Typical of a country rich with Confucian influences, Korean dining is largely performed with chopsticks. Though you of course don’t need to know the proper way to use chopsticks when dining at our Bellevue Korean restaurant, it’s a good skill to have if you want to impress friends from abroad.

To hold your chopsticks, hold one stick like you would hold a pencil and grip the second stick underneath it, atop your middle finger. Try to pick up food by bringing the tips of the sticks together at an angle; if the sticks are perpendicular with each other, you’ll find yourself dropping a lot of food. It takes practice to develop the proper manual dexterity, but after a few meals you should be eating like a pro.

Within Asian circles, be sure to observe proper etiquette with your chopsticks. This means that you don’t spear food with them, or leave them standing up in your rice. This latter practice is often a tradition reserved for funerals, and can be seen as rude. When you finish a meal with chopsticks, place them back where you found them in the first place.