High Class Table Manners

She might eat the garnish.

Elbows on the table perhaps?

Reaching across the table instead of asking for something to be passed to her. (And in the movie Mrs. Winterbourne the main protag played by Rikki Lake was a trailer trash reject who was dining with a very posh older woman played by Shirley MacLaine and her poshy-posh snooty son played by Brendan Fraser. Rikki Lake made the error of congenially reaching across the dining table to shake hands in greeting with someone who just walked into the room.)

Eating someone else's bread and/or salad. If it's a ROUND dinner table instead of a RECTANGUILAR one--or (this happens also) if it's a SQUARE table set for a party of 4 (one person on each side)-- a VERY common error I have seen is someone to eat somene else's dinner roll or side salad. The rule of thumb is: drinks to your right, everything else (rolls, salad, etc) to your left. But at a round table, place settings tend to get smushed together and so the lines between where your own place setting ends and where someone else's begins can get blurred very easilly. So if you do not know the drinks-right/bread-n-salad-left rule, you might be inclined to take the roll/salad sitting at your right (especially if you are right-handed). I saw a business exec do this once when we were all in fine dining restaurant for a business meeting. The person to his right (whose roll he ate) said nothing and just proceeded with the meal, ignroing the fact that he had no bread now.

Drawing attention to manners. A truly uncouth person will merely THINK they have manners and refinement and will verbally spout various sections of "the rules" out loud to everyone.

Talking with animated hands and even brandishing utensils and waving them around in the air while gesturing with one's hands. (Self-explanataory.)

Offering one's leftovers/discard to others./Asking others if they will give her their leftovers/discards. While this is common practice in a lot of families, especially families that are trying to save money, it's a huge no-no in fine dining. Some classic no-no-examples: "I don't like shrimp. Anybody want my shrimp salad? I'm not gonna eat it." or "Aren't you gonna eat your rice? I love rice. I'll take it if you don't want it." or "Oh my gosh! This is incredible! Anyone want a taste?"

Spooning soup in the wrong direction. You are suppose to push your soup spoon away from you, not drag it toward you.

Incorrect handling of a too-hot food/drink that you just ate/drank. If you just placed into your mouth a piece of scalding hot food, or drank a hot beverage that proved far too hot, the correct response is to inconspicuously take your cold glass of ice water and sip a tempertaure-balancing measure to instantly douse the heat. And do NOT draw attention to yourself. The no-no list includes hollering out loud, spitting out the hot food/beverage, opening your mouth and loudly sucking in a huge helpig of air, fanning with your hand at your open mouth, etc.

Blowing on a forkful/spoonful of food to cool it down. (Self-explanatory.)

Starting to eat one's own food before everyone else has been served. (Self-explainatory.)

Picking up a dropped utensil. If you drop a utensil on the floor, leave it there! When the waiter comes by, discreetly ask him for another one. You're not supposed to get down underneath the table, poking around amongst the legs of your dining companions.

Inapropriate interaction with the serving staff. Being bossy to the servers looks like a power trip. Being too friendly/joking looks like flirtation.

Drawing attention to any faux pas (your own or someone else's). All faux pas are to be ignored and gotten past as quickly as possible. They shouldn't be discussed or revisted,.

::EDIT:: OOPS! I typed "avocado" when I should have types "artichoke!" Thank you for pointing out my error, arrowqueen!


And then, the classic pit falls of escargot and avocado artichoke leaves. Eating escargot is an adventure (as shown in the film Pretty Woman). And avocado leaves are the ONLY sit-down food that I know of besides bread that you are allowed to eat with your fingers (there might be others, but it's all I know about). And the whole avocado artichoke leaf eating thing is a near art form.





Now, I know you said right and wrong fork didn't interest you, but every now and then a very odd piece of silverware presents itself. An uneducated person might ask about these odd utensils and betray their own ignorance.

- Escargot needs a specialized set of tongs.
- Grapefruit needs a special spoon (called a "grapefruit spoon") that has little teeth on the tip.
- A high class restaurant will hand you a chilled fork to go with your salad.
- There is a type of fork called a "fish fork," and the one tine found on the farthest left has an odd little notch on the tip so that you can use that tine to peel back the fish skin more easilly. (I often see this same fork used now adays as a desert fork also by fine dining restaurants.) Some of the truly old school restaurants will place the fish fork on the right side of the place setting. Seeing a fork on the right can be confusing to some people.



