We Want Plates

The image above was found over at Reddit on We Want Plates. I guess a rather fancy chef thought it would be a good idea to use a lot of cutlery to serve bite sized food. That’s a lot of forks. And probably not a very happy dishwasher.

But this does bring to mind how flatware can affect your meal. We use different spoons for different foods such as soup, dessert, coffee, grapefruit and such. We have different knives for butter, steak and cake. We have a couple of different forks I guess. I remember being in Germany and it seemed every brand of beer had it’s own special glass. With the easy access to 3D printing are we coming up on custom cutlery as well?

We will see, here at the Cutlery Review.

Hanging Flatware by Supreme Housewares

We have a set of hanging cutlery in our house that comes in quite handy. Where we use it the most is for picnics or buffet style dining. You just drop it in the middle of the table and if someone needs to butter a bun then there is a knife. Need a spoon for the relish? Right there on the flatware tree, pick it yourself. But we warned most stands are a little tippy as the base isn’t heavy enough but we still find it better than a handful of cutlery in a jar or something.

This hanging flatware by Supreme Housewares includes 4 dinner spoons, 4 dinner forks, 4 dinner knives, 4 salad forks, 4 teaspoons, and one stand. The cutlery and stand are made of stainless steel.

Flatware Set of 20 with hanging Stand from Amazon

Alessi “Eat. It” Flatware Set

The folks at Alessi sure do have a great collection of cutlery by some very talented designers.

The “Eat. It” flatware designed by Wiel Arets has a interesting concept. The idea is that all the tableware (in particular the knife, fork and spoon) can be stacked upon each other nicely. This lends for a minimalist setting at the table.

This setting for one consists of a table spoon, table fork, table knife, dessert fork, tea/coffee spoon and are made of 18/10 stainless steel.

Alessi”Eat. It” Flatware Set Composed Of One Table Spoon, Table Fork, Table Knife, Dessert Fork, Tea/Coffee Spoon from Amazon

Dinner forks were considered to be a tool of the Devil & banned by the Catholic Church

Here’s some interesting cutlery trivia for you. Dinner forks were considered to be a tool of the Devil & banned by the Catholic Church. And there might be a connection between the word fork and bad four letter word (or not).

A snippet from the article at Leite’s Culinaria by Chad Ward:

“God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks—his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to him to substitute artificial metal forks for them when eating.”

It’s a great article with detailed history about flatware that we haven’t seen before.

Check it out at Leite’s Culinaria