Food

Food Culture-Western (Pasta)

Eating Etiquette

Pasta is most commonly eaten with only a fork. Long pasta are usually not cut up and one should use a fork to twirl up the strands of pasta. In most meals, long pasta are twirled on the spoon before it is brought to the mouth.

Traditions

By 1785 there were 280 pasta shops in Naples and pasta became a street food. It’s most devoted consumers were street people (lazzarone) who are characteristically portrayed as holding long strands of pasta with their fingers, tilt their heads backwards and at arm length sliding and then swallowing them in one gulp!

Indeed, this was a spectacular must-see tourist attraction. People on tour often ordered up a plate of pasta just to see these lazzarone perform.

Food Culture-Chinese

Symbolism

Chinese noodles are always in long strands; they are symbolic of longevity and thus are common during Chinese birthday celebrations.

Longevity noodles get their name from their long lengths. The longer the noodle, the longer the wish you bestow upon your guests for a long and healthy life.

Traditional longevity noodles are made with a single lump of dough. The dough is stretched, then folded and stretched again until each fold creates thin threads of noodles. The process is only considered complete until there are a thousand strands of noodles (1000 is perceived as a lucky number)!

The proper way to eat the noodle is to not break the long strand, but consume it whole. For, to break the noodle it would mean breaking one’s luck and shortening one’s life.

Traditions

(i) Noodles not only play an important role in Asian daily eating, but contribute to rituals in honoring the dead, celebrating birthdays of the living, and marking other special occasions. Noodles are brought to the grave of a deceased family member or friend on the twenty-fourth day after the first of each lunar month. This practice dated back from the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), when Emperor Chu Yuan-Chang constructed a shrine to the imperial ancestors where he placed spiritual tablets of his paternal relatives and had food offerings, one of which is noodles with sesame oil.

(ii) Upon giving birth to a baby (especially a boy), the wife’s maternal family members would send over gifts that include wheat flour noodles, chickens and a basket of eggs.

Food Culture-Japanese

Eating Etiquette

In Japan, it is a habit to slurp noodles loudly when eating. By doing so, it means that the noodles are delicious and it is also traditionally polite.

In addition, by drawing up the noodles, especially hot ones, quickly into the mouth, it helps to cool them down.

Traditions

(i) “Flowing Somen” occurs from April 29 to May 5 (during summer) annually.

Some restaurants offer somen served in the manner of “flowing noodles” in the summer. “Flowing Somen” is known as "Nagashi Somen". The noodles are placed in a long tube of bamboo that carries ice-water, across the length of the restaurant. As the somen slides down the bamboo gutter, people pluck them out with their chopsticks, dip them in sauces and slurp them.

The fun element of this tradition is catching the noodles and not letting them flow down the drain

(ii) Soba is traditionally eaten on New Year’s Eve in most areas of Japan, a tradition that lasts till today. The dish is named toshi-koshi and it means “year passing”.

(iii) In Tokyo, there is a custom of giving out soba to new neighbours after moving house as ‘soba’ sounds like another Japanese word which has the meaning of “next to”.

(iv) If a bowl of noodles, in the shape of the word “udon”, is placed on the roof of a taxi, it means that the taxi driver is happy to take customers to a restaurant serving udon.