Tips and Pitfalls
- Beginning
- Developing the habit of taking a moment to
observe which starting method will be operative
at an event can be very useful in preventing
awkward mistakes. It will ensure, for example,
that an agnostic guest never finds himself with
laden fork pushed halfway into his mouth just as
the host begins to say grace.
There are two common approaches to determining
how to begin, and, whichever method is used, it
should be followed at the start of each course
of the meal. At smaller events, it is common
to wait to take a bite until everyone at the
table has received a serving and the hostess has
begun eating. Sometimes a hostess may urge her
guests to eat immediately upon receiving the
food. This is especially true at larger events,
where waiting for everyone would allow it to get
cold. In this case, wait until one or two of
the other guests are ready to begin as well, so
that you are not the only person at the table
who is eating.
- Posture
- ("Elbows, elbows, if you're able -- keep
your elbows off the table!")
Proper posture at the table is very important.
Sit up straight, with your arms held near your
body. You should neither lean on the back of
the chair nor bend forward to place the elbows
on the table. It is permissible to lean forward
slightly every now and then and press the elbows
very lightly
against the edge of the table, if it is obvious
that you are not using them for support.
-
- Eating Soup
- Dip the spoon into the soup, moving it away
from the body, until it is about two-thirds
full, then sip the liquid (without slurping)
from the side of the spoon (without inserting
the whole bowl of the spoon into the mouth).
The theory behind this is that a diner who
scoops the spoon toward himself is more likely
to slosh soup onto his lap, although it is
difficult to imagine what sort of eater would
stroke the spoon so forcefully through the
liquid that he creates waves. It is perfectly
fine to tilt the bowl slightly -- again away
from the body -- to get the last
spoonful or two of soup.
- Eating Bouillon
- It is not very well known, undoubtedly
because it is no longer in fashion to serve it,
that if you are given bouillon in a soup cup
with a handle, you may pick up the cup and sip
the broth directly from it, even if a soupspoon
has been provided. If there are any bits of
vegetables or meat in the bouillon, they should
be eaten with the spoon before you begin
sipping.
- Finger Bowls
- The finger bowl has hovered on the brink of
obsolescence for over a century without entirely
disappearing. This is probably why it provides
the critical obstacle in the story of the man,
either a foreigner or a bumpkin (depending on
the teller), who is a guest at a formal dinner
party. When a servant offers him a bowl of
water at the end of the meal, he drinks it. The
hostess presiding at the event is so poised and
utterly well-mannered that, without skipping a
beat, she drinks her bowl down, too,
thus saving him the embarrassment of realizing
the extent of his faux pas. This tale
has reached almost the status of urban legend,
and it is told in many variations. The hostess
may be a family matriarch or someone very
well-known, say Eleanor Roosevelt or Queen Victoria, but the finger
bowl seems to be a
constant.
Fortunately, the main difficulty lies in
recognizing the finger bowl when you see it,
which, at formal events, will be either before
or after the dessert course. Often there is a
slice of lemon floating in the water.
Once you are presented with one, all you need to
know is that you should delicately dip your
fingertips in the water (no scrubbing), dry them
off with your napkin (equally delicately), and
set the bowl to the side of your plate.
- Offering Food
- Take note, when you are the host of a party,
of the way you offer additional servings to your
guests. Urging someone to "have another (or a
second or third) helping" can be seen as an
unpleasant insinuation that the guest has eaten
too much. It is best to phrase each offer of
food as if the dish has just been brought out
for the first time.
- "Please Pass the Salt"
- The proper response to this very simple
sounding request is to pick up both the
salt and the pepper and to place them on the
table within reach of the person next to you,
who will do the same, and so on, until they
reach the person who asked for them. They are
not passed hand-to-hand, nor should anyone other
than the original requester sprinkle her food
when she has the shakers in her possession. The
reason for this, as Judith Martin points out
more than once, is that American etiquette is
not about efficiency. Often, the most refined
action is that which requires the greatest
number of steps to carry it out (as in, for
example, the zig-zag
method of handling a fork and knife).
- Removing Inedible Items from the
Mouth
- The general rule for removing food from your
mouth is that it should go out the same way it
went in. Therefore, olive pits can be
delicately dropped onto an open palm before
putting them onto your plate, and a piece of
bone discovered in a bite of chicken should be
returned to the plate by way of the fork. Fish
is an exception to the rule. It is fine to
remove the tiny bones with your fingers, since
they would be difficult to drop from your mouth
onto the fork. And, of course, if what you
have to spit out will be terrifically ugly -- an
extremely fatty piece of meat that you simply
can't bring yourself to swallow, for example --
it will be necessary to surreptitiously spit it
into your napkin, so that you can keep it out of
sight.
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