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Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

By the way, although the "secret Japanese techniques" aspect of this is a little overblown (little here is really that interesting), there is at least one reason for this to be highlighted at all. Given that forks and knives are not the common utensils of the north* Asian dining table, most things are pre-cut for consumption. If you ever encounter steak/pork/katsu chops, etc. at a restaurant, you will find that they are all pre-cut for you to be able to consume in bite sized pieces. You'll never get a whole slab of chicken breast or pork chop for you to dissect with chopsticks.

*added qualifier to satisfy detailed criticism

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>> Given that forks and knives are not the common utensils of the Asian dining table

Asia is a big umbrella, my friend. (You can Google for how many countries.) You’d be surprised to know there are Asian countries that went from hands to spoon-and-fork hundreds of years ago and never knew chopsticks. But of course this notion is not exotic enough.

Well, I just mean those restaurants that are not western food. You're usually going to get chopsticks and the reasoning is for that. Thailand, etc. may get an exception to the story, fine.

Hi. I'm from India, an Asian country. We have 1.3 billion people. We don't use chopsticks.

Where I live in the Midwest US, most people from Asia or with Asian ancestry are Hmong, Korean, Chinese or Japanese. Essentially, "Asian" has become a euphemism for "East Asian". There's a notable exception in Rochester, Minnesota, where the Mayo Clinic and related industry drew a lot of immigration from India.

As a result, "India" is occasionally lumped in with "South Asia" but is typically referred to as its own entity in lay conversation.

I suspect part of that is proximity to the middle east, which is also rarely lumped in with "Asia" in colloquial conversation, and general confusion or laziness over needing to specify the "east" part of "east Asia".

Other parts of the country probably speak differently based on who lives there.

I can say this though - if I want to go to a restaurant for "Asian" food, it'll usually be Chinese, Japanese or Vietnamese, and the restaurant will typically offer dishes from at least two of those cuisines (sometimes authentic, sometimes heavily tailored to a Midwestern pallet). On the other hand, if I want Indian food, I'm going to an Indian restaurant, and the closest thing on offer to one of the other above cuisines is some variation of a Manchurian dish from Mumbai, depending on what regional focus or focuses the restaurant offers.

नमस्कार। To give the benefit of the doubt - in the UK (and perhaps elsewhere) India is practically never considered 'Asian' in common parlance. As if 'the Indian subcontinent' (as is said) were actually a continent almost, subordinate to nothing.

I am curious now though - obviously spoons have been around 'forever' but as eating utensils do they predate British/Portugese colonialism do you know? I understand today spoon/bread/hand is dish, region, and perhaps to some extent class/personal preference dependent, but has it 'always' been so?

(I'm honestly not doing a 'be thankful we brought you spoons' bit here.. I hope it doesn't come across that way. Just genuinely curious as a हिंदी और भारतीय खाने का विद्यार्थी (student of Hindi and Indian food).)

Indian here, I think eating utensils came with the Europeans.

Asia really should unite and push to deprecate this term. There’s practically nothing we share all across this so-called Asia metaregion, except it’s neither the West nor the Africa.

I did a text search of this article, and nowhere does it use the word “secret”.

Not saying the article says they're "secret". I'm just observing that for some reason, given the identification of these cutting techniques as specifically Japanese, given headline status here at HN, on the very existence of an article about a fairly mundane task, it seems to imply something special (and in the click-baity "secret techniques the kitchen doesn't want you to know about" memes) about this.

They’re identifying by name the techniques used in Japanese cuisine — not claiming they’re unique or secret.

The same way we use “julienne” in French cuisine.

Correct, nowhere in the article did they claim the cuts were unique.

I cannot fathom why people are so defensive about this article and say it makes claims it never does actually make. This might actually be more interesting than the article itself…

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