People who tuck in before everyone is served - rude?

[SarahAndQuack]

Say you have family/friends over and you are cooking a meal for, say, 8 or 10 people - enough that it takes a bit of time to get on the table. Either you dish it up on plates and pass them out, or you serve everyone at table - you do guests first, of course. Guests tuck in straight away, while everyone else is still being served.

Is that rude?

I was brought up to think you wait for everyone to be served, if it's a sit-down meal.

What do you think?

I was taught never to let hot food get cold. It isn’t rude to start eating as soon as you are served as long as you don’t take take large portions of ‘serve yourself’ dishes.

I am so shocked at the number of people who don't know this is really rude!

I feel SOOOO OLLLLLDDDD!!!!!!

@lockdownalli

I am so shocked at the number of people who don't know this is really rude!

I feel SOOOO OLLLLLDDDD!!!!!!

It's nothing to do with 'knowing' it's rude. It's a silly bit of British etiquette that I think is pointless.
Who would want to wait till their food is cold before starting to eat?
What's the benefit of it?
Do other countries do this?

It certainly isn’t just British! And unless there’s some major mess-up, it will usually involve you waiting an extra 30 seconds to a minute.

At home with family and (close) friends - who cares

In a restaurant I would generally wait but have to consider the vibe and group consensus at the table. Sometimes when service is slow someone waiting for food usually speaks up and encourages people to tuck in and everyone else is quick to agree. Nobody really wants to let their food go cold...

How would your food get cold in the time it takes for a few more plates to land or be loaded? Do you eat your food in that timeframe too?

I spent a few years living in USA and Caribbean and it was absolutely the done thing to wait until everyone was served there too.

Really rude, I never eat with anyone who’d start before everyone is served (unless encouraged to dig in). It’s a sociable thing, the main purpose it to be convivial, not to shove food down your gullet at record speed.

I also hate eating when everyone else has finished. Went for lunch with friends the other week and someone’s meal didn’t come out – she encouraged us to start, which we did, but we all ate very slowly so she wasn’t eating alone!

It’s probably more of a British obsession that food should be hot.
I suppose @SarahAndQuack that you just have to take a detached anthropological view. People have different manners.
It wasn’t something I learnt at home, but it is the norm in the circles I now move in (to wait that is) although I think even my family would tend to wait for everyone to sit down.
I get the impression that it wouldn’t be a long wait in your system so I think that works both ways. They can’t be much ahead of you.
I absolutely agree that tackling other people’s rudeness head on is bad manners. I also do understand how upsetting bad manners can be even if it’s something not particularly rational.

I spent a few years living in USA and Caribbean and it was absolutely the done thing to wait until everyone was served there too.

American here. It’s a regional thing. Third option would be offering to share some of ones food while someone waited if in a restaurant setting so everyone is eating, no one is left out, and everyone got the meal at the temperature they order it for.

@Grinling

It certainly isn’t just British! And unless there’s some major mess-up, it will usually involve you waiting an extra 30 seconds to a minute.

I'd say the dance is quintessentially British.

Not necessarily encouraging those with food to start, but having to ask twice, because the first time no one follows the command as that's not how the dance works.

Like... the credit card dance if someone is treating you. 'Let me get this.' 'No, no, let me get this. 'No, really, I insist.' 'Oh, okay then, that's very kind, thank you.'

Or... asking how someone is. 'How are you?' 'I'm fine.' 'No, really, how are you?' 'Actually, my arm has just fallen off and I'm about to bleed out, so if you wouldn't mind terribly, could you please call me an ambulance?'

@TYbakedpotato, I'm Irish, and all those things are absolutely just as Irish. See also the only mildly exaggerated Mrs Doyle in Fr Ted, who bears a distinct resemblance to my mother. who thinks people who refuse a cup of tea are just being polite, because she would refuse a cup of tea just to be polite, so she just serves it anyway because she thinks she's doing what they want but are too polite to say. (And by 'cup of tea', she also tends to mean 'sandwiches, cake, biscuits etc.)

She is absolutely baffled by more direct cultures or individuals who see a refusal as an indication that the person genuinely doesn't want a cup of tea/three-course meal, so they don't keep offering.

I once told her about a student friend of mine who politely refused dessert on her first night as an au pair in France, and was taken aback when it wasn't offered a second time. Nonetheless, she politely refused again the next night, and the next, and after that the family stopped offering because they'd concluded she didn't like sweet stuff. I told this as a joke on my friend, because she's an absolute pig for sweet stuff, but I've heard my mother retell it on numerous occasions as a joke on French people, because imagine not offering and re-offering time after time, night after night. The height of rudeness!

The upper and working classes tuck in.

Not my upper-middle/upper class experience at all. Formal official public dinners work somewhat differently, but normal family, or informal dinner parties, it is so rude to start eating as soon as you're served.

