July transcript

July Breakfast Den Guest List:

Robin Key

John Henry Donner

Matt Gove

Gaya Sriskanthan

Nina Gotlieb

Ilk Yasha

Dwight Cassin

Elspeth Gilmore

Daniel Sadicario

Aida Sehovic

Delarys Ramos Estrada

Julie Pham

Morgan Smith

[Start at 7:50]

[cross talk and light chatter]

McKendree Key: If you haven’t taken fruit salad, you have to, and if you did already you have to take more.

[cross talk and light chatter]

Dwight Cassin: So, what’s the story of the utensils?

McKendree Key: We’ll get to that.

Ilk Yasha: Eager.

Aida Sehovic: I have the same question.

McKendree Key: I’m assuming people know what those are but maybe not. Then I have some…have a choice of different utensils, which you may or may not want to use. But I’m just gonna show them and you just put your hand up when you see the one you want. We have a Spork, a slotted spoon. We have a weird kind of devil-like...this one is…

Julie Pham: Lobster fork.

Aida Sehovic: Oh my god. I picked too soon. 

John Henry: Yes, please thank you

McKendree Key: This one is really special. We have another gorgeous slotted spoon.

Ilk Yasha: Tell me which one you want and I’ll trade

Aida Sehovic: I know right. I wanted that.

Ilk Yasha: Oh I can’t do that.

McKendree Key: You can trade. You can trade. 

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: Hi.

Delayrs Estrada: Should I go? Yes? Yes. I wasn’t sure...

McKendree Key: Absolutely. I think if somebody else comes we can squeeze them in around the table. 

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: There are a few people who are signed up to come but who are not here I think. There’s one more. Gaya. So when she comes we’ll just squeeze her in. Do you want to get some food or?

Delayrs Estrada: Yeah I got food. I just didn’t want to take up table space. 

McKendree Key: What’s your name? 

Delayrs Estrada: D 

McKendree Key: Dean? 

Delayrs Estrada: Yeah or D.

McKendree Key: I’m McKendree. We’ll go around and say our names. Thank you all for coming on this really rainy day. I hope you enjoyed your walk down the High Line with nobody else around because usually it’s unenjoyable almost because it’s so crowded.

Morgan Smith: Peak hours are the worst.

[inaudible]

McKendree Key: Yeah. Yeah. And so here’s the deal. We’re going to be here until 10. We won’t go past 10. I don’t have my phone so actually just…

Elspeth Gilmore: I can time.

McKendree Key: Keep me on track. You can get up any time. You can get up to get more food, more coffee any time you want. There’s coffee on the table. I think that’s coffee.  Feel free. Don’t feel like you have to stay here. Thank you. Like right here the whole time. We’re going to talk about utensils. Talk loudly. We are being recorded, but that’s not a big deal. And, yeah, if you can speak loudly because there is a little bit of background noise. The most important thing is that you speak from the heart, and you speak about your personal, speak about yourself not skirt around that if you can, if you want to. Yeah, so I will just tell you a little bit about this project. So this is the second in a series of three that I’m doing this summer on the High Line. Thank you to the High Line that have allowed this or made this happen. And I usually pick the topics based on kind of things that I feel like get overlooked in our lives from the day-to-day, and utensils is one of those things. And we’ll get into it. Just in case you were wondering, this project started as kind of a reaction against these surface conversations that I felt like I was having constantly. I felt like I was going through my life just having these conversations that were up on the surface and just chit chat and never getting down below to anything deeper. And it started to get to me. So I started holding these breakfast conversations. Some of you have been to them before, and it’s just a time to kind of really carve out time and focus on one thing and have a meal face-to-face with strangers. I know many of you, but I think of it as kind of a radical act at this point in history: meeting, eating, gathering, and looking at those spaces and talking about something like utensils. So yeah, here we go. I think...Where’s Gaya? Is everybody comfortable? Let’s squeeze Gaya in...Are you?

Helen: Hi, I’m sorry. I was just running, jogging along, and I know your mum…

McKendree Key: That’s great did you just stop in?

Helen: And I just stopped in. 

McKendree Key: That’s perfect

Robin Key: I don’t know whether...if we can let her in or not 

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: Feel free to get up, get your stuff, coffee, breakfast, anything you want. Let’s just go around and introduce ourselves. And I asked, if you wanted to, I said you could bring in a utensil. If you didn’t, that’s totally fine. We have plenty to talk about. But if you want to show what you brought and say something about it you can. And no pressure to talk about it, if you don’t want to. But just remember that we’re a big group, making sure that everyone gets a chance to share. So I’ll start. I brought my baby spoon, which has my name on it. And I’ve had it forever. I mean since I was a baby. And at one point got lost, and it was so sad. It got lost, and I thought it was gone for forever. Turned out it fell behind a cabinet in my kitchen and for like two years it was gone. And then we took out the cabinet to redo the kitchen and there it was. And I was like…So I actually I came…Yesterday I was in New Mexico, and I had to bring this to New Mexico with me, then to Arizona, then back to New Mexico, and then here today to get from my house in Brooklyn to here. To be here today. So it’s been...It’s done a little travelling lately. But, yeah, I’ll leave it at that. There’s a lot more to say about it, but I’ll leave it at that.

Julie Pham: I’m impressed that it’s not a plastic spoon like for babies it’s usually…

McKendree Key: Oh, yeah, yeah, well, this was a different time. This was long, long ago. Yes, so. You want to go?

Julie Pham: Sure. Hi everyone, my name is Julie. My utensils are my hands, my fingers. As you can see I’m Asian so growing up in a—I’m Vietnamese—growing up in my culture, we used mostly chopsticks, and it’s sort of ubiquitous now…that chopsticks…like everyone thinks it’s cool and uses them [inaudible]. I think fingers are really important utensils that we, in my culture personally, used a lot, and we take for granted sometimes. But I feel like I make everything with my hands and I eat with my hands. So yeah, my utensils are my hands.

McKendree Key: Awesome.

Dwight Cassin: Hi everyone. My name is Dwight. I didn’t bring any utensils. I actually don’t own any utensils.

McKendree Key: What? That’s amazing

Julie Pham: Do you use your hands too? Your fingers?

Dwight Cassin: I use other people’s utensils. One good story is that in college I was a part of the Utensilist (sp?) Eating Club. So every month we’d get together in a room to the side of the dining hall and eat dinner together. All the regular, all the same food that everyone else ate, pot roast, peas, and everything but we ate with our hands, and it was super intimate. It was really...There was something special about it. It brought everyone together. And also because it was college, a lot of times it ended with a food fight ...It was really lovely. It was a really special, intimate experience.

Matt Gove: Hi, I’m Matt, and I didn’t bring any utensils. Good morning. 

Robin Key: What’d you say I’m sorry? Couldn’t hear. 

Matt Gove: I’m Matt. Good Morning

McKendree Key: And he didn’t bring any utensils

Elspeth Gilmore: I’m Elspeth. I just grabbed this spoon out of my drawer this morning, but I actually think there’s a lot of utensil stories in my family passed down, but I feel like there’s the other side, which is, I’ll search through my drawer or other people’s drawers to find the utensil that has the right weight or that feels like the right form or feels like something I want to eat out of and I’m very picky about it. So this is one of them that I will use. 

Delayrs Estrada: [inaudible]

Elspeth Gilmore: Yeah.

Unknown: Depends on what you’re eating. 

Nina Gotlieb: Hi, I’m Nina. I brought the oldest utensils that I own and the newest utensil I own. I brought a knife, a fork and a spoon from a set of silver, silver, silver that was handed down to me from my grandmother. It’s at least a few generations old, but I’m not exactly sure how many. It sits in its original container in a brown paper bag, in a plastic bin in my basement. And it’s travelled with me to four different apartments, and I’ve never used it, ever. And I don’t really plan on using it. But now actually because of this I sort of feel like I should use it. And then I didn’t do this on purpose, but realized on my way here that I also brought my newest utensil, which I just bought and used for the first time yesterday and it’s a collapsible cup. So that when I get coffee at work I don’t have to use plastic cups. It’s actually made of silicone, and it moves like this. It’s got a little straw and a little holder. You can put hot or cold liquids in. Got a little sleeve, and then this is the cap. And, yeah, it was cool to use yesterday. The barista at my coffee shop at work was intrigued. 

McKendree Key: Can I see the straw?

Nina Gotlieb: What? 

McKendree Key: The straw

Nina Gotlieb: Yeah, the straw? 

McKendree Key: Is it bendy?

Nina Gotlieb: Yeah, it’s silicone.

John Henry: Hi there, I’m John Henry. I brought a very goofy utensil, but it’s kind of my favorite. I got it when I got my grill from Craigslist. It’s a spatula with a golf handle and it says Par-be-que on it. But I was like looking through my apartment, and I was thinking about this discussion, and I was really interested in the difference between tools and utensils are and the way that grilling products are gendered as tools and serving things are gendered as utensils. That’s one of things I wanted to explore today. And I’m also a chef so I have a pretty intimate relationship with a bunch of utensils.

Dan Sadicario: I’m a Dan. Speaking of being a chef, I used to be a cook and I didn’t want to bring my chef’s knife. I thought it would be weird walking down the hill with a chef’s knife, but I really like it a lot. I love cutting with it. When I have to cut vegetables, I’m really excited to get to use the chef’s knife.

Aida Sehovic: I’m Aida. I did not bring a utensil, but I was having a very long debate in my head whether that word exists in my language. And I couldn’t remember for hours, and then I did. But I was wondering, and I don’t know if that’s true in English, but in my language, I’m Bosnian…I don’t know if in English, utensils refer to just utensils for food. We have utensils for drawing, utensils for...that was my big question.

McKendree Key: Different words for drawing utensils? 

Aida Sehovic: No, it’s still the same word. And, I guess I realized until last night when I was thinking about this that perhaps in English utensils only refer to utensils for food whereas in my language, there’s utensils for different purposes like you still call them utensils. You would just add utensils for drawing, utensils for eating, utensils for…

Unknown: I’m interested in our definitions too.

