To think these are correct table manners or am I just a snob??

[Justintime3]

I was raised with strict table manners, yet I have never been sat at a table with anyone who has the same table manners I do! Are these over the top?

This is what I was taught

1. Do not eat until the person who cooked sits down (excused if the chef says you can start)
2. Do not eat until everyone has their food in a restaurant (excused if the person without their food says you can start)
3. Chew with your mouth closed and do not speak with your mouth full
4. Do not take calls or use your phone at the table. Excuse yourself if you need to
5. Put your knife and fork together at the front of your plate when you are finished
6. Offer the last serving of XYZ to the table before you take it
7. Thank the person who cooked and offer to clean up
8. Elbows off the table
9. Tear bread into small chunks to eat in a restaurant, don't bite off the whole roll

10. Use cutlery correctly

• index finger on top of your knife and fork
• spoons for soup and dessert only. Spoon the soup from the farthest side of the bowl
• load food onto the back of the fork with your knife. (No 'shovelling' as my mum called it)

My mum's always been really strict on it and is the type to point out people's bad table manners so I've always followed these to a T. Thoughts? Is this over the top and I'm a snob, or are these just normal to expect?

Because of how I've been raised I can't help but be put off when I see someone without these manners.

Just keen to see how others were raised!

All basic manners except the bread one, it's fine to bite

Oh and shovelling rule doesn't apply to non Anglo-French type cuisine eg fine to wind spaghetti, shovel rice, couscous etc.

Oh and shovelling rule doesn't apply to non Anglo-French type cuisine eg fine to wind spaghetti, shovel rice, couscous etc

So if it's ok to 'shovel' rice, why must we persist with peas? 😵‍💫

The bread thing is about breaking a small piece of your roll (not bread roll) and buttering it, rather than buttering the whole thing and biting bits off.

I have read about half the thread! Would agree that these are fairly standard apart from keeping your mouth closed, I still wouldn’t judge people but I really dislike people eating with their mouth open because it troubles people with misophonia (including me).
I was also raised with a few extras/alterations (for context I’m white British and my family went so quickly from poverty-stricken mill-workers to middle class in my grandparents’ generation I’m frequently taken for affluent UMC due to my accent and “manners”).

1. soup - the spoon goes away from you and you tilt it to get the last bit also away from you, never towards.
2. Be very quiet about everything - no slurping, crunching, scraping plate or letting your teeth scrape on the fork
3. there is an exactly correct way to hold your cutlery which I haven’t mastered ( I think I hold my cutlery too close to the functional end, but I’m not sure and I get a lot clumsier when I move my hands back)
4. Not just the smushing peas thing, you also need to put everything you can’t spear on the back side of the fork - rice, sweetcorn etc. Anything that isn’t actually liquid you need to eat with a fork, as well - I still reflexively will eat anything more solid than chocolate mousse with a fork.
5. there is also a correct way to twirl your spaghetti around your fork. I also have never understood this and therefore do not eat spaghetti.
6. no seasoning something someone else has cooked for you before you have had a taste. One bite is enough but you shouldn’t imply your host can’t cook properly.
7. Cutlery should be rested entirely on the plate at about 5 o’clock. Tines down - pausing, tines up - finished. If I’m eating away from home I’ll also push my plate away a little to make it clear to the host/waitress.
8. this has been mentioned upthread but ask for things to be passed instead of reaching across. I hate asking for things so I normally will get up, apologise and warn that I might be entering someone’s personal space or I might ask if I can reach across which sometimes means they pass it.

Quite a few of these make me really slow at eating, which is annoying.

I recognise all these but don't do them all, or judge others that don't. Specifically, I would use a spoon for stewy type things or pasta, elbows are fine on the table, don't care where knives and forks go after you eat so long as they're on the plate.
Yes to being considerate of everyone having food, saying thanks to the cook and not talking with your mouth full.

I forgot one! Never scrape both sides of your knife on your fork (eg to get the last bits of sauce) by pulling it through the middle of the fork tines. Scrape on the side of the fork tines one at a time, on the outside of the fork tines.

Also trying to squash peas on the back of your fork is a mad way to eat them.

The silent domestics waiting to receive signals from the angle of your cutlery are not a feature of modern life as I have known it.

Well, they have been in mine in my childhood. I was taught very early on to be considerate of others around me who were working hard.

