AIBU for hating people wanting “a taste” of my food?

[HereComesAuntySocial]

I went out for brunch with a friend which we do quite often, we usually order different meals. .

Every time we go anywhere she takes ages to decide what she’s having and questions me about what I’m going to order and makes suggestions when I just want to choose my own bloody food!

When we get our meals she will start eating her own then eyeing up mine and ask me if she can “have a taste?”
I don’t understand this at all, It’s often something she’s likely to have had before, I don’t see the point in just trying a small amount of a meal because what if you really like it? Is it not disappointing knowing then you can’t have more or having food envy wishing you’d ordered the same?

Sometimes she offers me a taste of her food first (just the wording of this is really winding me up) and I know it’s so she can then dip into my meal.
If I refuse she keeps on at me but I’d had enough today so I said no firmly and told her I just wanted to eat what I’d ordered.
She laughed and said “well I’m still tasting yours” and before I could stop her she’d stuck her used fork into my smoked salmon and scrambled egg.

I lost my temper and pushed her fork away with mine and then said I actually didn’t want my food now and she could have it.
I was really angry and she seemed taken aback and said it was a complete overreaction and it’s normal to try each other people’s food when eating out.

Unfortunately I have experienced this before and I’ve been out with groups of friends where people have asked to taste each other food and I just think it’s so unhygienic and puts people under pressure to say no.
I also really hate people staring at what I’m eating and commenting on it with things like
“oh that looks nice? What’s in it? What does it taste like?“
I had to stop eating my lunch in front of other people at work feeling like I was expected to start offering it round.
I fell out with a colleague once who was hanging around quizzing me like he’d never seen a chicken baguette before, he got highly offended when I said he reminded me of a seagull waiting to dive bomb me.

Another food crime is people who don’t ask and just take food off your plate, I find that men are the worst offenders who ask if you are planning to finish your meal or wait until you are taking a small break from eating and lunge at it before you get a chance to stop them.
My BIL used to make comments like “you can’t possibly eat all that” or “where do you put it all?”It made me feel like he was trying to shame me into not finishing so he could eat the rest so I refuse to eat with him now unless it’s unavoidable.

I know some people say they love the experience of sharing food and it makes it more enjoyable to try different things, I have friends who start offering round “a taste” of their meals before they have even tried it themselves, I just find it weird!

Whilst all these are annoying scenarios to me, nothing is as bad as people who order a small meal or nothing at all claiming they aren’t hungry but then they change their mind and ask for some of mine - or worst still start helping themselves. There is a special place in hell for those people - especially when it’s a pudding I’ve been looking forward to, fuck off Janice we will not need “two spoons” 😂.

AIBU to get so pissed off about this or was Joey right when he just made it clear he doesn’t share food?!

I don’t think I’ll go out with her again to eat.
She knows it’s pissed me off in the past, I’ve tried to keep a jokey tone but was just really annoyed earlier.

She suggested getting different meals before and then halving them so we could have two different options and I told her that I just wanted to order what I liked and didn’t like sharing meals so I thought that would have made it obvious I didn’t want to then start swapping “tastes” of food either.

I don’t want other people’s used cutlery in my food or them eating the part of my meal I was looking forward to the most.
If she wants to try what I ordered then why not have it next time she visits?

I would love to know what people gain from having a few bites out of someone else’s food when they have their own to eat?

Does she stomp over boundaries in other ways @HereComesAuntySocial ? I would absolutely hate that, luckily no one has tried that with me.

Do you find it odd the whole having “a taste” thing? I can understand if it was some exotic food in a place you might never return to but when it’s something like spaghetti carbonara or something that they have probably had before and likely will again it’s just annoying.

I’m glad I’m not alone in this because I often feel I come across as weird or selfish for not participating in food swapping when I’m with friends.

YANBU.
Smoked salmon and eggs is just that. I don't get why she'd want a taste. I could understand if it was something more fancy or complex, like a curry or an exotic sauce.
Maybe it's a "power move"? Either way, I'd have stabbed her hand with my fork.

My husband always wants me to try his food. I have told him I never want to. Never have, never will. Yet he still asks me.

I've never experienced this. It sounds disgusting.

Vaguely related:

I hate when I cook a meal and people pile their plates up high and get through about 2/3s of the plate before announcing they're stuffed. I always think FFS that could have made a really decent sized leftover for tomorrow but obviously im not going to save your half-gnawed scrapings now

@HereComesAuntySocial I do find it strange- last time it happened to me it was roast chicken and I was offered a taste of beef bourguignon! Hardly exotic or unusual. I just said no thanks, I've had it before! If I'd been eating raw fishes' eyelashes I'd sort of understand why someone would be curious.

My brother is like this. It makes me inordinately angry. Esp when I order a pudding and he doesn’t then tries to fat shame me into sharing it with him. FUCK OFx. Or when people drool over your food as you are trying to eat it.

My brother is lazy but wants to lose weight so he tries to eat healthily but gets too hungry and greedy and just slobbers over other peoples food. I’m eating this cake cause I’ve just run 10 miles. It’s not ‘piggy’ of me to eat it all and not share it with you. If you want to eat cake and not get fat, run 10 miles to.

gah. I feel better now OP.