Aida Sehovic: Yeah, so that was a question I had for everyone. I didn’t want to look it up. I just wanted to come.

McKendree Key: Yes, yes. No expertise needed.

Helen: I’m Helen. As I said, I was jogging along the High Line and found your breakfast so I don’t have a utensil with me. I think it’s an interesting, wonderful subject to choose because I personally…the holding of utensils and choosing utensils is really something that I do [inaudible]. Whether it’s in the garden or in the kitchen I just love that kind of thing. It’s my kind of William Morris bit. 

Robin Key: I’m Robin. And I brought a few utensils that McKendree…

McKendree Key: The special ones, ones that are…

Robin Key: The salad fork and spoon are also mine. I can tell them the story about them now or later. Whatever you want. Now.

McKendree Key: Sure.

Robin Key: So this fork and spoon, tongs, I guess they’re salad tongs…They’re bone or ivory where the fork and spoon are…and then the silver, we believe it comes from the Nuragassen (sp?) collection, special collection of borum (sp?) silver. And my McKendree…I’m McKendree’s mother, for those of you who don’t know, and we grew up…McKendree grew up not far from here. My husband and I moved to the West Village when we were really young. And we were definitely hippies, and we landed not far from here when it was a very different part of the city. McKendree went to a co-op nursery school, and I met there the artist Brice Marden, whose daughters also went to nursery school with McKendree. And Brice and I became friends, and when McKendree Key’s grandmother wanted to give me a portrait painting of McKendree on her 4th birthday of her to go above my mantle I freaked out because there was no way I was going to put a painting of McKendree above our mantle. So, I said to Brice, “What the heck should we do?” And he said, “You should have a photograph taken of her by Robert Mapplethorpe.” To make a long story short, we ended up doing that. It was a fascinating experience getting to know Robert Mapplethorpe, and getting these portraits taken. And we kind of followed him forever. And this fork and spoon came from the Sam Wagstaff’s silver collection that was at the Museum of Natural History. His whole collection was not donated, but given to them to show for I think a really long period of time. And some of it was auctioned off. My...McKendree’s grandfather bought it at auction and gave it to David and I because we knew Mapplethorpe and Sam Wagstaff was Mapplethorpe’s partner. So, we’ve had these, and when McKendree’s subject of utensils came up, I said “Oh I have utensils.” So, here they are.

McKendree Key: Feel free to pass them around if you want.

Robin Key: If you look closely one is a fish in the silver and the other is a dragon.

Helen: [inaudible]

Robin Key: Sam Wagstaff. His partner has one of the most renowned collections of silver (or had). He’s passed away and the collection, I believe, is still shown at the New York Historical Society. And the other utensils are just, like Nina said, passed down through my family and my husband’s family and ended up in my drawer. And I do use them all the time. Nina…

Nina Gotlieb:  I should use them.

Robin Key: Yep. 

Nina Gotlieb:  Ok

Robin Key: You get great pleasure out of it. You’re holding something really old.

Nina Gotlieb:  Yeah, I know. It’s so crazy that I’ve never even thought about using them. I already have silverware. The easy stuff. And I don’t know.

McKendree Key: What is the silverware that you have, that you use?

Nina Gotlieb:  So the silverware that I use was a wedding gift to me from my first marriage. I took it. Yeah it was like Lagio Old (sp?) from Williams Sonoma

McKendree Key: What kind of metal is it?

Nina Gotlieb: It’s silver. It’s actually, really beautiful. It’s all metal colored. Like the handle is stainless, but it has brass rivets. It’s really pretty. 

McKendree Key: Alright.

Ilk Yasha: So what you said Aida about the utensils was actually what I went through as well. And I was just like…when you sent me a message about utensils. I was like utensils? I took it very conceptually. And I was like, “Oh okay, I’m just going to show up with what I always have,” which is a pencil. Because I was like, “Oh it’s a utensil. It’s a household item that you use.” And that’s what I took utensil as. Maybe it’s our multi-lingual brains, but I was like… “Aww yeah utensil why’s it got to be with food?” So, maybe I misinterpreted it or maybe I correctly interpreted it in my own way. But I went with my pencil, which I normally keep on me.

McKendree Key: That counts. That counts.

Ilk Yasha: Yeah. Most people think I’m a carpenter, but I’m not. But I always have a pencil most days, and it’s an important tool.

McKendree Key: Awesome

Delarys Estrada: Hi, my name is Dee. I didn’t bring anything, but I do have my hands. And I grew up in the Bronx so a lot of my food I have to be capable of eating it anywhere like sandwiches, butter rolls, things like that, usually eating with my hands and on the go. So, yeah.

Morgan Smith: Hi, my name is Morgan. And I also didn’t bring a utensil today, but I’m excited to explore the relationship with all of y’all because it seems like everyone has a relationship to [inaudible] … And I haven’t given a lot of thought to my own personal relationship to utensils.

Ilk Yasha: Until today.

Morgan Smith: Until today.  

Gaya Sriskanthan: Hi, I’m Gaya, and I just realized I didn’t think I had any utensils and then I came here and then I realized I had two because I take them around with me every day—part of my quest to avoid plastic. So, I have my little lunchbox, and also, this is a new acquisition, since I found out that plastic tea bags is disgusting to soak in your tea. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure that out. So, I have this tea thing. I have Viscera (sp?) tea bags, and I put their guts in here.

Aida Sehovic: You carry the tea bag in your pocket? 

Gaya Sriskanthan: No

[laughter and cross talk]

Aida Sehovic: Oh, I was like did you pull it out of your pocket?

[laughter and cross talk]

Robin Key: Oh, so you empty the tea bag into the tea ball.

Gaya Sriskanthan: Yeah…

McKendree Key: Why aren’t tea bags good?

Gaya Sriskanthan: [inaudible]… release chemicals in the actual bag. Some of them [are] like plastic bags, fancy ones that are full of mesh. You’re just soaking that plastic in hot water.

Ilk Yasha: You should make the jump to buying loose tea and then not having to cut the bag.

Gaya Sriskanthan: I do have it at home, but it’s more convenient than taking a bunch of tea with me. 

McKendree Key: Well I’m fucked then because I use tea bags a lot.

Gaya Sriskanthan: So, do I…I mean so did I. I only found out recently. And I was like, Oh great…

Ilk Yasha: It’s actually not great quality. 

Matt Gove: It’s just those ritzy ones right? I don’t think…

[inaudible cross talk]

Julie Pham: That’s another breakfast. 

McKendree Key: All right very interesting. I want to go back to the concept of cultural differences embedded in utensils and how some people here don’t have utensils or use their hands to eat. And some people place a lot of value on utensils. And I also think it’s really… I also want to talk about why you haven’t used your silverware. And why people don’t use these special things that have been passed down for generations and are beautiful and like utilitarian, which is the definition of utensils: something to be used. Yeah, and I just wonder if maybe you could talk a little more about what it’s like eating at your house.

Julie Pham: Yeah, sure. I think…when I was born…I was born in Vietnam, and we don’t really use forks and knives. So I never really had like this kind of gesture growing up. This is kind of foreign to me. And I married a French person, and he’s very knife and fork. Don’t use his fingers. So culturally, I think utensils are ingrained in us and how we grew up. I remember trying to teach my friends how to use chopsticks… And it’s just sort of innate in me holding these two sticks together and using them to grab stuff. And I think utensils represents our cultural upbringing, our traditions, and things like that. And what comes to mind is like when I first saw the movie Pretty Women and she was getting a class, or like you know like a training session by the concierge to say this is like a salad fork, this is like the shrimp fork. I had no idea what those things were. And when I was in college, I had to take the same class. It’s like etiquette. When you go to a fancy restaurant or an interview, you want to know not to use the dinner fork for the first course or something. People would look at you like, “Oh this person is not well brought up. Doesn’t have class or anything like that.” So I feel like utensils are very representative of who we are and where we come from. And I think as I grow up more and more I become more in tune to other cultures like Ethiopian you don’t really use utensils, you just eat everything with your hands—just like other ethnic countries. Americans and Europeans are very hands-on with the knives and forks…And like representations of when you set the knife and fork a certain way it means you’re still working on it. And when you set it this way, it means you’re done. And when you set a knife you can’t have it face this way. So, when I first came to my in-laws, my French in-laws, when I was setting the table…it has to be like…they kind of like nitpick. Like [if] I set the knife facing outwards instead of inward, it represents retaliations to other people or something like that. So I think my mother-in-law like casually just flipped it, and I sort of noticed [and] I’m like okay.

McKendree Key: She flipped your knife?

Julie Pham: The knives that I set around the table. Yeah, so, that’s my experience with utensils.

McKendree Key: Do you have… Are there hierarchies within chopsticks? Are there really like fancy ones and basic ones?

Julie Pham: Yes, but I don’t know much about it. But I’m sure with the emperors and people back in the day I’m sure like the emperors probably had golden chopsticks and peasants had…

McKendree Key: Right. I mean now as a normal person?

Julie Pham: I don’t know. I just know that my nieces and nephews when they’re starting out they have baby chopsticks. They’re shortened up for their baby hands and they have grips on them to teach them how to use them. I prefer wooden, but other people have like fancy decorations. It becomes very decorative as well, like an art to them. I’ve seen shops in Chinatown where they have a special chopsticks store, and they have different kinds of Asian art work on them. 

Matt Gove: Different countries prefer different chopsticks, I think?

Julie Pham: I don’t know. 

Matt Gove: In Korea, they seem to really love metal chopsticks. You never see a wooden one.

Julie Pham: That’s true…because, I guess, they grill a lot of Korean barbeque; they wouldn’t want the wood to be burned in the fire grill.

