Drop Your Basic Utensil for a New Experience with a Finger-Shaped Spoon

As far as Emily Post is concerned, eating with your hands is a big no-no. But let’s be real, some of our most delicious and memorable food experiences have often come from this very activity. Eating with your bare hands or sucking your fingers are natural behaviors. We believe it feeds your mind, not just your stomach, by offering a personal connection with your food.

Design studio Michel/Fabian tapped into the sensuality of eating with one’s fingers when developing their genius take on the spoon. The result = Goûte, a teardrop-shaped glass wand designed to eat creamy foods like peanut butter, Nutella, yogurt, or chocolate mousse. Their handcrafted utensil makes the experience of eating creamy foods much more mindful and pleasurable.

Michel/Fabian also collaborated with Oxford University’s Crossmodal Research Laboratory to conduct an experiment testing the effect eating with Goûte can have on flavor perception. Participants reported perceiving the food as tasting significantly better than when eating with a conventional spoon. Some participants even rated the sweetness of the yogurt sample as being sweeter than those eating with a plastic spoon. Lastly, the perceived value of the food went up by 40%.

Goûte can be defined in three ways. Each one below clearly shows how perfect the product name truly is.

goût french |gu|
taste or gustation.
One of the 5 senses that informs about the molecular properties of food.
The sensation of flavor perceived in the mouth on contact with a substance.
goutte french |gut|
drop (of liquid).
A small round or pear-shaped portion of liquid that hangs or falls.
goûte french |gut|
to taste.
“Goûte cela” – “Taste this”.

As for the physical design, the original concept started by 3D printing a scanned finger, and giving it a handle. Then after many failed material trials, they decided to move forward with glass. The versatile material could produce a similar shape to the finger while allowing them to find a balance between tactile qualities, visual aesthetics, and manufacturing capacities. The glass Goûte is made by glass blower Richard Price, in the United Kingdom.

Additionally, they also produced a version in different woods: Pear, Maple and Olive. Their wood is ethically sourced, dry-aged, and hand-turned on a lathe by Dominic Jones, wood artisan in the United Kingdom.

Photos by Joe Sarah.

from Design MilkDesign Milk http://design-milk.com/drop-your-basic-utensil-for-a-new-experience-with-a-finger-shaped-spoon/