favorite fork

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yeah, but the why would you use a fork to eat pudding?

[angus]

What the fyck

Anyway, this is always my response (internally anyway) to multiple forks. Why use more than one? Posh people are weird.

That's really the inspiration.  I have also found the ubiquity of multiple forks to be superfluous, thus the thread.  Well, that and Rick Santorum, obviously.  For all I know he may be a misogynistic homophobe, but given that I'm a swing voter who voted for Obama in 2008 but who has been singularly disappointed with the Obama presidency (vis-a-vis his candidacy), and one who would prefer to vote for one of the two big Name Brand candidates rather than settling for a Socialist or a Libertarian who, while pure at heart, has no chance of winning, I was hoping that the GOP nominee might be someone who at least could appreciate the inefficiency of multiple forks.  Or something like that.

Anyway, the last option was obviously offered in honor of the honorable Mister Santorum, though he certainly may deign to choose one of the other options should he choose to honor this forum with his honorable presence.  This, at least, was my hope.

[opebo]

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I never had a bad snail.  All the snails I've eaten were pretty damn tasty, and I can't recall ever haven eaten them with anything other than the fork with which I was presented, which was probably either a dinner fork, a salad fork, or maybe a lunch fork.  Well, at least it had four tynes and looked fairly unremarkable otherwise. 

What the heck kind of restaurant would have snails on the menu, angus, and then serve them with a huge dinner fork?  I enjoy and quite like snails, and do occasionally eat them here, but mostly ate them at fancy restaurants back in the STL, where they invariably served them with very small forks for fishing them out.  Seriously man, did they have snails at Ryan's Steak House or something?

[Хahar 🤔]

In Soviet Russia, dinner forks you!

[angus]

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I never had a bad snail.  All the snails I've eaten were pretty damn tasty, and I can't recall ever haven eaten them with anything other than the fork with which I was presented, which was probably either a dinner fork, a salad fork, or maybe a lunch fork.  Well, at least it had four tynes and looked fairly unremarkable otherwise.  

What the heck kind of restaurant would have snails on the menu, angus, and then serve them with a huge dinner fork?  I enjoy and quite like snails, and do occasionally eat them here, but mostly ate them at fancy restaurants back in the STL, where they invariably served them with very small forks for fishing them out.  Seriously man, did they have snails at Ryan's Steak House or something?

I've never actually seen them at any Ryan's, and we have eaten there from time to time (maybe once a year, in transit), and I think I would have noticed them, but no I've not seen them at Ryan's.  I've only ever ordered snails at pricey, sit-down places that provide a special fork with them.  

Hey!  Speaking of being served specialty foods with specialty forks, then foregoing that specialty fork in favor of one of the three "normal" forks placed on the table when one originally sits down at the table, this happened a couple of weeks ago with oysters.  To wit:

I had dinner at a restaurant in Boston.  The restaurant was part of a new hotel that was not there when I lived in Boston, but that has been built since, and I don't remember its name.  It was expensive, I think, although I was not paying for the meal so I didn't pay too much attention.  It had very nice ambiance, but terrible service.  Slow.  We were a party of four and had made reservations for 7:30, or so I was told.  We had arrived at about 7:20, and after giving the minivan's keys to the valet who parks the car, my hosts walked me into this restaurant which had kind of a 20's flapper/speakeasy motif, right down to the fixtures in the men's room.  We then waited for about 45 minutes to be seated!  But once we were seated, the food and wine and cognac was delicious.  For an appetizer, I had the oysters.  Apparently there were at least four kinds of oysters that night, as when I said "I'll have the oysters" the waiter said, "Very good, sir.  Which ones?"  And I said, "Which ones?"  And he said, "Buzzard's Bay?  Cape Cod?  Weymouth?  Or Hyannis?"  And I said, "um, gee, let's see...."  And he said, "How about one of each?"  And I said, "Splendid!"  

Some time later--a very long time later I think, but the company was good so I didn't mind--the waiter brought me a tray upon which there was much crushed ice, along with four oysters in half-shells.  Four very different-looking oysters!  Two fairly large, two fairly small, but all uncooked and unseasoned.  There were also three types of dipping sauces in the middle.  One red, one orange, and one the color of olive oil.  I decided to use the least flavorful-looking sauce for all three, not because I don't like other sauces, and not because I don't like variety, but I wanted to have a fair comparison of all four oysters.  (I did have a definite favorite, by the way, but I cannot remember which one I preferred, unfortunately, so I'll have to go through the whole business of ordering all four again next time.)  Of course there were also four very small forks presented with the oysters.  One for each oyster, I assume.  I did not use those forks.  Instead, I used whichever fork came into my hand first--the medium one in the set of three which had been placed upon the table when we were seated--and I used that fork for all the courses of my meal.  That fork worked equally well for my oysters, my steak, my vegetables, and my tiramisu.  It was the only fork I needed that evening.  Actually, I thought of that when I made the thread, although not as much as I thought of Rick Santorum.

[Simfan34]

I'm angry I haven't been mentioned in this thread yet. I was seriously having a conversation about forks the other day.

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

That's right, you don't only need une fourchette à escargots to eat escargots, you also need this:



Ah well, maybe with some Bourgogne you can manage it with a normal fork, and you can eventually eat them with your fingers if you don't mind burning your fingers with the shell, or if you eat them middly warm.

