The Culture of Tooth Pick in Hong Kong

Tooth pick is designed to be used in Rest room or at home, that is why there is no tooh pick in a French or Italian Restaurant.

There are tooth Pick on average table in an average restaurant. In Certain higher class restaurant, they serve the tooth pick on a plate after the meal. These Tooth pick has been individually sealed in paper envelop.

Some of them even have one side dipped with Menthol to give you a kind of mint refreshment.

In a Chinese Restaurant, after a eating the yummy dim sum, most of the people would start to work on the teeth with a tool pick. Some of them have addicted to be as a Culture.

They eat with one hand holding the chopsticks and the other hand holding a tooth pick.

I have seen the follow way of using tooth pick.

1. with Mouth Open, and use one hand to pick the food residues between teeth one by one. Use hand to pull out the bigger bit.

2. With mouth open, use the tooth pick to eject the food residues which was trapped between two wisdom tooth, if you are lucky, you can see this food debris can fly over a few feet away towards you!

3. Use one hand to pull open the lips and one hand to manipulate the tooth pick, looks like he is performing some dental operation. But there is no nurse or dental assistant.

4. Some of the people use the tooth pick as tool to pick out the food at the top of tooth pick and press it onto the table cloth in front of him. Some more profound people has a bit Hygienic gesture, he will put the food residues onto the table cloth under the table…

5. Some one can even chew and or eat the food debris at the tip of the tooth pick!

6. An absurb action is holding the tooth pick and to remove the food residues by the mouth self… This takes certain practice and I have seen people does it this way, but there is always a risk that the food residues will be ejected out to the out people at the table.

7. The older generation people used to go Dim Sum on Sunday many years ago, after leaving the restaurant, they hold the tooth pick by his lips for hours after leaving the restaurant, This is to tell his friends or neighbors he has been to the restaurant, nowadays this culture was carried out by some of the grass root people.

Next time , when you are eating in restaurant, try to observe how they use the tooth pick... it is funny but that is nasty!
HK Snob