Gaya Sriskanthan: I actually have a similar experience to you because I was born in the UK, and I grew up there, but my family is from Sri Lanka. So, when I was very little we probably used spoons, but we’d eat by hand. And then I remember…I have this very early childhood memory of being in the Get Free school lunch in the U.K. And they call them dinner ladies…They’d wear these scarves and come around and sort of like…I would just be struggling with these knives and forks and feeling slightly ashamed because she was sort of judgmentally showing me how to eat properly. And it was just this very early memory—somewhat too like your in-laws— and this slight like, Oh, I’m doing something wrong. And this is the proper way to do things. And I’m not doing it. This weird sort of judgment around using utensils. 

Julie Pham: Proper etiquette.

John Henry: It’s interesting to note that a lot of that etiquette comes from Western ideas of serving and eating. All those...the array of forks and knives and stuff…that is all based on French and English forms of etiquette. And even this little spoon has a little Florida Lee (sp?) on the back. So a lot of ...That would be a connotation of high class because French cuisine is the cuisine, the haute cuisine. Haute is a French word even so… yeah, it’s interesting to note. There’s also a pineapple on here as well, on the other side, which is the international symbol of hospitality. Because it’s like...

Unknown: Really?

John Henry: Yeah people would put pineapples like in the middle of the table to say like, “Oh I spent a lot of money to get this pineapple over to you and present it for you. I’m like opening my house and my bank account essentially.”

McKendree Key: Because pineapples are…

John Henry: They’re hard to get… 

Elspeth Gilmore: Not in the … in the part of the world you’re talking about. 

John Henry: Exactly there’s a Florida Lee (sp?) right there. Because… it means like… French people were bringing pineapples from Polynesia and bringing it to their guests, or whatever, to serve them.

Julie Pham: It’s so funny you said pineapples like that because I’ve heard that pineapples also are a representation of being open to swinging. I don’t know…

[cross talk]

John Henry: Really. I didn’t know that? Well I mean hospitality means a lot of different things. 

Gaya Sriskanthan: On a spoon…

Elspeth Gilmore: They also take 18 months to grow. 

John Henry: Ok, there you go.

McKendree Key: What’d you say?

Elspeth Gilmore: They take 18...

[cross talk]

Elspeth Gilmore: They take a year and a half to mature.

McKendree Key: Really?

John Henry: So, again the idea of scarcity.

Elspeth Gilmore: So, they’re also pricey to produce.

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: I didn’t know that.

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: Well, yeah just look at this…I mean this is…What is this for? 

Aida Sehovic: That’s beautiful.

McKendree Key: It’s gorgeous. I grew up here, in New York, but I was given a set of silver by my grandmother as was my sister. And I have a brother as well. And I kind of…in thinking about utensils, I kind of realized that my sister and I were given silver, but my brother wasn’t. And it just occurred to me that I didn’t…I hadn’t thought about this at all before, but it’s kind of like a dowry. A certain way for my grandmother, I’m sure, to express her class and her privilege to the world. To endow it to the females in the family…So my brother was left, completely left out of that. Does he get something else?  

Robin Key: Well, he’s not married yet, but I’m curious what do you recommend we do in this situation? How do you make sure everything’s even? Because he didn’t get his portrait taken by Mapplethorpe either. And the two girls did, but that had nothing with him being male or younger. It had to do with Mapplethorpe passing away and getting too expensive and too old…I mean too sick to do it. But yeah, no, you’re making me feel a little nervous about that.

McKendree Key: Oh, he’ll be fine. I’m sure he’ll be fine. 

Robin Key: What?

McKendree Key: Not too worried about him.

Robin Key: The little folding spoon though. That came down through my mother’s… no, my father’s family…And I always thought it was a travelling spoon for somebody who didn’t want to eat with a plastic fork and spoon or just any utensils in a restaurant. They would have their own silver spoon right? That they could put in their pocket book. I mean I think that’s what the purpose of that was. I also wondered, Well is this a baby spoon? Is this what you would take with you back in the day when you would be travelling with an infant and you’d still want to have that silver spoon handy? I don’t know. So, those were my thoughts about that spoon.

John Henry: Yeah it’s very interesting object I think…

Matt Gove: Does anyone know what that weird one is? It must...I mean...

Robin Key: This also came down. It’s…

Matt Gove: Is it for tea?

Robin Key: I think it’s like for jam, and that’s how I use it now. Although it’s a strainer as well… So, I don’t know if you would fish your lemon out of your tea.

Elspeth Gilmore: Or the tea bag?

Robin Key: Sugar cube?

[cross talk]

Nina Gotlieb: This one is slotted also but it’s got more of a ladle shape. So it’s definitely...

McKendree Key: Is that one yours?

Nina Gotlieb: No. This is...

Robin Key: It might be gravy. I mean, but then gravy would go through it.

[cross talk]

John Henry: It also looks a little bit like absinthe spoon or an absinthe strainer. So, the way you serve absinthe is you pour the absinthe over a sugar cube nestled into the spoon. So, the absinthe goes through the sugar and into the glass with some ice. And that’s how you serve it.  

Robin Key: That would make a lot of sense. 

Helen: Your family has a wonderful eye… [inaudible]

McKendree Key: I mean just the fact that there’s all these different spoons and designs for all these purposes makes you realize just how particular—and what’s the word I’m looking for—just what a privilege it was to eat with these, to have a specific spoon for a specific thing.

Gaya Sriskanthan: I was just thinking of that saying, born with a silver spoon in your mouth.

McKendree Key: Definitely.

[cross talk]

Julie Pham: I recently found out that it’s bad luck to give someone a knife without them giving something in return. When I was in Martinique, I found these French knives that are sort of like this, but great for cutting fruits and very sharp…You know, just having a good knife, like a chef’s knife, like you said, is very important. So, I bought a bunch, and I gave them out to friends and family. And then my mom was like, “You can’t give them out. That’s bad luck. Because then the two of you...it’s going to stir up tensions” and stuff like that. So, I learned that in our culture when we give utensils, like a knife, for example, you have to make them purchase it or give something in exchange. You can’t just plainly give a knife so like I got like a dollar from my family.

McKendree Key: You got a dollar?

Julie Pham: Yeah, just sort of like an exchange, to make it a transaction because it’s seen as bad luck to just give a knife. 

McKendree Key: Oh, so your solution to that was to get a dollar from them?

Julie Pham: No, that was the tradition. To get money or something like that. You can always sell it. You just can’t give it as a gift.  I don’t know if anyone has...

Elspeth Gilmore: You can give a penny, but there has to be some kind of exchange of money. 

Julie Pham: Yeah, I don’t know if anyone has...

McKendree Key: Is that... Vietnam right?

Julie Pham: Vietnamese

McKendree Key: Is that specific to Vietnam?

Elspeth Gilmore: I’ve heard it too…Liz… 

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: You’ve heard it?

Elspeth Gilmore: My partner’s brother gave her a knife, and she had to give him ten cents or something…

McKendree Key: What? I’ve never heard of that

Elspeth Gilmore: Yeah, superstition

Ilk Yasha: Yeah, there’s this Middle Eastern superstition. It’s not superstition. I think superstition is like a larger, kind of heavy word. But when you give someone a bowl of something you’re never supposed to give it back empty. It’s like really bad if you do. So you have to fill it. If someone gives you a bowl, to take home, like food for you to take home with you right? And you use the bowl or the pot or whatever. And you just wash it. You give it back. We’re in the culture of like, “Oh just give it back,” and my mom’s like, “No, no you’ve got to put something in it.” So, you’d put something in it and give it back filled or at least like something in it, in exchange. And again I think it goes back to hospitality, welcomingness, inclusion, and like trying to break into that class thing, which is like we’ve shared something regardless of who you are or where you’re from. We’ve just shared something. Makes it a little bit more equitable.

Julie Pham: That’s the same thing in our culture. Yeah.

Dwight Cassin: So, there’s all this talk of cultural meaning, and I’m sitting here as like an American, third fourth generation American, feeling kind of like soulless and empty here.

Matt Gove: Good…

Dwight Cassin: Like I don’t have any meaning behind my utensils. But I feel like that’s an American quality too—like at least for a lot of Americans, not all Americans—to feel like utensils don’t have meaning. And I, even last night, I did a little research. I didn’t want to...I wanted to just...I was already interested but instead of going down the Wikipedia rabbit hole I kind of got stuck on the definition, which was at least defined by Google or Webster, whatever, as just a transportation device to get food into your mouth...I’m paraphrasing. 

Aida Sehovic: That’s the definition. 

Dwight Cassin: Which, I think again, is just so American—to make it about the utilitarian factor devoid of all sacred meaning or culture. 

Aida Sehovic: But just for food. 

Dwight Cassin: Yeah. 

Aida Sehovic: So you couldn’t have a utensil for drawing, which is what I was mentioning early…

Dwight Cassin: No.

Aida Sehovic: Wow 

Helen: But the opposite side of what you’re saying, which I’m feeling about McKendree and Robin, is that you have layers of history of utensils, which probably for those of us, who in various different ways are immigrants here, you know you’ve left things behind, you know. You’ve kind of forgotten the etiquette from when you were child. I mean I now eat primarily with my left hand with a fork, which as you said in Britain, we were, you know, we were taught to eat with a knife and fork. And then here you don’t; you eat more with just your fork. So I actually think there’s a kind of layer of history that you have if you’ve been multi-generation in one place [inaudible]…That’s a different way of looking at it.

Gaya Sriskanthan: I just wanted to say your comment was really interesting because I think it’s this thing about what’s American as well? It’s really revealing because I would see this as a European tradition that you have—you all handing forks down through your family. So, it seems like...The fact that you see it as American, when it’s not; it’s European-American. 

Dwight Cassin: Yeah…

Gaya Sriskanthan: And the fact that what she does is American. It’s not...there is no standard where it’s a blank culture. It’s invisible to you because it’s become so normalized. Curious…

Aida Sehovic: I’m still fascinated by the definition that transportation of food. Wow. Anyway.

John Henry: Yeah, I was like really fascinated by that idea too because there’s different categories of utensils. Working as a chef, I use utensils in the preparation of food. And that is like...So, I was thinking of it more as like these tools that work as transition—like technologies of transition of food. So, there’s like…you get the raw product, and you use utensils to put it into the vessel, and then [to] take it out of the vessel, you use utensils to put it onto the plate. And you use utensils to put it from the plate into your body. So [utensils] exist in all of these liminal places between points of preparation and consumption. So, I don’t know. I was really fascinated by all of that. 

