These are basically training chopsticks. If you find yourself using them a lot, you'll find it easier and more satisfying to use actual chopsticks. Chopsticks are cheap, easy to clean, versatile, able to be made from materials like bamboo, and more elegant than pincers. You can't make rudimentary scissors out of pincers, and those points look too narrow to hold anything heavy. The only problem with chopsticks is that they're harder to use, but if you use them regularly you'll be able to pick up heavy items using polished metal chopsticks in no time.<p><a href="https://marcosticks.org/best-learning-chopsticks/" rel="nofollow">https://marcosticks.org/best-learning-chopsticks/</a>
This reads like a Jr engineer's argument on why some text editor is better than vim after only learning a couple vim commands.
Pincers have a lower learning curve but chopsticks are so much more versatile if you're skilled with it.<p>Here's when chopsticks are more useful than pincers.
* Grabbing something wide like a large meatball.
* Slicing soft food like tofu.
* Separating bones in a chicken wing.
* Eating noodles (you have to go in wide, close, keep parallel)
> <i>They make it so much easier to eat anything from sushi to chicken wings</i><p>I don't see how one would pick up a sushi roll with the pictured pincers. It looks like their default opening is not large enough.
I'm just simple boy from the Midwest who learned to eat his steak and potatoes with a fork and knife, as $DEITY intended, and even I learned to use chopsticks well enough that I don't see what the pictured tool buys me. I understand that some have hand mobility issues, but the pictured solution reminds me of the chopsticks with a rubber band that my Asian immigrant neighbors used for their kids.<p>Take my titanium chopsticks from my cold, dead hands!
Just as with chopsticks, this only works if the food contains the cultural knowledge that it will be manipulating with two points of contact, or food will be tossed/shoveled from the plate/bowl held in close proximity to the mouth. Forks allow scooping!<p>Perhaps a pincer where one tine has a semicircle, allowing it to be used as a spoon, when pinched?<p>Regardless, surely the future of food is hallucinogenic flavor crystals, matching your desired flavor, texture, smell, and atmosphere!
Other kitchen utensils you might not have considered using when plating and/or at the table:<p>• Small silicone tongs (e.g. <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Fuyamp-Kitchen-Cooking-Silicone-Grilling/dp/B07ZP4HGL1/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.ca/Fuyamp-Kitchen-Cooking-Silicone-Grilli...</a>) — great for "family-style" service of oily spaghetti, salads, etc. Much better grip on saucy foods than laquered wooden "salad hands." No need to wind pasta around anything; just pick it up. Works much better than a spoon/ladle for breaking up a mound of sticky sweet-and-sour pork — you're pulling and twisting, rather than pushing.<p>• Kitchen shears — some foods (e.g. Korean short ribs) that are extremely annoying to slice/saw the meat off the bone of with a steak knife, can be scissored through with ease. Also work great for cutting open crab legs.<p>• Handheld cheese wire slicer (e.g. <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Cheese-Slicer-Stainless-Steel-Cutter/dp/B09HPWMGNV/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.ca/Cheese-Slicer-Stainless-Steel-Cutter/d...</a> — don't bother with the ones with a little roller in them for "depth of cut adjustment", it'll just get gummed up) — rather than pre-slicing your cheese for charcuterie snacking (and having it all dry out), you can just bring the block to the table and slice it as you need it.<p>• A mini-sized silicone spatula (e.g. <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/HLMY-Silicone-Resistant-Baking-Essential-Gadget-21CM/dp/B074L6X25M/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.ca/HLMY-Silicone-Resistant-Baking-Essenti...</a>)... for spreading butter on toast. Yes, really. I just figured this one out yesterday, since I already had the spatula on hand from making eggs, and figured I may-as-well try. It works better than any butter knife I ever used; even the fancy wide-bladed "spreading knives." Much less butter left stuck to the utensil in the end. And it makes sense — buttering toast isn't all that different than icing a cake.
Is this a parody? "Developer finds new tool -> is amazed -> thinks this is the future of X -> turns out it's not very useful outside one or two cases"
I have not tried pincers so keep that in mind. I appreciate that they are easier to use, however the economics come to play. Chopsticks, the disposable ones, the ones presented to most diners are incredibly cheap to make about 2 cents. Some diners prefer disposable cutlery for perceived sanitary reasons.
