Question about table manners or ettiquette

[Haole Girl]

Recently, I realized it is improper to eat with one's fork upright. "You have GOT to be kidding me," I thought. Really? Where I grew up (well, that was actually everywhere) I was taught it is improper to eat with your fork facing downward.

Did everybody else know this?

I feel like such an idiot. :blush:

[struggle4progress]

1. I just eat with my fingers

:shrug:

[LynneSin]

2. you use your fingers?

I mean why dirty your fingers when you can just take your face to the plate and chow down

:shrug:

[struggle4progress]

4. Whether or not it is stylish depends, I suppose, on individual skill. If you can pick the

dressing-drenched veggies from your salad bowl and pop them gracefully into your mouth while continuing to converse wittily, with a suitable unawareness of the shocked faces around you, then (to my view) you have won the etiquette game

And if someone should be rude enough to complain of such classy behavior, the proper response is to apologize profusely, grab a fork, and accidentally launch a tomato quarter across the table from your salad bowl -- after which another profuse apology is in order

Really. Who taught you your manners? Hmmph!

[MiddleFingerMom]

14. Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman" after her snail took t'flyin' in the fancy restaurant...

.
.
.
.
.
..."Slippery little suckers, aren't they?"
.
.
.

[seabeyond]

7. laughing. no wonder you have all those wimmins threads. nt

[struggle4progress]

15. !

:D

[blueraven95]

3. This is actually a difference between American and British (European?) etiquette

If I recall correctly, from a Miss Manners column some years back, Americans are taught to eat with the fork face up, while Brits are taught to eat with the fork face down. It's a tiny bit more complicated than that, but etiquette-wise, I don't think either is actually wrong.

[A HERETIC I AM]

5. Brits also tend to keep the fork in their left hand...

and a knife in their right, just as Americans do when cutting meat (right handers, anyway) except that Americans usually switch the fork back to the right hand when taking food from the plate to the mouth. Brits just push food onto the fork held in the left hand and move it to the mouth and never switch back and forth.

[tigereye]

6. I have always wondered why that is- and how these things change

[Graybeard]

8. Famous movie scene about that.

I think the film is 13 Rue Madeleine, a WWII spy movie, and Jimmy Cagney is trying to pass as a European in Nazi occupied Paris.

He gives himself away, in a restaurant, when he is seen eating "the American way" as you described it.

[El Supremo]

16. I remember that!

But I had no idea what movie it was from. Thanks.

[A HERETIC I AM]

19. Not related to table manners, but the movie "Inglorious Basterds" had a similar sort of scene...

If you have seen the movie, one of the Americans trying to pass himself off as German uses his fingers to signify the number two. He holds up his index finger and his middle finger, as an American is likely to do. The Germans (apparently) would hold up the thumb and the index finger. The mistake gives him away to the SS or Gestapo dude.

[Pacifist Patriot]

13. Another difference...

Americans tend to eat with one hand in their lap. A lot of Europeans would consider that disgusting while Americans think the hands/elbows up on the table are rude. I mean really, what is that hand doing down there?

[A HERETIC I AM]

18. RE: the "hands/elbows up on the table" idea....

My Mom and Dad were pretty old school regarding table manners and even went so far as to make us hold small books or magazines under our arms while we ate, in order to learn to keep the elbows in and at your sides, as opposed to on the table! That only took once or twice to get the idea, mind you.

As far as the hand in the lap thing, perhaps it is to be quick with the napkin, which should be in the lap at the ready?

[petronius]

21. These days? That hand is busy texting...

[Orsino]

9. The proper way is to rotate the fork in the bowl of the spoon...

...to make sure you get every last, delicious Olive Garden noodle.

[petronius]

10. Never heard that one, but I was taught that as long as most of the food went in my mouth,

and I remembered to close said mouth once in a while, everything was hunky-dory.

Fork down seems silly: curving the tines up should keep the food on easier and is a far more natural hand position. The tines-down position guarantees carpal-tunnel injuries and all but proves that the person is a satan-worshiper...

[gratuitous]

11. One foot must be in contact with your chair at all times

Growing up in a family of five boys, there had to be some rules. And even a 30-second penalty was a long time.

[Pacifist Patriot]

12. That's a cultural difference, not a matter of etiquette.

I grew up in Europe, so my style of eating looks a bit different from Americans sometimes, but I wouldn't call it gauche.

In my opinion, proper etiquette is common sense, common courtesy and compassion. Everything else is distracting details.

[El Supremo]

17. When I was little my father taught me to use the overturned fork in my left hand...

to eat when cutting food with a knife in my right hand. I use the upright fork in my right hand when I don't need a knife. He thought it was silly to trade the fork to your right hand after cutting. And all his ancestors have lived in American for more than 300 years!

[Haole Girl]

20. Lived in 'America' for more than 300 years?

2010-1776 = 234 years.

Which "America" did he live in?

:silly:

[El Supremo]

22. You are confusing America with the United States.

The colonials called it America too.

[Haole Girl]

23. I knew the explorer who discovered "North America" coined it that....

but didn't realize colonialist did.

[El Supremo]

24. That's what you get for living in Cook's Sandwich Islands.

Where they eat poi with their fingers.

:)

[Haole Girl]

25. I wish

:P