McKendree Key: Wait, say a little more about that...it exists in?

John Henry: Liminal spaces? So, there’s the raw product, and then you use a knife to cut up a vegetable. That goes into the vessel, whatever, which you could call utensil itself, and then out of the vessel, you do some sort preparation to get it to the plate right? And then from the plate you use utensil to get it to your mouth. So, it’s like all these sort transitional spaces between points of preparation.

McKendree Key: And it’s...I would argue...one could argue it’s completely unnecessary because this motion is the most basic thing a human can do. Food to mouth, but we’re like putting all this…

John Henry: So, there’s layers of abstraction through utensil usage. Stuff like that. From your...and that’s what a lot of haute cuisine is about. It’s like taking this raw product and transforming it in a completely different way to make it elevated for expensive consumption.

[cross talk]

Julie Pham: I was just going to say in the way the actual eating food is completely utilitarian. You have to eat in order to survive. Haute cuisine decorates food in a way and like we…I don’t know what the impetus is… I guess it’s just the simple pleasure of elevating food, we also just elevate these utensils by giving them decoration in a way. Or, sort of something like this…There is a functional aspect to these perforations in the spoon, but it’s made in a joyful kind of decorative way. In order to add pleasure to this utility, this functional act that is necessary.

Elspeth Gilmore: Based on that definition I was just going to say that all of those other uses of serving utensils or knives in the kitchen, would not be considered utensils… but if it’s getting food to your mouth? So, I think, there’s something about—I’m thinking about it as I’m talking…But just the narrowness of the word. In the English language it seems like it is a very narrow definition, and I wouldn’t, just based on my sort of growing up a native English speaker, a knife used in the kitchen…I don’t know if I’d call that a utensil just sort of based on my….

John Henry: There’s a lot of kitchens that just call them kitchen tools.

Elspeth Gilmore: Right. I would call them more tools.

John Henry: Because I’m like really interested…

Elspeth Gilmore: Or I wouldn’t go around saying that, but if I were to categorize them that’s more how I would…I think it’s very...it does seem like a very narrow word in English.

Aida Sehovic: But I’m also thinking about the word transportation. 

[cross talk]

Aida Sehovic: Sorry…But then it’s actually ...I’m thinking about time and transportation because then it’s slowing down transportation because me eating with hands that’s also transportation of food from somewhere to my mouth. But utensil actually really slows it down—whether you’re preparing the food or holding it to bring it.

John Henry: Yeah...Grabbing a tomato off a vine...

Aida Sehovic: Need to update the Wikipedia definition. 

Helen: Does anyone know why certain cultures did begin to use…? 

McKendree Key: Why did?

Helen: I mean why did we stop using our hands?

McKendree Key: Well, we didn’t in many in many places. Right?

Helen: Well, no no.

McKendree Key: I’m curious to see if anyone...I tried to invite somebody from Ethiopia here, but they couldn’t come. But has anyone been there or been to a country where you’re eating with your hands?

Aida Sehovic: Like in my country, there’s certain dishes we eat with hands, and if you eat them with utensils it’s really considered snobbish and sort of…like eating I guess for Italians the phyllo dough pastries; you’re supposed to eat [phyllo dough] with your hands. And we have our version of a burger that you always eat with hands like the meat and bread. So it’s sort of frowned upon if you use forks, like utensils, to eat those foods.  

Dan Sadicario: But just a little side note is that the dough, the bread, in the Ethiopian culture is the utensil. Isn’t that the thing used to actually hold the other thing? You still have the...

John Henry: That’s how sandwiches came about. Cause like Earl of Sandwich was playing a card game. He didn’t want to get his hands greasy so he put the meat between to pieces of bread and that’s…

Matt Gove: Ha that’s great

John Henry: Apparently? It might be a pocketful, but that’s the story.

Julie Pham: Have you guys…You guys are Seinfeld friends? There’s like…I was just thinking of that scene where you eat a Snickers bar with a knife and fork. It just represents class I guess.

Elspeth Gilmore: That’s what...I mean I don’t know what the history is but I can’t imagine it’s not class. [cross talk]…separating and elevating creating a class society and westernizing 

Ilk Yasha: For sure a lot of these kind of habits are...I’ve always referred to them as manufactured exclusion that someone has in their minds created this sense of exclusion from others. And there’s like this habit...I think since probably, I would say, Roman society onwards, that like Western traditions turn towards this stuff. Because if you think about like...Old religious stories about people who are monarchs, or of the people…And there’s this story of like the table being forever long and everyone was invited to it, and everyone was probably, in some way, equal at that table…And then there’s this sort of notion of like monarch, that’s like Renaissance, 17, 1600s, and everything’s like very stuffy, and then there’s this disconnect from the people…And then we get all the way to now where there’s like lines for everything in New York… and you got like wait for everything…and you go in and there’s like ten people in there…and you’re like, “Why the hell did I just wait?” There’s all this manufactured sense of exclusion, but like limited edition things. All these…I feel like our society is obsessed with making us feel individualistic, and so this is like the historical clickbait. We all love like, “Ooh have you tried this little dainty fork? It’s slender and makes you look like no one else has it.” And you’re like, “Ooh I want that. Here sign me up.” Everyone’s obsessed with these kinds of things. Western culture is steeped with this because of consumerism and this need to be different and this need to create traditions when there aren’t any and you’ve borrowed so many from others. 

McKendree Key: Totally.

Ilk Yasha: Sorry to get a little heavy.

[cross talk]

Dwight Cassin: Who was the politician that got in trouble for eating pizza in New York City?

John Henry: DeBlasio (sp?)

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: He got in trouble for eating pizza with a fork and knife?

Dwight Cassin: He got caught doing it 

[cross talk]

Dwight Cassin: It was a big to do…

Delarys Estrada: I also think...I find it interesting how this is sort of the departure from having an aesthetic relationship to art where this is like one [inaudible]... than it is about kind of like the elevation of experience. If you think about something like West African masks used during ritual. This is sort of like a ritual. So there is that other aspect to it where it’s like this really beautiful thing achieved by [inaudible] and like making it like a sacred act of eating. It’s a process.

Matt Gove: I think there must be a hygiene angle somewhere in there too. Going back to...

Julie Pham: Yeah.

McKendree Key: A what?

Julie Pham: Hygiene

Matt Gove: A hygiene angle going back to my example of Korea. They’re obsessed with hygiene…and they leave the metal chopsticks, you get one of these metal ones, and they leave them in like this device that ionizes them or something; it nukes them so they’re totally clean. So I think at somewhere along the line there must have also been like, “Oh maybe there’s nowhere good to wash your hands. Use this stick?” I don’t know.

Ilk Yasha: Yeah, yeah, Ethiopia…you mentioned Ethiopia, and I only say this because my dad recently went to Ethiopia because he’s obsessed with their like...just understanding different cultures. And he said that they have this thing where no matter where you are they’ll bring a bowl of water to you, and you’ll wash your hands before you eat. And so there’s this thing about hygiene too that I’m sure is involved in that. But, even in cultures where you’re eating with your hands, they’re reminding them like, “Here’s a bowl of water. Let’s wash up please, and then you can have at it.”

Dan Sadicario:  But even that’s a ritualistic thing that’s meant to again enhance the meaning of the experience.

Nina Gotlieb: It’s a different way of solving a problem too. It’s like these two ways of doing the same thing evolved almost in like, maybe not in parallel exactly, but separately from each other to solve the problem of cleanliness. Somebody decided this was the way to do it and then another person decided well, we’re still going to use what we’ve been given, but we’re going to make sure these are clean.

John Henry: It’s interesting that Western culture, they invented this technology that could be commodified to be able to get stuff into your mouths.

Nina Gotlieb: That’s true another commodity.

Dwight Cassin: I lived in India for a while where people eat just with their hands all the time. So, in the family setting, they sit down every night for dinner. The family sits around, and then the mother who did all the cooking would serve the food. Then everyone would eat, and then she would eat at the end. Then at a restaurant we’d always go to, we’d sit down and they’d give you a banana leaf. And you’d unfold it on the table and then they’d give you some water to clean it, like to purify it, and then the guy comes around and serves the food, like a dollop a time of like maybe six or eight different things. Then there was a hole in the wall where you’d go to wash your hands. And then you’d take the banana leaf, and you’d put it through the hole. And then there’s some cows on the other side and they’d eat the banana leaf.

McKendree Key: Oh wow.

Dwight Cassin: But then there’s always this thing about washing your hands before you eat and after you eat. And always use your right hand too. 

McKendree Key: I was going to say there’s a rule about...what if you’re left handed?

Ilk Yasha: You’re not allowed to eat…

Julie Pham: You can’t eat

[laughter]

Gaya Sriskanthan: It can be pretty chill in Sri Lanka; my cousin’s done that when she eats with her left hand.

Elspeth Gilmore: A really close friend of my family’s was sort of an honored guest on a trip in India and was left handed. And he served himself with his left hand and they took all the food back. And he thought it was because he was the honored guest, and he found out later it’s because he contaminated all the food…

McKendree Key: Eating with his left hand?

Elspeth Gilmore: He like served off the main dishes. But he didn’t know. It wasn’t…

Unknown: That is crazy.

Elspeth Gilmore: His hands probably were clean but the assumption that...But I think it was probably actually disgusting to them. You would never do that. 

Ilk Yasha: So, there’s a really important anecdote about left hand and why also. In many traditions where you don’t have...where you have outhouses…

Elspeth Gilmore: Well, that’s why…

[cross talk]

Ilk Yasha: Yeah, but you shake with your right hand. You always watch Saudi (sp?), like regal things, their left hand is always behind them, and the right hand is the one that’s out because the left hand is for the bum, and the right hand is for the [cross talk]. You’d shake with your right; you’d respect with your right; you’d eat with your right. And then this is just for washing the bottom…

[cross talk]

Elspeth Gilmore: You just keep it that...

