Toasties and tools
“I saw something very strange the other day” (or something to that effect), said an acquaintance over drinks. “There were two men having lunch and both were eating their toasted sandwiches with a knife and fork.”
This man and his wife, who was also in attendance at drinks and far less quizzical of such a practice, are two people I like and admire very much and had been pursuing madly as friends. I was not about to cock it up by admitting that I, too, was some kind of weirdo that eats a toasted sandwich with a knife and fork.
“As well as pizza – why would one eat a pizza with a knife and fork?” he added. This was going from bad to worse.
In a not exhaustive poll I subsequently conducted, only one toastie and pizza consumer behaved similarly all of the time, and a minority some of the time.
“I use a knife and fork to eat a toasted sandwich and a pizza. Not because of grease or wanting to keep hands clean, just habit/routine,” said Mo. “A hamburger too.”
Gideon replied that he eats a toasted sandwich with his hands “begrudgingly”. As for pizza, “knife and fork is strictly (and secretly) preferable; hands, if necessary (and begrudgingly so…).”
“It depends where my mood takes me for either. I do tend to take up a knife and fork if I need to slow myself down in a more social setting, as opposed to wolfing it down to satiate my hunger,” said Claudie.
“If I’m in a restaurant eating pizza at dinner, I’ll be civilised and use a knife and fork,” Mike said. “If I’m being onbeskof (rude or ill-mannered in Afrikaans) and shoving an Uber Eats number down my gullet at home, I’ll use my paws.”
I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a sandwich or a toastie with a knife and fork – or a piece of pizza, for that matter
– Mia Penn, co-founder of Lion’s Bread bakery in Cape Town
On the whole, the responses confirmed that I and my fellow knife and forkers are well and truly misguided.
“It’s gotta be eaten with your hands,” said Alfie.
“Absolutely no debate about it: I eat both with my hands. I would be suspicious of anyone who didn’t,” said Kelly. “Toasted sandwiches need to be crispy enough to leave your fingers a little greasy, and cooked pizza dough has a weight that needs to be felt,” she added.
“I eat both with my hands, as it should be. Only gringos use knives and fork for sandwiches and pizzas,” remarked ‘Don’ José, an Argentinian and longstanding Capetonian.
“Using utensils to eat a toasted sandwich is just flat out wrong,” agreed Ari, a South African who has had years of practice in SA, the US and Israel. “By the same token, a pizza should only be eaten with your hands. You have to be able to feel the crust with your fingers. In addition, if you are a pizza lover, you can put a hell of a lot more pizza in your mouth this way,” he said.
Jens, a German living in Germany, declared “toast is necessarily eaten by hands.” How to eat pizza, he added, has to be learned “from the prettiest woman in the history of movies, Sophia Loren, in Houseboat.”
Jared, an American, said eating pizza with a knife and fork “robs it of the fun of eating it. Plus with hands is just more functional.”
There is something intimate about eating food with your hands, like a temporary truce with civilisation.
– Cape Town-based scribbler Herman Lategan, from his Substack
Perhaps a professional opinion was in order. So off to Lion’s Bread in the Bo-Kaap neighbourhood of Cape Town I went, which, at that point, in early September last year, had been open for two celebrated weeks.
Baker Jack Green is firmly in the no utensil camp too. “I actually prefer to not use a plate either. Just sit outside with it in my hands; eat it like a sandwich.”
Said his bakery co-founder, Mia Penn, while preparing my toastie: ‘‘We don’t actually have knives and forks, so it’s not an option.”
Do you have anyone asking for a knife and fork?, I asked.
“No, not yet.”
