The fork and spoon (chon and sorm)

The Thai table takes the spoon (ช้อน, chon) in the right hand and the fork (ส้อม, sorm) in the left, and this arrangement belongs to the Central Plains and the court at Bangkok. David Thompson, in Thai Food, describes the fork and spoon as the manner of eating that settled in the Siamese court and the central kingdom, and sets it apart from eating with the hand, which remained the practice of the North and the North-East with sticky rice. The knife has no place at the table because the kitchen has already cut every ingredient to a mouthful.

The spoon is the principal instrument and the fork serves it. The fork does not carry food to the mouth; it pushes and gathers rice and morsels onto the spoon, and the spoon is what enters the mouth. This is the first thing a cook must grasp about the Central Thai table, since it explains why the food is prepared as it is. Meat is sliced thin or cut small, vegetables are trimmed to a bite, and whole fish are boned at the table or eaten with the spoon's edge, so that nothing requires a blade. The arrangement follows from the structure of the meal. Thompson presents the Thai meal as rice with the dishes that accompany it, not as a sequence of courses, and the dishes arrive together and are shared from common plates. Each diner takes a little of one dish, spoons it over a plateful of steamed rice, and eats that mouthful, then turns to another. The spoon serves this exactly, because it carries rice and a sauced dish together and holds the liquid of a curry or a relish that would escape a fork alone. A serving spoon rests in each shared dish, and the diner uses the personal spoon only for the plate before them. Balance is the reason the rice is eaten with the dishes and not after them. A hot, sour, salty or sweet dish is tempered by the plain rice beneath it, and the cook composes the table so that a rich coconut curry is set beside something sharp, a salad or a relish with raw vegetables, and a soup to cleanse the mouth. The fork and spoon are the means by which the diner makes these small combinations, one mouthful at a time, and the meal is complete only when the diner has varied them. The usage is also a matter of the table's manners. The fork is not put into the mouth, and the spoon is not left to hang in a shared dish. Noodles, which came from the Chinese, are the exception that confirms the rule: they are eaten with chopsticks and a spoon for the broth, and are seasoned at the table from the condiment set of sugar, dried chilli, fish sauce and vinegared chillies. Elsewhere in the country the hand and the sticky-rice basket remain the proper way, and the fork and spoon should be understood as the habit of the central table, not of the whole nation.

Taken together, the spoon and fork let each diner build a mouthful from plain rice and one dish at a time, so that the cook's contrasts across the table are tasted in sequence. Rice with a sharp relish, then rice with a rich curry, shows how the meal is meant to be eaten: the dishes are seasoned boldly because the rice beneath them softens their force.