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.

I went on a date when I was at uni with a guy who booked the restaurant - a rather swanky Chinese.

When we sat down, he asked for a fork as he didn’t know how to use chopsticks. That was our only date 😬 Shallow of me? Absolutely.

I think it is (or was at least) traditional at weddings for ladies to continue to wear their hats during the wedding breakfast, and also to only remove them when the mother of the bride removed hers.

From lpmrestaurants.com. One of several sites which says to hold the escargot fork in your dominant hand and the tongs in the other. There is no right or wrong way to hold them, and they're not one handed.

Really? So just because a person is fat they have no manners!! Very judgemental!

It is though - in the writing example you're forcing the non-dominant hand to do something that's very difficult for it. Same with using the knife. I'm right handed, and there's no way I can use the knife with my left hand. I can hardly do anything precise with my left hand. My husband and kids are much more ambidextrous, and can do lots of thingswith either hand. My kids both write with their right hand, but use their cutlery correctly, but in the "wrong" hands.

Someone we used to know, died nearly 10 years ago at over 80, had the most appalling table manners. Evidently not taught as a child, but he had a very successful career so you’d think he’d pick a few tips up on the way, but no…
DDs used to argue about who was NOT going to sit opposite him, it was so gruesome to witness!

@GreenChameleoni work in a school and there’s not the staff in the dining hall to help the children with their eating. So it’s being supported in school. But you’re right, mine just say no one eats like this!

I've witnessed lots of young men in particular shovelling food while hunched over their plates as well. It turns by stomach. Also I used to live in a country with a very different culture to ours and I noticed that the women in particular would put HUGE lumps of food into their mouths and then chew with their mouths open, probably because they struggled to cut their food up into bite size pieces.

I've noticed in recent years that so many people seem to struggle to hold cutlery properly. I'm sure it didn't used to be like this. They are often white and from a western culture as well, so it's not as if they haven't grown up being accustomed to knives and forks.

I am not a complete snob about it, I don't think there is only one 'right' way, I don't care if you use your fork like a scoop sometimes, or whether you hold it facing upwards or downwards, so long as it works and doesn't look massively awkward, sloppy and inefficient. But these people don't seem to be able to manage their cutlery at all. They hold it in the most bizarre ways and seem incapable of manipulating it to perform the function it was designed for. No disabilities such as arthritis as far as I can tell. It's something that seems to be an issue with increasing numbers of young people and I don't remember knowing anyone who ate like this when I was growing up.

I know several people in their late teens and 20s who grip their fork like a spear and then stick it into the food while holding it completely upright, like they are putting one of those flag poles into a golfing hole, if that makes sense. Then they tear and drag at the food with their knife rather than cutting it or sawing at it.

When I was in the States I noticed this more than ever. Lots of very odd cutlery holding styles, balancing forks and spoons across three or four splayed fingers of an upturned hand, or gripping it like a javelin they are just about to throw.

I know Americans like to cut their food with their knife first, then put it to one side, switch their fork to the other hand and just eat with their fork. I don't claim to understand it, but it doesn't bother me.

What does bother me is when they get too lazy to switch back to their knife as needed, so they try to cut their food with their fork. They spend so long hacking and sawing away at their food with the blunt side of their fork and I want to scream 'just use the bloody knife for God's sake! That's what it's sitting there for, remember?'

That was ridiculous of you. Not shallow, but very snobby and pretentious. Chop sticks are difficult if you aren't used to them. I'd rather he used a fork than ended up with a lapful of rice and went home starving. 😂

Also, Chinese people lift their bowl up under their chin or put their head down to the bowl because they know the rice or noodles are likely to end up everywhere but their mouths otherwise. Whereas we have it drilled into us not to do that, so eating with chopsticks is doubly hard if you are trying to be 'polite' by our standards and not put your face too near the plate.

Me too. I know that it's perfectly normal in some cultures but if the food it too wet I think it's grim. I will scoop at a curry with my naan bread, but no way am I using my hands for the rice.

I've watched people do it and the only way to stop it falling apart in your hands is to sort of knead the rice together until it forms a sticky ball, then scoop at the curry with it. But what is the point of cooking lovely fluffy rice with separated grains if you are going to squidge it all up into a gluey lump?

I find it faintly nauseating when I see people getting wet food all over their hands. And watching people roll and knead their rice or their fufu or their pap around in their hand like it was play-doh actually makes me feel ill.

I am very fastidious and I get really twitchy if I'm eating with someone and they get a blob of ketchup or gravy on their hands and they don't notice, and they are waving their hands around. Or a blob of mayo on the side of their mouth. How can they not feel it there?!! DH does this all the time and I can't stand it. I have to tell him and he gets really annoyed with me, says I treat him like a toddler, but it stresses me knowing it's there. I can't relax until it's wiped off. 😂

I think we all use our dominant hand for our fork if we are eating food that only requires a fork. But surely you would not continue to use your dominant hand for your fork when you can manage a fork perfectly well in the other hand and you need your dominant hand for your knife?

That makes no sense to me.

Now I am a stickler for decent table manners but I think this is outdated nonsense and I don't give a stuff for 'correct etiquette' where it makes no sense and no practical difference. It's not as if a left handed person being allowed to have their knife in their dominant hand is going to offend anyone, or lead to messy/uncouth eating, is it now?

People don't 'notice' if you are eating with your cutlery the 'wrong' way around, providing you can use it cleanly and efficiently. If you are left handed you should have it the way that works best for you. What people do notice is when someone is making a real pig's ear of cutting their food and getting it onto their fork. That's much more likely to be the case if they are not encouraged to use their dominant hand for their knife.

I dread to think how many left handed people have been bullied and shamed into learning to eat in a way that feels completely alien to them, because of 'etiquette'. It's no different to forcing them to learn to write with their right hand. A completely pointless exercise.

To say 'they either weren't taught or don't know any better' is horribly snobbish.

OP I work with young people who are brought up by adults who can’t cook. No such thing as conventional mealtimes with behaviour being modelled by multiple generations. No dining room table. Fast food eaten with fingers. They come to school eating Pringles and a packet of Haribos, as they can open these packets themselves. The muscles in their jaws are underdeveloped as fast food is designed to be chewed easily and swallowed. Digested too quickly, so rinse and repeat. Those people you described sound like an adult version. X

Wow, that's so sad. How did you become involved in helping with this and what skills do you teach them? Why don't think adults can't cook these days?

It does though. I have zero control over the knife if it goes in my right hand. It slips and slides everywhere and I struggle to cut anything. To hold it there is completely unnatural for me.