Table Manners

[PistachioTiramisu]

We were having a drink at a fairly upmarket pub yesterday evening. Two young men - around 20 - came to sit at a table next to us and ordered roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. I watched in fascinated horror as they proceeded to 'devour' their food. They both held their cutlery the wrong way round and like daggers, they attacked the meat over and over with their forks, then tearing it on the plate. Finally, instead of putting food on their forks and bringing fork to mouth, they bent over and shovelled the food into their mouths from the plate. Do people not learn table manners any more? It seems to me that all the niceties of life are being eroded to the lowest common denominator. So sad.

Talking of salt...it's hardly on any tables in restaurants nowadays. Why is that? From places like Pizza Express to pub dining. Some people like to season their food themselves.

My mum had impeccable table manners, some of which she managed to pass on to us 🤣

One she didn’t successfully impress on us was peeling and eating oranges with a knife and fork. It was quite something to watch but I just didn’t have the dexterity (or motivation) to do likewise.

She did go to a convent boarding school and obviously was brought up in a different age (and country).

She did tell us some historical reasons for some table rules though which were interesting - keeping your hands/forearms (not elbows 🤣) resting on the table showed that you weren’t concealing a knife under the table!

Increasingly, various establishments are available to more people from various parts of society. Well, sure, anyone can dine at the Ritz.

What? This is a class - sorry levels of society- thing?

Whatever next.

Phone for the fish knives, Norman.

That sounds pretty gross, but to be honest, I doubt I would even have noticed. I'm normally 100% engaged with the people I am dining with to really notice what is going on around me.

My husband is awful. Cutlery in the wrong hands and doesn’t use them properly. My dd is the same. It’s awful. When I’ve tried to pull her up on it he says he’s ok. So which one of us is right? It’s embarrassing to be honest.

This is my experience! All 3 boys are wired to do it instinctively, no amount of teaching could change it

Teaching my kids table manners is a constant battle because they always answer "who cares", and they are right because no one seems to care any more - their friends all have bad table manners (think 8 year olds chewing with their mouths open), table manners are never talked about, let alone taught, at school. I find it very hard to convince them of the importance of table manners because I get the feeling DH and I are the only adults trying to enforce an old-fashioned and pointless set of rules.

It’s quite embarrassing the number of snobby posters shouting about cutlery in the ‘wrong’ hands. You hold the knife in your dominant hand. For many that’s the right hand. For some it’s the left.

There is no right or wrong way! If you’re left handed you hold the knife in your left hand.

You blame the mother not the grown adult who acts piggishly.

Not if you are using them correctly. Some cutlery can't be used in the wrong hands.

Plus if you are seated next to someone and you don't use the cutlery correctly you will be elbowing me when you raise your fork to your mouth.

There is nothing snobby about it.

This has literally never happened to me and I’ve been jammed together with other people at plenty of weddings. You just keep your elbows in 🤷🏻‍♀️

Awful!
Add in holding a knife as if it was a pen, taking a drink while still eating and not putting down cutlery to take a drink.
Grim!

Of course there is. Unless you have such appalling table manners that you flap your elbows athletically every time you cut up food or take a mouthful, there’s no reason at all for you to jostle your neighbours, whichever hand you hold your knife in.

No.
The knife is held in the right hand, it doesn’t need to be held by the dominant hand and is never held like a pen.

table manners aren’t universal. I was in a Vietnamese restaurant recently and there was an Asian couple next to us (tables very close together) eating a meaty noodle broth with chopsticks. The slurping was horrendous. Then at the end they drank from the bowl. I’m sure this is typical in their culture. I just tried to block it out but I didn’t judge them for it.

My mum had a set of fish forks that had one thick tine that she got as a wedding present in the 60s. I don't recall them ever being used, but that's another story. They're the only pieces of cutlery I can think of that are "handed". Every day cutlery can be used in either hand.

Why should left-handed people (or anyone) be forced to use cutlery in a way that's not natural to them? It's universally agreed that forcing left-handed people to write with their right hand is a bad idea - why should eating be any different? The argument about elbowing the person next to you is just nonsense if everyone is following another basic rule of table manners: elbows in.

It does. Because the dominant hand does the cutting. I agree about holding it like a pen though.

Using cutlery is unnatural for everyone.

As well as fish forks cake forks, some seafood tools are handed as are escargot tongs.

Also, as I have said the people I know who use the wrong hands are right handed.

Why? I like eating at a well set table too. Hate eating off my knee when the food slops everywhere.

I've never managed to elbow someone despite using the 'wrong' hand. Weird.

I were mostly referring to the fact that she moves tables in restaurants and has clearly passed the issue onto her ds to the point where he sits alone at lunch time.

I quite often swap my cutlery over, if I am using my knife I will use it in my right hand, if I am mainly using the fork I swap it over into my right hand also. I guess many of the posters on here would ask to me moved away from me if they saw me in a restaurant.

That is normal in SE Asia.

The hand writing analogy is not applicable. You use 1 hand to write but both hands use an item
of cutlery, both of which require a degree of dexterity.

I went on a date with a man to a nice pub for a meal. He sat sideways on his chair, ordered goujons and chips and proceeded to eat with his hands! Needless to say there was no second date!