We need to talk about those plates where your cutlery slides into the sauce

Adeline loves food, lots of it and often, both at home and out. That often goes well, but sometimes it doesn’t. This week, she needs to talk about cutlery that always slides into your plate so awkwardly.

This week, it happened to me twice (!). Does that mean I ate out twice this week? Yes! I’m immediately bankrupt because of it, but it’s better to be bankrupt with a full stomach than without one, or so they say. But there’s something going on with the cutlery in restaurants. Literally and figuratively.

Struggling with the cutlery

I’m a sucker for beautiful plates. Without shame, I immediately turn them over so I know where I can buy such gorgeous pieces myself. So far, the tableware and I usually get along very well. But these days I’m always struggling a little with the cutlery. I know all the choirboys will be curling their toes at the sight of the word cutlery, but that only makes using it even more fun for me. The cutlery, that is, which so sadly slides into your plate in between bites. Because these days, it does so more and more often. Twice this week, in fact.

Cutlery clatters diagonally onto the floor

The rim of the plate is usually too high to position your knife and fork neatly at quarter past three, the way you always used to. You do try for a while, but it’s often so steep (and the tables are so small!) that you risk your cutlery immediately clattering diagonally onto the floor. So you stick the knife just slightly askew into your plate, and that’s where the trouble starts. From the corner of your eye, you see the knife sinking bit by bit by bit by bit deeper into that already very deep plate. As it sinks, you naturally still try to pay attention to any dining companion, but that’s almost impossible. Precisely because it slides so slowly. You know what’s coming, but it’s almost impossible to prevent.

With the blade and all

The annoying thing is that you can’t put the knife anywhere else. On the table means: a filthy table. Leaning diagonally upward against the plate means: dangerous. So you always end up with a knife stuck halfway into the plate and the eventual, inevitable terror of it disappearing completely into your food. And it’s never next to a smear of sauce. No, no, no. It always goes all the way in. With the blade and all. Which means your hand immediately ends up covered in the gunk.

I told you something was going on, didn’t I? Well, that’s it. So this week I ended up covered from head to toe in puréed sweet potato. I looked like a baby that had been left alone with a jar of orange Olvarit.

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