So these pincers need to beat the economy of Chopsticks and consumer uptake.
> The pincers have a good grip, are easy to manoeuvre and are the right size and weight. They make it so much easier to eat anything from sushi to chicken wings.<p>Oh dear god, I'm both horrified and intrigued ... but mostly horrified ...
I and the folks of chinese-descent in my family prefer wooden chopsticks over steel ones because of the better grip wood texture provides, so perhaps pincers are the future, but not the metal ones OP has. Wood might be more sustainable, too.
Years ago on our first anniversary I took my SO to a sushi place as she'd never been to one.<p>The waiter told us that outside the regular cutlery they offer a middle option for those who want the chopstick experience without the hassle.<p>I opted for that and the guy fashioned a set of picers from chopsticks and rubber bands on the spot.<p>Guy looked like he did that every day.
Since so many of the comments here are about chopsticks, I'm curious what folks think the proportion of people in western countries who can use chopsticks is? I assume it follows roughly the introduction of Asian foods into the locales where people live?<p>I learned in my late teens; prior to that, there was really only one Asian restaurant around where I grew up, and it was more of a buffet-style Chinese restaurant where most of the entries were variations on General Tso's chicken or other Americanized menu items. My parents did acquire a taste for Asian cuisine, but never learned to use chopsticks. But we also have relatives of a similar age who literally have never tried Asian food at all, and I'm assuming have also never tried to use a pair of chopsticks.
I have summarized this comment section in a meme that I titled "Chop-Cels be seething over Pincer-Chads."<p>Url: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/dxgI1Mx" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/dxgI1Mx</a><p>Of course, this is needless. Pincers don't threaten chopsticks, nor will they replace them.<p>Pincers are an opportunity to learn to stuff the face in a new way. If I get pincers, I anticipate they will be fun to learn, and I will gain unique food handling skills with them, like I did with chopsticks, forks, knives, and other food tools.
I hate forks as much as the next person (compared to spoons and knives, forks are far worse at performing their primary job), but I'm not sure about these pincers. For one thing they look more difficult to clean (stuff would get stuck at the base).
These are actually plating tweezers. When I visited a lot of modern restaurants in Spain about ten years ago, these were pretty common to appear at three table for a course or two. So these have been around for a while now and haven't spread much outside the kitchen. I have some of these, but rarely use them to eat. In a regular kitchen these are really great for stuff like getting pickles or anchovies out of a jar
I've consider myself fairly proficient with chopsticks, but this got me thinking: would <i>reverse</i> pincers be an improvement? Ones that have a spring to hold closed, versus holding open. My one beef with chopsticks is that it requires somewhat more holding strength to retain something between the two ends than a fork.
I think the issue will be that not all pincers (and other similar kitchen utensils) are not all made the same. Some are much harder to squeeze than others. Some don't open as wide, so I may not be able to get it around a large chunk of sushi. With chopsticks I have neither of these problems (although chopsticks do vary in other ways).
Eating Panda Express style Chinese food with rice and a couple of stir frys? Try putting it in a plate, and use a fork and spoon to eat. Fork pushes components+rice into spoon, spoon goes into mouth. No more stuff falling off like when only a fork is used. Fork also used to stab when needed and spoon used to slice when needed.<p>Thank me later
I'd actually quite like these.<p>I have fairly poor manual dexterity (I struggle to use a spoon sometimes!) due to tremors. Chopsticks are really, really hard to use for me, and "trainers" make them about on par with a fork or spoon for my situation. A solid piece of metal would be easier to clean.
With these pincers you lose multiple degrees of freedom v. chopsticks, and while those degrees of freedom make chopsticks harder in some respects, they also allow chopsticks to grip large and irregularly-shaped items with which pincers would have a <i>much</i> more difficult time.
Between sticks with prongs, sticks with mouth shaped bowls, and sticks with sticks, unless culinary art sees major advancements I think we’ve got it covered for the next 1000 years lol.<p>Of course according to the Onion, Yum Corp will being dumping Taco Bell nacho grande chees-oid solution into our troughs.<p>;^P
To me the difference comes in with the knife, not the fork. In the west we get for example large pieces of meat/veg that you need to cut yourself, vs for example in Korea where everything once prepared is already made into bite sized pieces.