Husband and I often have two meals and share or offer tastes for something unusual. However, demanding or, worse, snatching a forkful without agreement would result in 'consequences', even if it was my husband.
Sharing is an agreement not a right.

This! I really don't have a problem with tasters when out with friends or family.

Yes, some people are sharers and some aren't. I'm a sharer. DH is a sharer. We have friends who we know 'are NOT sharers' so we don't expect them too...though it does take some of the joy out of say a curry evening.

It also means that we don't tapas with them. It's too tense.

An ex colleague - we would go out fairly regularly for a curry as a team - would loudly declare at the beginning of a meal - I don't share....

I don't even like it when people start taking my leftovers off my plate because I've finished eating. I still see it as my meal, so God help anyone who takes food off my plate while I'm still eating it!

No she really doesn’t, she’s a great friend in every other way but I have had enough of eating with her now because it just makes me tense and irritated.

It wouldn’t be so bad if she just accepted it when she’s trying to feed me part of her meal like I’m a toddler.
She makes all these ecstatic noises over her meal and says things like “you HAVE GOT to try this, go on have a taste”.

I always say “no thank you but she persists every time then wants to try mine and I’m fed up of it.

I’m another YANBU!
Perhaps, ALL eating places should have little table signs with; “NO sharing or staring”! for each normal individual who likes to eat their own meal; then no arguments will ever happen again, for any1?

Tapas and curries are very different, that's more of a buffet, which is fine. It is not fine to help yourself to someone's individually ordered main dish.

Fork stabbing. Not too hard, just light enough that she'll never stick her fork in your food again.

It's ok to share food if you want, but it's also ok not to share, especially when people are sticking their used fork in your food.

She laughed and said “well I’m still tasting yours”

I wouldn't go out for brunch 'quite often' with someone so rude and annoying.

Honestly, nobody has ever done this to me before. My friends and colleagues are all nice and normal people who eat their own dinner! My husband will occasionally say, 'this tastes amazing, so you want to try a bit' but that's offering his own food out.

I hate this as well, I always see it as a bit greedy because why would you want leftovers someone else has been eating?
My work colleague used to finish my half eaten sandwich which was just gross.

I don’t mind saving some for DP because I often can’t finish a meal and hate waste. I wouldn’t be happy if he just took food off my plate when I was eating.

Oh my Christ I’ll always remember, I think it was 1997 and my friends and I had started eating in pubs, drinking our pints thinking we were so grown up. It was the days you could smoke indoors, so that was bad enough, people puffing around the table.
My food was put down before my friends and before I could react she reached over, and grabbed some chips before I could say anything. She had been smoking so I just remember her yellow faggy fingers grabbing some of my chips “because she was starving”. Absolutely rank!
It’s rank, and I’m on your team OP. If you want something else order something else!
Blech

My brother stabbed me with his fork when I took a chip off his plate when we were kids. It taught me a good lesson (although I still steal chips from the kids now and again).

I would hate what you describe, OP. I never offer a taste and refuse other people's offers to avoid a quid pro quo situation. Someone who didn't understand the boundary and just dived in would horrify me too. How rude and how unhygienic, as you say!

Puddings can be different but only if you have agreed to share, not just someone asking for a second spoon without you having offered to share! New friends needed for you, OP!

To add, I would share with my son, he’s almost 7 and loves trying new food so he can take what he wants. Anyone else, NO

I do like tasting bits and sharing meals. It allows me to assess whether I want to get that thing the next time, learn about a new taste, share recommendation, get just a one small bit of something less healthy I don't want a full plate of, taste something I suppose I wouldn't like but want to know, many reasons.

That said, your friend would annoy me and I wouldn't like to share with them for a few reasons:

1)I see it as ok to ask (once), ok to say no situation. Noone should just help themselves without asking. And asking means something only when you are ready to accept "no".

2)I don’t want other people’s used cutlery in my food or them eating the part of my meal I was looking forward to the most.
I actually agree with this. With wider family or friends we resolve the sharing/dividing/tasting pieces before we start eating. We distribute the tasting bites while the cutlery is clean and than everyone eats what ends on their plate.
My DP is an exception from clean cutlery rule, but it's our mutual agreement.

It's just one of those things some people like and some don't. And, to be clear, people around me join happily in tasting and exchanges, so it's not me being a CF.

I will maybe share a 'taste' with my husband but other than that no.

I had a co-worker who would hoover up bits of leftovers so would give him any tomatoes I picked out of food but in general never encountered this really other than that (and it was kind of just a quirky joke among the group 'oh, don't throw that away, save it for David'). He didn't watch you eat eagerly or pounce on your plate or anything though. They just always asked for anything someone was about to throw out so people just started putting their unwanted picked out bits to the side for him.

My middle child will constantly beg for others food or reach for their plate but only when at a seated formal meal. He does it even before eating his own food which is the same. He's never hungry at other times, has access to food constantly and we have no idea where he got it from or why he does it but we just block his grabs and remind him every time how rude it is. I'm hoping he will grow out of it because I have no idea how to fix it other than to keep telling him 'no'. Our other kids don't do it and never have and no one in the family does it so its not 'learned'.

YANBU if you don't wanna share your food then don't. Just say NO.