The Right Way to Eat Dinner with Other People

You've been eating dinner all your life, but chances are, you've been doing it wrong. But don't worry, Joanna Goddard and Gemma Correll are here to rescue you with this nifty guide to how to eat dinner when you're a guest at a dinner party:

If you're a guest at a dinner party (pictured above), wait to start eating until the host or hostess takes his or her first bite (unless they absolutely insist that you start).

Your wine and water glasses are to the RIGHT of your plate. Your bread plate is to the LEFT of your plate. If you remember that, you'll never drink someone's water or eat their bread again! (A genius tip from readers: To remember the order of the placesetting, think "BMW" -- for bread, then meal, then water.)

Surprisingly, salt and pepper should be passed together, even if someone asks only for one. They're considered "married!"

Read the rest over at A Cup of Jo: Link


It doesn't annoy me, but it explains why my husband always passes the salt and pepper together. I'd never seen anyone do that until I met him, and he ain't from around here.
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My favorite is that you should always eat with the fork tines pointing down. As I was always told "It is a spear, not a shovel."

If you need to 'scoop' something, you're apparently supposed to use the spoon, which I guess is shovel-like.
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I've often food eating etiquette quite interesting. Not just the general things but the more personal subtitles. For example, some people always eat the things on their plate separately, a bite of broccoli, then some potato, then some meat; whilst others always mix everything up on the fork, broccoli, potato and meat all at the same time.

Some people constantly scrape food remnants off their fork, other people don't bother. Some people rearrange the food on their plate to more central positions whilst they eat, others systematically eat from one side of the plate to the other.
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