Yes, you read that right. Thanks to the modern phenomenon of solutions to problems no one has, there exists concept design for a device which, depending on your viewpoint, is genius, preposterous, useless, or somewhere between the three. Please meet the CHOMPr hamburger grasper, which according to the copy is "a conceptual hamburger grasping device for high-end restaurants." Looking like two coffee tables from a dollhouse from the Eames era held together by those pins Ikea gives you to keep your bookshelf from collapsing, the CHOMPr seeks to ameliorate the conflict between the informal process of eating a hamburger and formal surroundings.

To some, whether you need a hamburger grasping device beyond those at the ends of your arms is sort of, well, silly. But it is very interesting as an etiquette question, because it raises the related issues of utensils as a dimension of table manners and hands as a dimension of utensils. For the former, utensils are a mark of civilization precisely because they aren't your hands, and the development of utensils has followed a trajectory more or less complimentary to the Industrial Revolution, culminating in the Victorian era, when a fully outfitted silver trousseau could top out at 500 pieces and counting.



I have encountered no record of a hamburger grasping device from the time, but the era predates the hamburger as a common foodstuff. The Victorians literally invented silverware for every arcane use they could find (Lemon fork, anyone? Runcible spoon? Crab mallet? Ouija planchette? [sorry; right era, wrong table]), so there is little doubt in my mind that had hamburgers been common to the Victorian table, there would have been tableware for them. As to hands: though some cultural etiquettes advise otherwise, hardcore Western Civilization 101 holds that very few foods are properly eaten by hand (asparagus is one such; raise your hamburger grasper if you knew that), but there were exceptions to this rubric then as now.

For example, fresh fruit: though there is always a proper way to eat fresh fruit at table (meaning fruit utensils, another example of Victorian-era enthusiasm, from which we have inherited such advances as grape scissors, cherry snips, grapefruit spoons, pineapple knives and the smirks of witnesses as a formal diner tucks into a fresh banana with a peeler, a knife, a fork, a scraps bowl, an expression somewhere between defiance and resignation, and a discernible gleam of future revenge being planned), it is widely understood that most any fruit that can be conveyed by hand can be eaten that way.

Some foods are designed to be eaten by the hands. The sandwich is the classic illustration of this, being not just designed to be handheld but actually capable of enforcing the rule. A hamburger is a sandwich so, ta da, hands are the correct conveyance for a hamburger -- as well as for the fries, the cold beer, the mountain of napkins, and the quarters for the jukebox. Whether you need an appliance for assistance with any of this is up to you.

However, now we have to deal with another related issue: is there a formal way to eat a hamburger? I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't have the answer: there is, but it depends on context. From an etiquette point of view, there is formal dining and there is informal; there are dinner parties, if you will, and there are picnics. The rules follow: at a formal table, utensils will be parsed out to the furthest reaches of your place setting, while at the inherently informal picnic, there are fewer utensils and there may not even be any. (Please note: there is neither room nor reference here for food snobbery. Tariffs notwithstanding, you could just as easily have imported cheese and pate at your picnic as you could bologna on white, and neither is better or worse than the other).

As a public service, herewith I pass along the etiquette for formal burger scarfing. If you are at a formal dinner party and the server plunks a hamburger at your place, do not give the server the satisfaction of a questioning look. Think of the burger as steak frites, which in formal office it effectively is. A meat knife and fork should be at place and you should use them (for the fries, too, though it is liklier that a formal burger is accompanied by gratin, a distinction with which you can parry if the server is snooty). There should be domed pots of condiments within reach of all at table, much as salt cellars are employed. There should be no communal condiment spoons as that makes everyone share the same utensil to touch food specific to them (different than salt spoons, which sprinkle from above). So at place along with the fork and meat knife should be a small, wide-hipped condiment spoon for you to use to slather mustard, ketchup, and/or mayonnaise. If pickles are offered, they will be in an oblong silver or crystal dish with a delightful spring-loaded gizmo called a pickle fork, which unlike condiment spoons can be shared, especially when you give it to the kids to play with quietly so that the adults can converse. If onions are offered, there is a corresponding onion fork which may have been doing double duty in the olives during the cocktail hour (perhaps unnecessarily since, if the service is truly old school, there are, of course, olive forks, but in modern service the two species often become one hybrid).

One more thing: since everyone dresses their hamburger differently, it is correct to quietly ask the host for a small serving of a sauce one likes on one's burger but that didn't make it to table. If the host has the sauce to offer, the host should do so, without feeling embarrassed if not. A chain reaction among the other diners can be expected to follow. Once all of these negotiations have been navigated, the dinner guests can have a free-for-all with barbeque sauce, steak sauce, chutney, blue cheese dressing, chili paste, pesto . . . whatever the host has the stamina to trot out while silently rueing having yielded to the notion that it would be cute to throw a formal hamburger party. If the sauce being requested is Bearnaise, it should be served in a sauce boat with a ladle -- and that host's name and address taken down for a follow-up thank-you note accompanied by a bottle of good wine.

Finally, there is the question of those public places which are hardly informal but at which burgers are on the menu. Primarily this means steakhouses and bistros and theoretically these are the audience for which the CHOMPr was devised. Whether steakhouse or bistro, you should receive and respond to a heightened level of service on the floor and execution in the kitchen. (Execution of the meal, not the chef. Sorry, getting giddy). The $41 hamburger at Old Homestead is served with knife, fork and napkin, but no additional device beyond the check, From that, we can extrapolate that they don't expect you to use a CHOMPr, and that while knife and fork are present the restaurateur leaves the decision to use them in your capable hands -- pun intended.