Map maven / eagle-eyed shopper Rurik Nystrom snapped this photo of some cheesy samplers at a branch of Market Place in Beijing.
Those toothpicks appear to be defying gravity. And do the pieces on the end of them even count as samples?
According to Merriam-Webster, a sample is “a representative part or a single item from a larger whole or group especially when presented for inspection or shown as evidence of quality“. I suppose those pieces are representative in that I can see they are cheese but I doubt eating one would give me a good sense of the “quality” I might get by purchasing a much larger portion. You’d have to ball them together to figure that out.
A better description might be “morsel” (“a small piece of food”) or “crumb” (“a small fragment especially of something baked”), with “tidbit“, “smidgeon“, “kernel” and “mote” having potential. Definitively hilarious.
I have a feeling that whoever put this plate together was told to make 50 samples, became peckish while doing so, and had to make do with what cheese she / he had left after a little work-time snack.
(Hat tip to R. Nystrom)
Maybe they are giant toothpicks !!!