And you can even eventually manage it with your big fork with some Charente ones, but really, the special fork is welcome, and not 'weird' for escargots.

And I never said escargots were 'bad'. Just I challenge you to find much flavor from them.

And oysters? Well, as I said it's never been my big friends, but yeah, eating it in the shell isn't necessarily the thing that you will do everywhere with anybody, to avoid the big 'sluuuuurp' when you eat it from the shell, then in a restaurant or when you're in a lil bit formal context, the tool can be necessary, if you don't have oysters fork, oh sorry, I mean, if you don't have some fourchettes à huîtres, normal ones will do.

[Platypus]

We have dinner forks and lunch forks, used interchangeably unless we're receiving guests, and even then it doesn't matter which ones we use as long as they match; dessert forks, used for cakes and sometimes rice or cous cous etc., and oyster forks, used for finicky things.

[© tweed]

plastic ones so I can throw them out instead of washing them.

[angus]

eating it in the shell isn't necessarily the thing that you will do everywhere with anybody, to avoid the big 'sluuuuurp' when you eat it from the shell

Indeed, the sound of the aspiration might be considered offensive by certain individuals.  Had I been back in the eleventh grade and still had my waiter's job at the little seafood restaurant where we bought oysters by the five-gallon bucket (for deep-frying), I'd have had no trouble walking in to the cooler and reaching into that bucket of raw oysters and pulling a few out for immediate consumption by hand.  They do not taste quite as fresh from the bucket as they do on the half shell, but they do taste as good when served by my fingers as they do when served by cold steel.  Perhaps better, even.

But I was in the company of my peers!  The three females hosting me--well, not even that, as I'd have been just as guarded among male colleagues, so I should say that my hosts--all were judgmental sorts, and respectfully so, and they were meant to wine me and dine me in style.  Having given a fairly well received seminar that evening on the subject of my earlier studies into the photophysical reactions of small, polyatomic, infrared-absorbing molecules (generally found in the lower atmosphere), I was the guest of honor, and as such I might have been forgiven a transgression so small as eating my oysters with the "wrong" fork, but I do not know whether it might have been impolitic of me to eat them, then and there, with my fingers.  I decided to err on the side of caution and propriety and use at least one of the many forks placed in my general vicinity.  I'm sure you understand.

[Yelnoc]

What an elitist thread.

[angus]

What an elitist thread.

Well, with regard to the forks themselves, it was meant to be egalitarian.  Moreover, we have established that most posters here are as comfortable using a dinner fork for steak as they are using it for scraping paint off a wall.  Of course, the dinner fork cannot help its being taller than the rest.  God made it that way.  You can't fairly claim that just because it is so popularly chosen that a quota should be set on its use, so that the less versatile forks, such as the fondue fork, might be more often used.  This would be as unfair to the dinner fork as it would be insulting to the fondue fork.

And as for ice cream, well, honestly I prefer a spoon, and I don't mind admitting it.  Frankly, I'm glad I live in one of those states in which eating ice cream with a spoon is legal, although it wouldn't surprise me if the legislature proposed an amendment to the state constitution defining ice cream enjoyment as "One Bowl Of Ice Cream + One Ice Cream Fork, the way God intended it to be."

[Yelnoc]

What an elitist thread.

Well, with regard to the forks themselves, it was meant to be egalitarian.  Moreover, we have established that most posters here are as comfortable using a dinner fork for steak as they are using it for scraping paint off a wall.  Of course, the dinner fork cannot help its being taller than the rest.  God made it that way.  You can't fairly claim that just because it is so popularly chosen that a quota should be set on its use, so that the less versatile forks, such as the fondue fork, might be more often used.  This would be as unfair to the dinner fork as it would be insulting to the fondue fork.

And as for ice cream, well, honestly I prefer a spoon, and I don't mind admitting it.  Frankly, I'm glad I live in one of those states in which eating ice cream with a spoon is legal, although it wouldn't surprise me if the legislature proposed an amendment to the state constitution defining ice cream enjoyment as "One Bowl Of Ice Cream + One Ice Cream Fork, the way God intended it to be."

People eat ice cream with a fork?  How?

[angus]

Oh, there's a whole bunch of videos on YouTube showing you how.

Type in "ice cream fork" in Google Shopping to get an idea of prices and availability.

Personally, I can eat anything with just one fork, and I still prefer the salad fork to all others, although I'm rather fond of the tried and trusted dinner fork, as many other posters are.  For ice cream, I do prefer a spoon, though, and not the spoon that we almost always use with our soup (which is what obebo calls that "weird little chinese spoon" although I'm used to it so I don't call it weird.)  I actually prefer a small, pointy spoon for ice cream.  I keep a few of those in our house.  In fact, I keep a fairly large collection of specialty spoons for all sorts of purposes.  I only need one fork, and most days I don't even use a fork since I almost always take my lunch with my fingers and I almost always take my dinner with chopstix, but when I do need a fork, a dinner fork or a salad fork will always work.  Spoons are another matter, and I'm a firm believer in having just the right spoon for the task.  And don't even get me started on knives.  Most folks have a knife drawer.  We actually have an entire cabinet devoted to knives.  No joke.

Ah, but this is a fork thread, let us not distract ourselves with spoons and knives.