Let me set the scene. You’re at a restaurant table when a few small snacks arrive, the opening salvo of an eight-course degustation dinner. There are two slices of lightly cured salmon sashimi, a crisp little tart twinkling with trout roe, and a small brick of laminated pastry showered with cheese and sticky with caramel. It’s delicious. But there is no cutlery, because the chef wants you to use the cutlery you were born with: your fingers. You do so and your chosen implements (that would be your fingers) end up all sticky and needing a bath.

Another night, another dinner, and my place at the table is set with a slim metal rest that holds a fork, a spoon and a pair of chopsticks. That actually makes sense, with so many chefs weaving the flavours of Japan and south-east Asia through otherwise European menus.

From the good old days when we had to sharpen a stone in order to hack into our brontosaurus steak, people have been funny about cutlery. I know someone who dislikes the standard practice of the fork to the left of the plate and the knife to the right. Once the waiter has left, she immediately places them together. “You wouldn’t put one chopstick either side of the plate, would you?” she says, with a charming lack of logic.

I have another friend who asks for a fork and spoon for dessert. Instead of chasing his ice-cream around the plate, he deploys the fork as a spear and the spoon as a scoop.

Another cutlery-related issue has to do with share plates, each one coming with a pair of what I can only call clackers: metal tongs with a scissor handle at one end and clumsy, spoon-shaped picker-upperers at the other. Congratulations to whomever invented these things; they are utterly useless.

Serving is easier with a simple fork and spoon; those who can do silver service will use them in appropriate fashion, and those who can’t will still be able to pick things up without leaving a trail of fermented carrots in their wake.

I seem to recall a time when a formal dinner meant an array of polished cutlery stretching to the east and west of one’s plate. You started with the pieces on the outside and worked your way in until they were all gone, then you went home. Things are better now, but not necessarily simpler.