Delayrs Estrada: I find this idea of the elder really interesting too because in Senegal you eat from the same plate and the oldest person at the table is the person who separates the meat for everybody. So, you’d have like rice, then like fish and chicken or whatever and they have to give you your like share.

Elspeth Gilmore: Allocates… 

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: The oldest person?

Delayrs Estrada: The oldest person at the table or around the…[inaudible]

Julie Pham: Does anyone know if the painting of the last supper has any utensils in it?

[cross talk]

Julie Pham: When we talked about the monarch, I was like I wonder if Jesus had utensils.

John Henry: Well, he has the grail.

Dwight Cassin: He was a carpenter so he had a pencil

[laughter and cross talk]

John Henry: That’s his utensil…

McKendree Key: I feel like we have to bring up the plastic utensil, which is just sort of like water. It’s everywhere. I feel like it floods my life. I find them in my bag, in the sink—even though I didn’t think I used it. They’re just sort of floating around. And I actually was going to bring one this morning because there are a bunch on table, but I didn’t because I was sure that there would be some here, but there’s not.  But yeah it’s a completely different experience to eat with a plastic fork or a spoon. Everyone can picture it. It’s the same. I mean you know what it looks like. It’s encased in plastic. It’s plastic. And it’s just sort of your standard size, standard everything, and you can feel when you take that bite with a plastic fork the ridges underneath and the little pieces of plastic that dangle down, but they get taken off in the machine.

Nina Gotlieb: And the temperature is different. The metal utensils sort of take on the temperature of what you’re eating in a way that plastic doesn’t. Something I’ve always noticed. 

Aida Sehovic: I’m so glad you’re bringing that up because I find when—I didn’t realize it until you said it now—that when I order takeout food I actually always eat it with a real fork. There’s no way in hell I would eat it with [a plastic utensil]…which doesn’t...I guess sometimes it’s in the container and sometimes I put it on a plate, but I have to use a real fork. I don’t know why. I guess, yeah, because I hate the taste of plastic in my mouth.

McKendree Key: Is there any time you would use plastic? You would choose to use plastic?

Aida Sehovic: No. If I have a choice? No. Yeah, I don’t know how other people ...I actually wish… It doesn’t make sense to me that they send it to you with a fork because it’s coming to your house you probably have something to eat it with.

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: Well, it’s become completely obligatory for whoever’s packing it up. They just throw it in there. They throw many in there just in case without even asking or considering. It’s just in there.

Helen: When you order on the apps now they ask you whether you want utensils…

Aida Sehovic: They do, but they don’t always…

Julie Pham: It’s an imperfect…

Helen: In the Seamless or Happy Hour or whatever it is. 

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: That’s great. I mean finally. 

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: But it goes back to what you were saying before about this kind culture of, or maybe it doesn’t really go back into the culture of exclusion. But just the culture of disposability. The plentiful abundance…this sense that you have as much as you need and more. But you don’t really need it.

Elspeth Gilmore: And it’s also the pace. The production in capitalist [society]. You’re on the move. You need to be having...you’re not going home for work…

McKendree Key: You’re not going to wash your fork…

Elspeth Gilmore: And even, I’m sure this is true in many places, but where you would like in Brazil go have a coffee but you stay there. There’s no take out or anything—even if it’s fast, there’s…

Dan Sadicario: But like even with silverware, we have...Everyone here probably has more silverware than you need. I have this drawer of like twenty forks and I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten through all of them before I end up running the dishwasher. Although, I started using, I don’t know why, but I just really like my boning knife that I have. One day I was deboning a chicken and then I just started using that in general, and now that’s my only knife I use. That’s all I need, but every time I use it I’m kind of thinking this is wrong. I should be using…I should be going through the knives I have in my drawer.

McKendree Key: But where’s the boning knife from?

Dan Sadicario: Just a set of good kitchen knives.

McKendree Key: Like passed down to you?

Dan Sadicario: No. No. When I worked professionally as a cook, I got some good knives.

McKendree Key: Say more about the guilt feelings. I’m really curious about this.

Dan Sadicario: Is this a therapy session?

[laughter and cross talk]

Dan Sadicario: I guess…

Aida Sehovic: You’re in a safe space

Dan Sadicario: I think…I don’t know where this audio recording is going. I don’t know what that’s about. I think it’s...I’m not......Like what you’re supposed to do...It goes back to the way you’re even supposed to cut your food. You’re supposed to hold your knife in one hand and the fork in the other—and even that I don’t do correctly even to this day. I’ve rejected that idea. But it’s always at home, it’s usually by myself, but I’m supposed to use these knives that are more like these right? That sort of soft, curved, and dull edge. And even for food that doesn’t need the sharp edge I really like it. But again I feel like this is not what I should be doing. This is not what you’ve been taught to do. 

John Henry: Is the guilt about the specialization of the intended usage of the object? Or is it about having more knives than you actually need? Or is it a combination of both?

Dan Sadicario: I think it’s about what’s considered proper etiquette. I didn’t grow up in a really strict home. I don’t remember any specific moment where this happened, but I feel like my parents…and maybe other people would say…maybe at a restaurant, you’re not supposed to cut food that way or use this knife for that. I think we all have that experience at some point. Not all of us but maybe some of us, especially in the European, Eurocentric tends to...you‘re shamed in some way. Maybe like a subtle shaming.

[cross talk] 

John Henry: Yeah, small culturally learned thing…

Ilk Yasha: The guilt. The guilt. I took guilt differently when you said it. I feel guilty because my parents didn’t have anything growing up. They truly came from poverty and through coming to America and amassing something they have held onto things, and they’ve wrapped things in sheets and plastic. Our living room is that typical room you will not touch because that’s for when guests are there. And there’s this like... It’s class because they didn’t have it. So you wouldn’t dare sit on that in the day time that’s for the special guests. And so there’s this thing that my mother has amassed cutlery, nice glassware. She never brings out the glassware until we have people over. And not like her regular family. Not regular family. No. No. No. When someone you normally wouldn’t see comes over…and I like go to make a cup of tea and she’s like….And I’m like okay right, and I’ll go to the nice cabinet and I’m like, “Oohhh they get the nice little china.” So I feel guilty because… Last time, I was there, my mom …like I finally knew my mom was getting old, older, because then she came over and she was like, “Have I ever shown you this?” And I’m like, “Ahhh, Lord, No. And she started to show me each of these little things that I sort of had to peer at when I was a kid…or knew about… And it was like this idea that she’s ready to pass them on to me…And the extreme guilt that I felt of like, Aww no, I’m going to break this. I know I’m going to break this or I know that this is going to sit in the cabinet for mine. Because it’s so embedded in this like you have fought your entire life, you’ve worked three jobs, so you could have this rinkety dinkety little china…And you’re going to give me that and then I feel an immense guilt for that. That’s a different version of guilt but for the same kind of …

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: It’s like what are you doing with your life?

Dan Sadicario: It’s definitely connected to social class too right?

Ilk Yasha: Yeah.

Dan Sadicario: That china isn’t used ever right?

Ilk Yasha: Ever. There’s tags on some of them still. 

Dan Sadicario: But it seems to represent something about your own value as a family.

Ilk Yasha: Yeah. That kind of guilt…I’m like, “Oh yeah, I got that guilt.” It’s starting to get filled as like she starts to look at her little things and she’s like, “Oh have I ever shown you this?” And I’m like, “Oh no. No.”

McKendree Key: And then it’s interesting for somebody like me…We have the good silverware and the regular silverware…and I have guilt as well about that: guilt of privilege, and the guilt of growing up with two choices...I forgot what I was going to say, where I was going to that. But… 

Nina Gotlieb: But do you use it? You use both you said? 

McKendree Key: Oh, so, yes. So my mom has always said, “Use the good stuff.” So we use the good china and the good silver in our daily lives. But that...I remember the point in my childhood in which that started to happen. Like it was the crappy stuff up until we were a certain age, and then you said,
“Let’s just do it.” And there’s always been issues because dad never wanted to use the good stuff, and you always said, “Just use the good stuff.” But it’s a completely different...it’s a similar thread here but like completely different backgrounds.

Ilk Yasha: Yeah… 

McKendree Key: Right? And just the...

Elspeth Gilmore: I was thinking about this before when you were talking about place settings and knowing where things go. But I feel like also growing up with—I guess with money in particular—but with a lot of forms of privilege in this country…the feeling like…the biggest privilege of that was feeling very relaxed about all of it. I was never trained on all of that stuff, but it didn’t really matter because I didn’t need to know it. Like if I made a mistake, it didn’t really matter; I knew enough. We would eat however we ate at home, and my mom was like, “You don't eat with this like this when you leave the house right?” But, you, know she didn’t really care, and she didn’t really train us, but we knew enough. And we could pass, and had enough privilege going into any situation that we wouldn’t be shamed for it. And if we were, there weren't any consequences. And with using things as well...I think, my mom grew up more middle class, but somehow she didn’t really take on a lot of the intensity around any of that stuff. So it was sort of like use whatever…like it wasn’t…not a lot of weight put on the fancy stuff or the not-fancy stuff. It was kind of just like use it. We didn’t work our whole lives for this...it’s sort of ...just being able to be sort of whatever that classic sort of normalizing…

McKendree Key: It’s a given. We have it may as well... There’s also something about the trying to hide wealth as well. Not using the good silverware, not using the good china because we’re normal. We’re normal. We have it there. We can use it when we want to, but let’s not show off. Let’s be…

John Henry: I grew up in a household where we had two sets: the good and the regular one…Especially at my grandmother’s house where we’d go for Thanksgiving and Christmas and stuff like that where we’d break out the good stuff to sort of enhance the ritual of the meal. Like to establish and reaffirm its importance and the communal aspect of it. “This is an important thing we’re all doing together. We’re sitting down to a meal and sort of really reaffirming it.” There is obviously an aspect of wealth signaling (or not), but I think the establishment of a sort, of not quite sacred, set of silverware and plates and stuff like that, but something that would enhance the importance and the ritual.