And then, glassware is another huge minefield!

The water glass.
The red wine glass.
The white wine glass.
The champagn glass.
The port/cordial glass.

And drinking milk at the dinner table is one of those things that "simply isn't done." Drinking milk is what children do. Adults drink either wine/alcohol, club soda, or water. For an adult to ask for milk is utterly laughable (the waiter will walk back into the kitchen to get your milk, and as he's pouring it he will viciously mock about you out loud to the entire kitchen--I have seen waiters do that in the restaurants I have worked at).

You might want to check out an Emily Post book. I remember leafing through one at the library and seeing information about table manners. It was informative. Made me feel like the country bumpkin that I am. Eeeekk!

Plot Device said:

And drinking milk at the dinner table is one of those things that "simply isn't done." Drinking milk is what children do. Adults drink either wine/alcohol, club soda, or water. For an adult to ask for milk is utterly laughable (the waiter will walk back into the kitchen to get your milk, and as he's pouring it he will viciously mock about you out loud to the entire kitchen--I have seen waiters do that in the restaurants I have worked at).

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Oh, crud. I thought I was doing good until this point. I'm totally a milk drinker. ::Hides head in hands::

Plot Device said:

Blowing on a forkful/spoonful of food to cool it down. (Self-explanatory.)

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Didn't think that was "uncouth".

S'pose I'll have to scald my tongue if I want to be a distinguished gentleman.

Here in the UK we have a fish knife and you never turn your fork around to pick up peas!

Aren't you also not supposed to use your knife to scoop something onto a fork?

Also, when cutting up food, I think it's supposed to be done per bite, instead of chopping up an entire steak and then eating it.

And never, ever slurp the soup

JoNightshade said:

Oh, crud. I thought I was doing good until this point. I'm totally a milk drinker. ::Hides head in hands::

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I got my own education on table manners from

1) working restaurants and hotels and for caterere
2) working in corporate America
3) reading a few books (at the behest of my manager in one large corporation I worked for)

I used to drink milk all the time in fine dining restaurants until I found out about this one. And when I researched as to whether or not it it's "okay" to settle for drining juice, I found out the hard way that while it's acceptable to ask for juice, the quality of the juice usually sucks royally (because it often comes from the "gun" or "beverage nozzle" found behind the bar, and those hoses sometimes have mold growing in them) or else (in the event that they crack open a fresh 12 ounce can of juice for you on the spot) the price turns out to be astronomical. So now I always ask for a mix of cranberry juice and club soda. It looks more "sophisticated" and adult-like, is easy as all get-out for the waiter to get it from the bar-tender, and cranberry juice is so heavilly acidic that it's amost impossibe for mold to grow inside the cranberry hose at the bar).

Another favorite beverage of mine when I'm doing the fine dining thing is to order an iced tea. I didn't start drinking iced tea until I lived in the American South--they take their iced tea VERY seriously down there-- and in recent years, iced tea has become a standard in a lot of Northern restaurants also. I likewise found out the hard way that when you go down South and you tell the waiter "I'd like a tea, please," he will asssume you mean an iced tea, not a hot tea. I was utterly appalled when my waiter returned with an iced tea. He figured out I was a Yankee and he politely explained to me: "Down South, 'tea' is always going to be iced tea, but if you want a hot tea you have to actually SAY 'hot tea.'" So to this day I always say "hot tea" no mater what part of the world I am in. And I also learned that sometimes instead of the phrase "iced tea" Southerners will call it a "sweet tea," which is still always an iced tea.

Another Southern favorite is lemonade, also making its way north as a standard drink of fine dining.

And, there is a non-alcoholic drink called an Arnold Palmer which is half iced tea and half lemonade. Again, if you don't want alcohol, feel like drining more than just water, and wanna look sorta refined, ordering an Arnold Palmer is a pretty cool way to go.

Oh and .............. on the subject of iced water .......... most fine restaurants will drop a lemon wedge into your glass of iced water. This is because most water tastes kinda putrid/yucky/metalic/gross when it come out of a standard tap faucet. But the lemon takes the bitter edge off of tap water. I was recently at a restaurant with some friends, and as the waitress brought all our ice waters, one person at the table commented: "I think this is a mistake, we're suposed to be getting iced water and all these glasses have lemons in them. I think these are someone else's drinks." I had to whisper to that person that lemon wedges are standard.