It just looks greedy - as though you're afraid there won't be enough food. And it means you're not taking notice of your fellow guests, or your host, or your guests (depending on whether you are a guest or a host) to ensure everyone has what they want, and everyone has enough, and is served.

It's about consideration & care for others, not getting as much food as you can down your throat.

It doesn't take that long to put everything on a normal table...

Well, quite.

And even at largeish formal dinners (or weddings & the like) if the service is good, one of the things they aim for is that each table (in a multiple table room) is served at pretty much the same time. At along dinner table, there should be enough service staff so that people are served almost all simultaneously, or certainly with minimal gaps.

It really isn't a matter of food going cold ... people are overreacting!

I think this does show that the middle-class system just hasn’t been thought through properly.

well, it shows that some people who might count themselves as middle-class haven't read through to the end of the rules which, as has been mentioned here several times, if you think your guests are in danger of eating cold food - you tell them to start.

Do other countries do this?

Yes. But then my German & French family & friends are also upper-middle class, and brought up with what a lot of you regard as "old-fashioned" manners.

We think of it simply as consideration & respect for others.

@dfendyr

Neap?? Meal

I thought you were Scottish and meant a turnip!

@Brefugee

I think this does show that the middle-class system just hasn’t been thought through properly.

well, it shows that some people who might count themselves as middle-class haven't read through to the end of the rules which, as has been mentioned here several times, if you think your guests are in danger of eating cold food - you tell them to start.

I still feel that there’s an intrinsic lack of logic to serving people in order of precedence if the default is to all start at the same time unless there’s an explicit instruction from the host.

*which, as has been mentioned here several times, if you think your guests are in danger of eating cold food - you tell them to start8

Of course one does this! It's about making guests feel comfortable, but making sure everyone is comfortable, not just the person who's served first!

@Ragruggers

Yes,rude unless the host says please start or the food will get cold.It takes a while to serve 8 people.

This

Brought up to politely wait until all served no matter how long it took or that your meal was now cold. If I'm out with a group now I'll wait a certain length of time but if it becomes obvious the food will likely be getting cold by the time the time the last person is served I would begin to eat. Most people want to but daren't look rude but will then follow suit of someone else starts. If I was hosting I would tell people tuck in as seems a waste of money and effort to have food eaten cold.

It's nothing to do with 'knowing' it's rude. It's a silly bit of British etiquette that I think is pointless.
Who would want to wait till their food is cold before starting to eat?
What's the benefit of it?
Do other countries do this?

It's absolutely the norm in a great many places, not just the UK and not just the English speaking world. In some places it would be even less acceptable.

The "benefit" is that it acknowledges that eating is a communal bonding activity as well as about fueling the body, it acknowledges the host, and in a lot of cases it means people won't be half finished eating before the cook gets to sit down and eat too.

Usually food doesn't go cold in a 5 minute span.

[quote Grinling]@TYbakedpotato, I'm Irish, and all those things are absolutely just as Irish. See also the only mildly exaggerated Mrs Doyle in Fr Ted, who bears a distinct resemblance to my mother. who thinks people who refuse a cup of tea are just being polite, because she would refuse a cup of tea just to be polite, so she just serves it anyway because she thinks she's doing what they want but are too polite to say. (And by 'cup of tea', she also tends to mean 'sandwiches, cake, biscuits etc.)

She is absolutely baffled by more direct cultures or individuals who see a refusal as an indication that the person genuinely doesn't want a cup of tea/three-course meal, so they don't keep offering.

I once told her about a student friend of mine who politely refused dessert on her first night as an au pair in France, and was taken aback when it wasn't offered a second time. Nonetheless, she politely refused again the next night, and the next, and after that the family stopped offering because they'd concluded she didn't like sweet stuff. I told this as a joke on my friend, because she's an absolute pig for sweet stuff, but I've heard my mother retell it on numerous occasions as a joke on French people, because imagine not offering and re-offering time after time, night after night. The height of rudeness! [/quote]
A good friend of mine, who is quite thin naturally, spent a year in Africa as a student living in a tiny village. When she came back she was positively fat, because the one thing you did not do was refuse offered food. Or seconds. And wherever she went, people offered it. She said the day she left she ate seven full meals.

It’s not rude but also polite for the host to say to go ahead.

It's absolutely not just a British or English thing. Nor necessarily a class thing. The number of people on here who think that upper/middle class English people have a monopoly on politeness or set the standard for others is so embarrassing! It's really not that likely that food will go stone cold in a domestic setting.
I've lived in a number of different countries including USA, NZ, Ireland, England, Spain, Greece, Singapore and it's generally accepted that if someone cooks you a meal then you wait until everyone is at the table and everyone starts eating together. In most cultures, the point of eating together is not that everyone gets their meal at some optimum red hot temperature, but the actual social ritual of eating together.

It’s best to wait until everyone has been served but it isn’t always reasonable to do so if their meal is taking much longer than yours, you’d just end up with cold food. I’d honestly rather everyone else start eating than leave their food to go cold waiting for mine.