks are the best tools. Can you eat nasi goreng with a fork only? Sure, I suppose, but anyone who has tried to eat rice with a fork can tell you that it’s not always effective. The task become nearly impossible for the British, who insist on eating with their fork upside down, pushing the food onto its convex side. No one in rice-eating cultures does that; it’s wildly ineffective. Spoons are the most useful utensil for eating rice as well as the soups (accompanied by chopsticks) that abound in Southeast Asian cuisines. It makes sense, then, that when people of the region adopted the fork they did so as an auxiliary utensil, an aide to the already useful spoon, rather than as the main tool for eating. Knife not required.
So, where have all the knives gone? Nowhere, they are right where they’ve always been, in the kitchen.
And in case you are wondering, yes, I did come back to the restaurant and paid for my lunch.
If you want to read others’ writings about eating with a fork and spoon, or just with a spoon, cultural norms, and eating etiquette, check out these two articles:
“In Praise of Eating Almost Anything with a Spoon,” Hannah Goldfield, The New Yorker.
“In Praise of Spoon and Fork,” Patricia Kelly Yeo, Catapult.
Housekeeping
I’m currently on a whirlwind five-week trip around Southeast Asia. I’m writing this from a very, very wet Singapore, where I’m paying a lot of money to sit in my room and not see the place. Not what I expected. Heading to Vietnam next.
If you are interested in following my travels and photography, not with a food focus, I have started and Instagram account for that, www.instagram.com/juneisyhawkins. I have other interests aside from food!
For the food, you can still follow www.instagram.com/nycityfare