Morgan Smith: Was it that that set was any way more precious or was it just different?

John Henry: Yeah. I mean it was definitely more expensive, so precious in that sense too, and also precious in the scarcity of use as well. It’s only used in these specific situations.

Morgan Smith: I wonder if it would evoke the same feelings…maybe not necessarily any more precious, but just different, and it was more about the scarcity of use…than there was a different sort of presentation around the whole meal; that specific set of utensils was part of that. 

John Henry: I don’t know if it would be the same thing if we had this very special set of paper plates that we set out.

Morgan Smith: Probably not. But that was actually related to the question I wanted to ask you about. When you do use the special stuff, does it feel different?

McKendree Key: Yeah…

John Henry: You said the good stuff but not the special stuff right? 

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: For my own house, we use the good silverware all the time. And, yeah, I like the experience of eating with it. I much prefer.

Morgan Smith: You do?

McKendree Key: Yeah than the crappy...but I don’t have a bad set...so I don’t know what it’s like.

Dan Sadicario: Can I ask you when you transitioned into the good stuff, did you feel like you were breaking a barrier of some kind? Or did you feel any of that guilt?

Robin Key: I have so much to say right now can I just let it all out? So, you know, I’m listening and I’m going from feeling guilty for certain reasons, and then not guilty for others. I grew up in a household like Elspeth. We were privileged, but there was nobody telling me what to do. My husband grew up in a household where if he didn’t hold his fork right his grandmother took her fork and stabbed him with it. 

Unknown: Whoa 

Unknown: Oh my god 

[cross talk]

Robin Key: So, when I first met that grandmother, McKendree Key was with me. She was about two or one. It wasn’t the first time I met her. It was the first time I visited her in her home. I was absolutely terrified and I actually ended up leaving the table in tears with you. And that was a horrible experience but… 

McKendree Key: Because I was eating improperly right?

Robin Key: I think maybe you were misbehaving at the table. 

Morgan Smith: When you were one…

Robin Key: When she was one, and I was the horrible young mother who didn’t know how to raise a child. And probably I didn’t cross my fork over at the right time...

McKendree Key: You weren’t of equal class…

Robin Key: And I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. And you know…anyway that whole thing was a little complicated, but here’s what I also feel. I feel as though…in my work I do a lot of historic preservation work and thinking about history and historic objects. So, I see all of this silver that came down to my husband and I through our various families, who were definitely on the Mayflower. I admit it. Maybe those families were supporting the arts; maybe they saw the beauty in these things and were, you know…Some of these things are so exquisitely beautiful. I look at them now as pieces of art. I don’t look at them as utensils so much as art. Because I think these are so unique and so beautiful and their history of coming down through an artist that I knew well. I put them on a coffee table and show them as art. So, I think that there’s another way of looking at all of these beautiful objects…as being someone who…a family that maybe appreciated beauty. And then the other thing that I’m thinking about…and it’s what I appreciate so much from all these different cultures as I am able to travel to other countries…so, we took a trip to India this past year. We have a friend who is a Buddhist monk, and we spent some time in a monastery eating with our hands and also eating in a Hindu household where they took the door down to be a table for us. They raised the table up off the ground. And the whole family—the kids, the grandmother, the grandfather…this was in our guide’s—yes our private guide’s home—they fed us first. And then after they fed us they took the table away and they all sat down on the floor, and ate their meal off the floor. Now what did Dave and I …We? There was some guilt…[cross talk]

Morgan Smith: Where were you when they were eating?

Robin Key: We were leaving. And they were preparing... They didn’t want to eat in front of us. We were the guests. We probably ate half of the food that was prepared. So they’re all going to go with less now because they wanted us to be in [their] home. But they were so honored that we came to their home. I mean so it’s a very complicated thing. What I was going to say was...I have… you know I’m in my sixties as I get older, and I have children and grandchildren who are living in New York and in Brooklyn …and I’m learning about so many different cultures and I’ve learned from you and you and you today about the origins of why you eat with your hands. So I think that it’s fascinating but I was the mother who turned the knife when McKendree Key’s boyfriend came and set the table and put the knife on the wrong side or turned it the wrong way. I went around and went boop boop  boop.

McKendree Key: You corrected it

Robin Key: I corrected it. But...as our culture here becomes more integrated I think these things will break down…and I just feel that your generation and your children’s generation are not going to have the same hurdles to cross that my generation has. Just look at the difference between how my husband and I grew up and how you guys grow up and then how your children are growing up. I mean light years have passed through those steps. 

Dan Sadicario: But do you think when…

Robin Key: Back to your question

[cross talk and laughter]

Dan Sadicario:  Wanted to get the juicy gossip of transitioned why into the…

Robin Key: The silver? Because I was sick of having it in a blue cloth, in a drawer. And also the day-to-day was getting pretty ratty. And I just said…At one point, I threw out the day-to-day china and the day-to-day silver…and now we’ve used our wedding china to the point where it’s all faded and I have to throw that out and buy a new set of china. 

Dan Sadicario: But you could have just bought a new set and kept the good stuff

Robin Key: I could have, but I didn’t want to do that

Morgan Smith: Are you glad you did that?

Robin Key: I’m so glad I did it. I am a pretty hands-on kind of...I use things…

Dan Sadicario: I guess I’m wondering—and you don’t have to answer this if it’s too personal—do you feel like on a subconscious level or anything there was some sort of rejection of your family? Or do you feel like you were breaking a rule of some kind?

Robin Key: To use it every day?

McKendree Key: I feel like it was an act against dad’s status and class.

Robin Key: To just use it? I could have been subconsciously… [cross talk]

McKendree Key: I remember loving it. I remember loving that she decided all of a sudden to use it. I was so like, “Yes let’s rebel.” It was this…

Robin Key: Oh, now I have to go through a whole other thought process. I’m not sure I did that consciously, but I probably did it subconsciously. And there were no rules in my household, but there were definitely rules in my husband’s household. And since we meshed and had to raise these kids in our own way, it probably was challenging for them to get the voices.

Dan Sadicario: I was hoping to hear that cause when you brought that up I thought, There’s a story there. I feel like I identify with that. I was saying before how I don’t use utensils properly. I know the rules, but I don’t like to follow the rules. Beyond cultural and universal rules, we have our personal relationship to utensils. I don’t know how many people have had these acts of rebellions through utensils…?

McKendree Key: Yes. Anyone have a story about that? Acts of rebellion?

Dan Sadicario:  I’ll start by saying that…I remember my parents teaching me the rules, and I still to this day don’t follow the rules. I don’t like cutting properly…I forget how I do it….I have to do it for a second because even though... I cut like this and then I will take the fork with my right hand and eat. And it’s just the way I feel comfortable doing that, but I also know it’s wrong. 

Aida Sehovic: Not in Islam? That would be exactly the right way to do it.

Dan Sadicario: That’s true. Moving to Middle East. So, yeah, I think it’s a rebellion against my father telling me what to do. I definitely think there’s something there about that—not like I’m consciously rejecting my parents…

McKendree Key: That was cultivated probably very young that rebellion…

Dan Sadicario: Yeah. Absolutely.

Julie Pham: I think as babies or kids, you throw utensils at your parents when you don’t want something. But then as you grow up you learn not to do that. 

John Henry: But, it also points up to the weird space that utensils have between utility and cultural signification because all the proper etiquette signals something to whoever you’re eating with…and the proper etiquette signals...but also if I want to get meat into my mouth, just use the fucking fork or use your hand. So if you don’t want to get your hands dirty you can use this. It’s a useful object, but it’s also a signifying object.

Morgan Smith: I’m thinking too about how we think about what is useful vs. how we think about what is beautiful and how the use of things that are ornamental is kind of revolutionary. Your use of the beautiful silver finally adds so much to you.

Nina Gotlieb: But I wonder if all of these things that people, that our generation is rebelling against, started with good intentions and ended up sort of strangling us. 

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: Did you say strangling us?

Nina Gotlieb: Strangling us. There is something really beautiful about a consistently set table with all the different types and shapes of silverware and napkins and napkin rings and chargers, which is something I’ve just learned about. It’s like a plate under a plate, a plate for your plate. 

John Henry: It’s called a charger…

Nina Gotlieb: It’s called a charger. I work for a home furnishings company so there’s all this stuff that I now know about it. And it’s just like, Wow. You go into one of our stores, and I’m like that’s a nicely set table…But it’s all this stuff that nobody needs, but it’s beautiful. So at what point does the rigor of creating something beautiful end up oppressing us in a way? I don’t know. Because there is something pleasurable…I hosted Thanksgiving a couple, two years ago, and put so much effort into the table and I bought all this decorative food at Whole Foods and set the middle of the table with boughs and weird gourds. And I thought it was beautiful and left them there and everything just rotted on my table. But it gave me a lot of pleasure to have this elaborate table with these non-useful things. 

McKendree Key: I think it’s happening all at the same time. All at once. At the same time the gorgeous and beautiful as well as holds so much history and cultural meaning and symbolism. I don’t think we’re...I think we’re celebrating the beauty of these things, the objects, as well as unpacking the history and the societal pressures, issues.

Dwight Cassin: It reminds me a lot of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party…like a bunch of beautiful table settings.

McKendree Key: What utensils ...I’m picturing?

Dwight Cassin: I don’t know if there are any utensils actually. I think it’s just plates. But I mean it just reminds me of it.

Ilk Yasha: Table cloths, plates, and I feel like…maybe there’s a charger.

Nina Gotlieb: Probably a charger…

[cross talk]

Unknown: I think there are utensils.

Nina Gotlieb: Some of them have utensils. This actually makes me think of Art Check Feast (sp?)

Unknown: I was thinking the same thing…

Nina Gotlieb: I want to know if you have anything to say about the utensils and the plates and whatever that was created for...

McKendree Key: For the Art Check? (sp?)

