He recently has all his teeth taken out fot stomatitis, as well as some moth eaten teeth they found before taking the others out.
He is not this sweet normally. He was too stoic to catch the pain he was in previously.
Bonus post surgery not happy picture. 
Well that's certainly not the whole truth the way mine can be heard crushing on his dry food from multiple rooms way
My understanding is that if the food is easily swallow sized, they may unintentionally crunch as they maneuver the food around their mouths to position it to be swallowed, but not out of necessity. If the food is larger, sure they'll break it up so they can swallow it easier. But by nature, cats aren't animals that need to chew food for grinding and digestive purposes (like animals that have flat/grinding molars.) As long as they can swallow it, they don't need to chew.
They don't tend to crush too much with their teeth from what I've heard, they mostly lack the molars needed for that i think, instead the can use the top and bottom jaw usually.
Might be wrong been a while since I read that.
Mine is also toothless by now. You are correct, my vet told my they're using their upper denture / jaw to crush what needs to be crushed and swallow everything else.
I was told to be careful with wet food and meat because this kind of stuff can't be crushed so it should be "bite sized" to allow her to swallow her food easily. But I don't know if this is a general thing or if this was related to an incident when my cat nearly suffocated from a piece of sausage she greedily swallowed without chewing... She's never been the sharpest tool in the shed, but we love her (人 •͈ᴗ•͈)