Burning Question

Every once in a while, controversy seethes beneath the otherwise placid surface of American culture, waiting only for some incident to unleash its brutally divisive force. For instance, recall the time the elder George Bush pronounced his distaste for broccoli, causing an uproar that threatened to tear children from families and destroyed any chance he had for re-election.

Thus the question “where are the spoons?” is momentous and indeed burning.

Take a look around next time you wander out to eat: Very few restaurants across the Dallas area include a spoon in the table setting. No one knows when Dallas restaurants began removing spoons from the place setting. The removal began quietly and with frightening efficiency.

Restaurateurs naturally discount the importance of the missing-spoon question. “None of the items we serve denotes the use of a spoon,” says Greg Sonnenburg, restaurant operations manager at Houston’s on Preston Road. He indicates that many restaurants prefer to “keep any unnecessary items off the table in order to enhance the dining experience.” According to Sonnenburg, health codes in certain regions also operate against the spoon, requiring that restaurants roll utensils in cloth napkins for sanitary reasons. In such a presentation, the spoon becomes an added burden. Yet he admits that in formal place settings, servers set “two forks on the left, a knife on the right, and a spoon outside.” He then hastens to add that the spoon is for soup.

The disenfranchisement of spoons from the traditional silverware service is so complete that few notice the missing pieces. “They don’t put spoons out? Really?” said a surprised Stacie Pakebusch when told of the missing piece. Her response is typical: initial surprise followed by a careless shrug of the shoulders. But beneath this lackadaisical attitude, the spoon question sparks a certain amount of restlessness.

“Spoons are gross,” says Mari Woodlief from an outpost at Mi Cocina. “It’s a big, solid piece of metal that comes between you and your food.” Woodlief is adamant that servers present these detested utensils “only when it’s meant to be used.” But Chicago comedian Henry Spoon, whose very name is derived from the threatened silverware, sees potential disaster in the lack of spoons–especially where children are concerned. “Sure,” he says, “you can pick up cereal with a fork, but without the right combination of cereal and milk in the spoon, kids would go to school unbalanced. Somebody could get hurt.” And Justin Rashid, president of the Spoon Foods Catalogue, complains that “if you leave the spoon out of your assortment of eating utensils, you forgo the sensory luxury of more liquid foods that flow across the palate.”

This subterranean battle already costs the restaurant industry countless dollars annually. Sonnenburg reports that Houston’s carries a budget of $15,000 a month for silverware, glassware, and other items. “Spoons are the one item I lose more than anything else,” he says. People walk out of his restaurant with 100 iced-tea spoons each month.

Whether this petty theft is the work of pro-spoon forces, anti-spoon forces, forgetful patrons, or common thieves is open to speculation. But it highlights the bitter antagonism surrounding this otherwise harmless eating utensil. Once spoons occupied a hallowed place. The Anglo-Saxons named the already-common utensil spon and carved them from wood chips or bone. Europeans were slow to adapt the fork, and King Louis XIV of France once banned pointed knives at dinner; but always the spoon remained. A man named Habbakuk Westman even penned a book titled Spoon back in 1845. Spoons reached their apogee in the mid-1970s, when hipsters dangled them from chains and artist Claes Oldenburg celebrated them in his lithograph Spoon Pier.

Oh, how things have changed. Sonnenburg’s staff will deliver a spoon, but only when necessary. Hunkered down at Mi Cocina, Woodlief revels in the trend toward simplification in the restaurant industry. “Now I don’t feel obligated to use the spoon just because it’s there,” she says.

But in Chicago, Spoon pleads for reconciliation: “How can spoons be taken from their utensil family? For God’s sake, please put the spoons back where they belong.”