Nina Gotlieb: For the Art Check. (sp?)

McKendree Key: I run a nonprofit ceramic studio and we had a dinner where artists made plate settings. Each artist made a plate setting for thirty. And…

Elspeth Gilmore: All out of clay…

McKendree Key: What’s that?

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: All out of clay yes. I had invited the artist here. Too bad she couldn’t come, but she makes giant utensils out of clay and they’re so beautiful. They’re these huge sculptures. I don’t know. The utensils...Somehow a lot of artists didn’t make utensils they just made a plate cup and bowl. Most of them didn’t make utensils. A few of them did. It was kind of a second thought like oh yeah we have to get forks and knives for that too.

Nina Gotlieb: You didn’t give them any guard rails or…?

McKendree Key: We told them plate, cup, bowl, but we said you could do whatever you want.

Morgan Smith: Were they any forks? There might have been some spoons…

[cross talk]

Robin Key: There were serving spoons…

Morgan Smith: But did the forks work?

McKendree Key: I don’t think so. I don’t remember that many.

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: The definition of utensils that I read also included plates and bowls. Anything that’s useful that’s basically...but I didn’t delve deeper. It says especially things you’ve used in the kitchen. The most broad definition I found was something that’s useful.

John Henry: Which points to pencil, writing utensils, drawing utensils

Ilk Yasha: I’ve always thought like writing utensil…Take out your writing utensil. I remember that…If anyone else has heard that before?

John Henry: I heard that growing up. My parents would tell me...

[cross talk]

Ilk Yasha: My Latin teacher [used to say] “Take out your writing utensil.” And I’d be like, “He’s weird, but sure.” 

Julie Pham: Also like hair accessories. Chopsticks I’ve used, but women only. That decorative.

McKendree Key: I mean we haven’t really discussed tools either. I mean utensils are tools, but we haven’t talked much more about things other than these kind of utensils, but I think the definition of utensils include tools of all kinds. Then you get into…

John Henry: It’s like all utensils are tools, but not all tools are utensils…

Delayrs Estrada: Can I just share a quick anecdote about like acts of rebellion with utensils? 

McKendree Key: Yes, go back to that.

Delayrs Estrada: Back in high school we use to get sporks and we use to flip, turn the ends of the sporks and we’d use it to break each other’s sporks. Instead of eating we’d play this game that we made.

McKendree Key: Plastic Spork?

Delayrs Estrada: It was plastic, yeah, not metal. It’s something I think of fondly. Did anyone else have that? Or is it just my crazy school?

Ilk Yasha: Would you whip each other with it?

Delayrs Estrada: We would whip the cup part of your Spork and whichever cup broke would lose. But it would be done in brackets, like we would have teams. Strange. [inaudible]…We could talk about something else. 

[cross talk]

Aida Sehovic: Your story of rebellion just reminded me that the way I was raised. A utensil, wooden spoon, was also used to beat the kids. I just remembered that…I was like, Oh my god, that’s right the spoon had a dual function right to mix and.... You know when your mom or grandmother went to get the spoon that was what you got spanked with.

Delayrs Estrada: Same

McKendree Key: Why do you think they chose that? Just cause it was there?

Aida Sehovic: I don’t know. I was thinking about that. It’s interesting because now I’m thinking about the gender aspect of it. Because I’m realizing that my dad never used the wooden spoon; he would use the slipper. It was the women in the family—the grandmother, the mother. Right?

Robin Key: Because they’re in the kitchen. 

[cross talk]

Aida Sehovic: I had like a hate relationship to the spoon. Like it was food, but it was also a reminder of …

Ilk Yasha: Pain.

Aida Sehovic: It sounds bad, but it wasn’t. I know now we’re like, “Oh my god! You got spanked.” Anyway, I don’t know if anybody else….

McKendree Key: A wooden spoon? Like not one that you would eat with…

Aida Sehovic: But like a wooden spoon that you would use to mix…

Ilk Yasha: Like sauces or whatever [inaudible]…

Aida Sehovic: I remember the sound. It was like this…

[cross talk and laughter]

Aida Sehovic: I don’t know why that... 

Matt Gove: Why not use your hands?

Ilk Yasha: Why not use your hands?

[cross talk]

Robin Key: It removes you from the content…

Aida Sehovic: It’s a utility.

Ilk Yasha: And with the running away just that extra six inches that you need.

Matt Gove: But spoons don’t spank people; people spank people…

Robin Key: The spoon did it.

McKendree Key: Do you have anything else to say?

Aida Sehovic: I do have something else to share about the special silverware because in my culture also… A lot of people have special silverware, but it wasn’t passed down through generations. It’s usually a wedding gift that people would get. We also never used it until the war happened in my country, and we had to leave and the silverware is like the only ...I was thinking about...and I know in other places where there’s war, for some reason, you take the silverware. And I had no idea why, because it was heavy and annoying, why my parents chose to use it. But now that the special silverware has been used every day. So it’s like that experience of losing…

McKendree Key: So they took it?

Aida Sehovic: Yah, we took it. It made it out. It made to the U.S. But it’s used now every day. Whereas before the war, it was so special. 

Morgan Smith: Oh that’s so interesting

Aida Sehovic: So my parents totally had this 360. Life is short. Use the good stuff every day.

Morgan Smith: And it serves as a reminder every day probably of how fortunate…

Aida Sehovic: I think so. So, there’s no more special...but I mean there are nicer things in the house and less nice things. But everything is used all the time

McKendree Key: Is there a story within that silverware to be told? What does it look like?

Aida Sehovic: I mean…So it’s not nice like this. It doesn’t feel as old, but it is made out of sterling silver with a gold in-plate. It’s a little bit modern in that sense …like the design, it has these golden rectangles. It’s still really nicely made. And it’s heavy.  That’s one thing...

McKendree Key: Is it silver?

Aida Sehovic: Yeah now I’m thinking is it sterling silver? I know the gold in there is actual gold.

McKendree Key: So that’s why they took it 

Aida Sehovic: Yeah but that seems crazy. 

McKendree Key: I know

Aida Sehovic: When you’re running for your life to be carrying suitcase of heavy silverware.

Elspeth Gilmore: Well, its money right?

John Henry: Yeah if worse gets to worse

Elspeth Gilmore: Do you think it was more like heirloom or more we can sell this?

Aida Sehovic: It wasn’t heirloom. I know for sure they got it as a wedding gift.

Elspeth Gilmore: I mean in terms of taking it. Was the motivation to take an important family thing or that you could sell it if need be?

[cross talk]

Elspeth Gilmore: Because it has value.

Aida Sehovic: I don’t know. But I know in other places in World War 2, the Jews, that’s what was confiscated.

Ilk Yasha: Yeah like candelabra. The Jews would take candle holders and whatever piece of silver they could get. Any of these heavy presh (sp?) metals that you can throw into a suitcase and run.

Aida Sehovic: I guess it is something you could trade in for money.

Ilk Yasha: In often Roma populations, that’s why they often have all their jewelry on them. You never put it away. You want what’s precious on you. 

McKendree Key: Or your gold teeth…

Ilk Yasha: Or your gold teeth. That’s another one. All across the Soviet countries, gold teeth is a notable…it’s a wealth thing. And here we look at it we’re like, “That guy’s got a gold tooth?”…But grills have made it popularized again.

McKendree Key: It makes me think about the last Breakfast Den conversation. We came down to story: which stories get told, which stories are interrupted. These sets of silverware seem to represent a story, a family history. So many people don’t...that’s interrupted along the way. Their story is interrupted or truncated or not fully told. It’s again the stories that are told are the ones that are continuous.

Dan Sadicario: I wonder with utensils if there’s another level, by using the good stuff you are rejecting a story as well or maybe a false narrative.

Ilk Yasha:  Retelling it. I think you’re retelling it, re-interrupting it. My inner dad wants to say something about culture. In talking about culture, while we’re all well-meaning, I wouldn’t want us to talk about culture and other these things in like, “Oh these people are different.” My inner dad is saying, “Ilk say this.” Culture essentially is just a series of rituals and traditions that you contain. Western society has opted into certain things, co-opted certain others, and decided to suppress others. And certain cultures, like everyone does this, they have laid emphasis on these and passed it down. The only difference between someone who has one cultural habit is that they have been told it and accepted it and then continued it. And other cultures haven’t—or that has been suppressed. Historical narratives are sometimes, often suppressed, rejigged, or reshaped. I think certain cultures have certain connections and they try to emphasize that. Some of my cultural habits are from my Middle Eastern parents and a communal society. And a lot of those things are linked to the way they grow up in a place and their connection to people. So a lot of the way our furniture sits, people come into our house and are like, “This is weird.” Because all of the furniture is up against the wall, and it’s all facing the center of the house. There’s no furniture that cuts a room in half because that would be absolutely disrespectful to turn your back to somebody who’s in a room. You never want to be turning your back to somebody. Even that, people come into my house and are like, “This is weird,” and my inner dad turns in and is like, “Nuh uh don’t other us. It’s just that we particularly emphasize this and [you] particularly don’t emphasize this.” There’s that comment that needs to be said.

McKendree Key: Totally 

Julie Pham: You brought up plastic. I would love to hear more about plastic and what we want to do in the end. Because at the end of the day, we have one planet, and we’re just like consuming and producing all this plastic. I do feel guilty. And I work in an office where plastic is everywhere. My coworkers when we go out to Sweet green, to get your salad…it’s [in] plastic. At one point I carried metal utensils with me in my bag, but that stopped cause it got dirty and I had to bring napkins to clean and stuff. It’s frustrating as a person growing up, trying to help the planet. I just recently started compositing, very small portion. But I feel like it’s a lot of plastic. So I don’t know what…I know we can say NO on Seamless and things like that, but they still bring in...I have a pile of plastic utensils from deliveries of this whole way of living. I don’t know what the consensus is...

McKendree Key: It’s forced on us. 