Could not agree more. I explained to my ex what would be expected of him if he met my parents for a meal (they are judgy) and he said “no wonder you’ve got an eating disorder” because he just thought it was so mental, particularly the pea thing (although they are quite hard to balance on an overturned fork as well).
My parents used to say I had to have perfect table manners or I would never have tea with the queen. Reader, I never did :’(

It can get confusing as a waitress if everyone is signalling differently.

“I also have never understood this and therefore do not eat spaghetti”

🤯🤯🤯 WTAF! This is a joke yes? Mate, live a little - seriously. Life is too short not to eat spaghetti because you can’t figure out a socially-acceptable-but-only-to-insufferable-snobs way to do it.

They are not just British upper class, like I posted previously, cut eat, cut, eat and cutlery held in that way is something I was taught with Scandinavian heritage.

As someone who has got young onset Parkinson’s and has had it since 40, I’m now 52, it’s not just geriatrics living with the condition. I’ve detailed my difficulties when dining a few pages back and the last thing I need when already self conscious is to see someone at the next table judging me because of how I might be holding my fork in a fist. If they want to wait until I get up to leave they can watch me struggle to get my coat on and if my meds are wearing off maybe my gait when walking will amuse them too.

That is fine - if the people working for you expect a certain form of communication, that's for them and you to agree.

But it doesn't affect how everyone else on earth should arrange their cutlery!

Really. Nothing snobbish about it

It's just basic manners

They could just ask if someone has finished their meal…? Some of the posts on here are wild

No, it isn’t basic manners as evidenced by the fact people on this thread are squabbling about literally every aspect of this

I have never ever loaded food onto the back of a fork

I was taught in my job to be fairly certain they’d finished before I went in to ask if they were done, and told off a couple of times for asking that too early. Maybe my job was an anomaly but the goal was for the customers to have a relaxed, seamless evening and the staff to do everything they could to assure that happened.

I think 1, 2, 4, 6 and 7 are important because they're about being a considerate human being. Rest are Victorian ideas of how to be civilised and can get in the bin.

In my experience, that is exactly what restaurant staff do. Likewise waiters at formal dinners. On this thread, even those who think that getting this code right is essential good manners have come up with at least four versions between them.

So unless somebody is going to announce rules in advance, a quick check that it's okay to clear the plates is going to be standard. Signalling that you have finished presumably fell out of favour once the staff weren't expected to be silent, so this custom just hasn't been communicated coherently to our generation. It's obsolete.

Sure, but how highly strung would you have to be for that to bother you? I’m in a restaurant, having paused eating but intending to resume having my meal, and a member of wait staff comes over to ask if I’m finished. ‘Not just yet but thanks for checking’. Job done. What am I missing?

Thanks for this approach @CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau I'm always aware (that early upper class training!) that one has to make it easy for the waiting staff. But lately I've had waiting staff at a restaurant try to take my plate when I had not signalled by placing my knife & fork together across my plate. It's a bit irritating for both them & me, & shows how tricky it is now that we don't have a set of clear signals about this!

For me, it's been drilled into me since I was a small child by my grandmother - You need to make it easy for the staff.

For the decade or so I was a guider (taking girls from 5-18 away), there was a definite trend towards abysmal table manners.

During indoor holidays, we’d sit at tables that one six or patrol on Hostess or Orderly duty would’ve laid.

You could definitely see which children had regular meals with their families at a table; polite, knew how to hold cutlery, sitting on their bottoms not kneeling on a chair, and just had a good grasp of the etiquette surrounding eating together at a table.

Any special needs aside of course (and the Rainbows at 5 were still learning too), many girls didn’t know how to hold their cutlery.

Eating off their knives, whole roast potatoes speared with a fork & eaten without cutting into smaller chunks. Holding sausages or meat chunks in their hands as you would a hot dog. Using fingers to push veg onto the fork. More than a few over the years would only use their spoon & eschew knives and forks completely.

It definitely wasn’t a class thing; there were some stereotypically middle class families whose children were the worst offenders, shouting across the table, getting up & wandering off, or shovelling the food in so fast before wiping their hands across their laps. And the absolute worst girl lived in a multimillion pound house with parents who both had titles before their names! Good manners are not class or wealth specific!

As a parent, sitting down to dinner in the evening from when my kids were small (at around 6-6:30pm, eating the same food as the adults), gave us all a chance to talk about our day, and as they grew it became a great opportunity for a million debating sessions about thousands of subjects (still the case today now they’re adults)! It was a time to not only eat but learn how to listen & communicate with each other.

Of course we had the odd night with pizza in front of the TV, but like most things, it was about teaching good manners and leading by example, as well as enjoying each other’s company.