The double dip faux pas

I recently came across a sign at a kushikatsu restaurant in Niigata which carried a very clear message in English: "Don't dip twice in the sauce. Please dip one time only." Anyone who has watched Seinfeld will immediately know where my mind went.

In one specific episode, George Costanza is caught at a funeral reception dipping a chip into a bowl of dip, taking a bite, and then putting the partially eaten chip back in. When another guest calls him out, George is less than apologetic, and the resulting argument escalates into a fight...because of course it does. The episode helped turn "double-dipping" into a phrase that's now widely understood as a social faux pas.

In the same George Costanza chip way, kushikatsu is traditionally accompanied by a communal container of dipping sauce. Once you've taken a bite, putting that skewer back into the shared sauce would mean introducing food that's already been in your mouth, so the rule is simple: dip once, then eat. Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries even lists the prohibition on double-dipping as a well-known part of kushikatsu etiquette!

So, sorry, George. You might have had an argument about it in New York, but in Japan, Timmy was absolutely right.