[cross talk]

John Henry: Well, working in the restaurant industry now, there’s a huge transition now to going from plastic to cellulose—completely biodegradable plastic flatware. The restaurant I work in does disposable plates, but they’re all made of bamboo. It’s completely biodegradable and stuff like that. So, I think, especially in New York, it’s going to be a long transition. Plastic is just so convenient. You have to make a conscious choice as a consumer to avoid it if at all possible.

Julie Pham: I feel like that’s a misconception of using compost or utensils or bamboo. The resources that you use to cut down the bamboo, to grow the bamboo, carbon whatever footprint… [cross talk]

Elspeth Gilmore: At least it’s not the end product isn’t sitting on the planet for forever and ever and ever.

Gaya Sriskanthan: I think adding to your point because it’s like the way we consume and confronting that role and filing the edges off what we’re already doing. And actually changing the way we consume and things we need...We think we need convenience. So you’re saying you still use paper napkins, but paper napkins still have an environmental cost. We decide that we have to have take out to bring back to our desk. We can’t stay in that place to eat because our bosses tell us we only have 25 minutes. So it’s like what if we change the way we work and work from home more and had long lunch breaks where you just stay and eat and leave? It would be about changing the way we live really to deal with that.

McKendree Key: After this conversation, I’m definitely going to try and take some utensils with me every day. For two reasons: one, to avoid the plastic, but also because I just really love the idea of eating with something intentionally and eating with intention, and I think what you use to eat is what sets your intention when you’re eating.

Morgan Smith: That’s a good point.

Nina Gotlieb: Maybe there’s a market for more things like this to make it easy to bring things with you. That’s why I got this cup. Because I do have the Klean Kanteens at home, but they’re metal, and they’re big, and so hard to carry around. So I searched vociferously for this collapsible light-weight thing, which after one use far is pretty cool. But there was a lot of environmental impact that went into actually fabricating this thing. But ideally this makes up for the tons and tons of plastic cups that I inevitably use. This is me admitting that I do get coffee on the go. There’s no avoiding it. I actually also have a steel container similar to what you have that I keep at work with me. And I also admitted to myself last year I do not bring my lunch. I do not bring my lunch to work. I never will. I always buy it on-the-go so instead of a takeout container I bring this metal container to all the places I get lunch. 

[inaudible cross talk]

Nina Gotlieb: Most of the places will put food in it. There are some places that it might be a code violation to pass over a certain barrier, which I totally get, but I don’t eat at those places very much anymore. If you think about it. Think about the number of people that actually throw away single-use containers and utensils every day just in one day…Just in one day. Just in your building or in this city. 

McKendree Key: It’s mind-boggling

Nina Gotlieb: And if everybody for one day didn’t do that. The mountain of trash that would not exist is mind-boggling, and that’s just one day.

McKendree Key: Yeah, and we have this...We’re talking about disposability. These things were meant to last. These were meant to be kept forever and why are we not using them?

Dwight Cassin: It seems like we’re not going back in that direction either. We’re headed towards the compostable utensils, but then you’ve got that mug. And I think that this is all hitting on the fact that we are in this amazing state of transition around utensils—redefining what they are and what they can be. I don’t feel like that’s over yet at all.

Unknown: This feels like a Band-Aid in some ways. This isn’t the answer, but it’s something…

McKendree Key: It’s crazy to me in 2018 that we still haven’t figured out how to eliminate plastic in this country. I mean there’s so much going on, and we’re still using, plastic one-single use plastic utensils. 

Robin Key: So McKendree, the reason why there’s all those plastic things on my kitchen counter because I brought them home from the office. Because in our office we have no sink so I have to go the ladies room to wash, and I never feel like things get clean enough so after a certain length of time I bring my utensils that I reuse over and over again home to go run them through the dishwasher and then I bring them back. But that is lame. I also have real, real, not-the-good silver in the office, and I think I’m going to just use that. And that lasts for about a week. And then I am bringing the plastic back in.

McKendree Key: What are you going to do with them?

Robin Key: Today, I’m going to use it. Take it to the bathroom, which is a disgusting bathroom in our building, and I’m going to wash it and I’m going to use it. 

McKendree Key: The plastic?

Robin Key: No. [cross talk]…the not so good. 

McKendree Key: But what are you going to do with the plastic?

Robin Key: I’m going to re-use that again and again and again. I don’t bring plastic home. I buy my lunch every day like you do. It’s a ridiculous...It’s terrible and I don’t buy into the new bamboo stuff because that’s a big pile of crap too.

John Henry: Sure. 

Robin Key: So what do we do? I don’t have time to make my own lunch, but I should make time to make my own lunch. 

Morgan Smith: You’re such a good cook.

Aida Sehovic: That’s why I like the radical proposal, I’m forgetting your name…

Gaya Sriskanthan: Gaya.

Aida Sehovic: Like maybe we just need to have longer lunches and be able to sit down. It’s a lifestyle….Maybe we have to stop thinking of these Band-Aid solutions. 

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: So, hence the sitting down for two hours and eating breakfast…

[cross talk]

Elspeth Gilmore: I like the idea. I pack the lunch maybe half the time, and there’s silverware at work. I’ll bring silverware with me when I pack my lunch, but most of the time that feels like... I like that as an entry point to having it all the time…Like to my larger dream vision of slowing things down and actually eating lunch…you know giving myself a half hour and not with my computer open. But it feels like silverware can be a wedge or a starting point that feels actually realistic.

[cross talk]

Matt Gove: And talking more about the plastic side, in my job I work with plastics. I try to eliminate single-use plastic, and I don’t really know what to say about it because it’s a never-ending fight. I think there is ways to do something. Growing up my mom would always wash the plastic forks in the dishwasher after a party. She’s had the same box of the plastic forks since I was a kid basically. At other people’s barbeques…and they used it once and then chuck them…But it’s really not that hard to use them. Treat them as your normal metal silverware, and you could just save them. And it’s hard to reduce. You’re always going to use some amount of plastic, but we try to help people bring reusable stuff. There’s a program where we give restaurants a donation and give them social media hype if they say they’re going to stop using plastic forks and Styrofoam and everything else. So there are things that you can do, but it goes back to how food is so ingrained and the stuff around food is so ingrained in the way people do things and they don’t want to change. But straws have been an amazing change. 

McKendree Key: Yeah

Matt Gove: We’ve been working on straws for fifteen years and just suddenly in the last five years straws have become this huge thing that people want to change. And it looks like that’s really going to change because companies are making paper straws cheaper and it’s almost becoming boogie now at a fancy cocktail bar if there’s a plastic straw you’re like, “Ugh. Where’s those cool paper straws?”

[cross talk]

Matt Gove: I think that’s something that… changed immediately almost in the last couple year

Julie Pham: Isn’t Starbucks starting to eliminate straws?

Matt Gove: They said they’re going to stop. McDonald’s says they’re going to stop. It’s this weird tipping point and suddenly straws are out. Hopefully that will really happen

McKendree Key: Hopefully it will happen with both straws and utensils. 

Nina Gotlieb: Marriott just banned single-use plastics from all their hotels.

McKendree Key: Really?

Nina Gotlieb: And they’re the biggest hotel company in the world. Over 4,000 properties around the world. That’s like so huge.

McKendree Key: That’s awesome. Okay. We have to stop, but I wanted to end with this utensil. Which is...do you know what it’s for?

[cross talk]

Morgan Smith: Candle snuffer?

McKendree Key: Which seems like the absolute, least useful, ridiculous thing ever. But yet it’s made out of silver, it’s beautiful, and you could just blow the candle out. 

Robin Key: Not if it’s above in a chandelier. It’s hard to blow it out without getting wax everywhere.

[cross talk]

McKendree Key: Going around is a sign-in, yeah. You can sign your name. Thank you so much. It far exceeded my expectations. I feel...I don’t know. I think most of you thought about utensils before coming here a lot. I know that for the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about utensils a lot and I will continue too. So, please think about utensils.

[Round of Applause]

Matt Gove: Did you talk about grills in your last discussion?

McKendree Key: Grills? Oh no. 

[cross talk]

Maya: And I just want to say thank you. I’m Maya. I’m the Public Engagement Manager for the High Line. Want to thank McKendree so much for being here. There’s a third breakfast, the final breakfast, on the 29^th. Spread the word. I think there are still some RSVPs left on our website. This is also a part of a larger series that we’re doing called BYO- Bring Your Own. We’re also working with artist Elia Alba with the Supper Club, and there will be a dinner she’s hosting on August 6^th. And then we previously worked with Heather Hart and Jina Valentine at the Black Lunch Table, which has passed. But it’s been a really great series. We’re hoping to put all the recordings into a publication. We’ll be in touch… [inaudible]

[cross talk]

Robin Key: McKendree can I just say one thing I noticed. So this has a little sticker 125. This was a wedding present. This was my 125^th wedding present, and it obviously came from someone who gave me their old candle snuffer right? 

Aida Sehovic: Oh, so it’s passed down.

Robin Key: It probably a family member. I have the book that tells me who gave me this so I can go look it up. 

McKendree Key: That’s a whole currency right?

Robin Key: I’m not going to tell you how many people were at my wedding.

[cross talk]

Nina Gotlieb: So you put the sticker on in order to catalogue…

Robin Key: I put the sticker on when I opened the presents and wrote down who gave it to me so I could write the proper thank you letter. 

Dan Sadicario: That’s very fastidious…

Robin Key: In the proper time.

Ilk Yasha: That’s next-level-mom.

McKendree Key: And this has your mother’s, grandmother’s maiden name on it.

Robin Key: Actually that has my grandmother’s, grandmother’s name. Bundy. So that’s a really old piece.

[cross talk and light chatter]

Robin Key: I had not really looked at the Florida Lee (sp?) and the pineapple on the little folding spoon. And this is a utensil and I make my tea at home and I bring it with me

Nina Gotlieb: I most of the time make coffee at home and drink it in the morning before I leave, but I need the afternoon coffee. I always get that on the go.

[cross talk and light chatter]

Robin Key: To me they’re art. They had gotten broken so…and you can see they were cracked…someone we tried to get to come from Gene’s silver…