And before anyone here thinks I'm some high-falutin' snob, I make plenty of faux pas myself from time to time. I was out with my family at Olive Garden last month and the waiter brought out a giant bowl of tossed salad for us. I picked up what I tought was a salad plate at my mother's place setting so I could dish out some salad for her. As I was dishing, I noticed the small plate was rather warm, but I figuerd it was par for the course that they would be silly enough to bring us warm salad plated--perhaps the plates had only just come out of the dishwasher maybe. So I ignored how warm the plate was and just kept dishing. But then my sister-in-law spoke up and said "No, no, dear-- that's a warm bread plate there. You want to use the chilled salad bowls for that." and then I looked and realized the waiter had also brought out a stack of small bowls along with the giant salad bowl, and they were indeed quite chilled. I apologized to my mother and gave her my clean bread plate and took from her the bread plate I had just soiled. (And I also dished out some salad for her into her chilled salad bowl.)

And, there is a non-alcoholic drink called an Arnold Palmer which is half iced tea and half lemonade. Again, if you don't want alcohol, feel like drining more than just water, and wanna look sorta refined, ordering an Arnold Palmer is a pretty cool way to go.

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My mom used to make iced tea this way when I was a kid - who knew she was ahead of her time, and a Northerner to boot!

Jersey Chick said:

Aren't you also not supposed to use your knife to scoop something onto a fork?

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Ye. But fully admit that I cheat a littke bit with this one by keeping the knife completely stationary and plowing the fork toward the knife and thus causing the food to scuttle up onto the fork.

Jersey Chick said:

Also, when cutting up food, I think it's supposed to be done per bite, instead of chopping up an entire steak and then eating it.

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Little kids start off having their parents cut up all their food for them (especially steak), and then as they get older some kids/teens prefer to keep on cutting it up by themsleves into little pieces. But when they become adults they really need to learn to stop doing it that way and need to cut one pice, eat one piece, cut one piece, eat one piece, etc. I personally don't care if an adult does this, but it looks really immature, and their food gets cold faster that way.

I knew a woman who held her fork in her fist like a small child. I was shocked that she never learned the adult way to hold a fork. That manner of grasping caused her to need to lean deeply over her plate to be able to get the fork angeld into her mouth, and she also neeed to stick her elbow way out to one side. It was pretty embarassing to dine with her.

VickyH said:

Here in the UK we have a fish knife and you never turn your fork around to pick up peas!

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I had to learn in college the European way of eating where the fork NEVER leaves the left hand and always faces down. It was kinda hard for me, but it was expected so I made myself do it.

I still can't do peas that way though. I definitely cheat when it comes to peas.

Akuma said:

Didn't think that was "uncouth".

S'pose I'll have to scald my tongue if I want to be a distinguished gentleman.

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No--just wait for the food to cool down, or else just chase the hot food with your iced water.

Jersey Chick said:

My mom used to make iced tea this way when I was a kid - who knew she was ahead of her time, and a Northerner to boot!

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FloVoyager said:

What might she do that would raise those upper-crust eyebrows, or even stop conversation for a second or two?

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Probably if she droped her fork and got down on her knees to look for it. This would cause a disruption at the table. It would make people uncomfortable that she was down by their legs.

Also, if she started eating before everyone else has been served, that would raise a few eyebrows.

And here's one that's very old-fashioned so it might not apply to today's culture but you might be able to work it in if there is a particularly blue-blooded family: in earlier generations, a man is never to remain seated if there is a woman standing in his presense. So, when a group of men and women are all taking their seats for the first time at a fine dining table, all of the ladies MUST take their seats first BEFORE any of the men can take their own. And (this is the REAL difficult part) if a group of people are already dining, and then a woman comes up to the table to say hello, EVERY MAN at the table MUST stand at once because she is now there and she is not seated. This situation behooves the visiting woman to keep her visit as brief as possible lest the men's food get cold as they politely stand (and stand and stand and stand) waiting for her to leave. One way to alleviate the situation is for one of the people seated at the table to say "Won't you please join us?" and the as soon as she is seated, the men are finally free to sit down again themsleves. But if the visiting woman says "Oh no, that's so kind of you, but really, I couldn't impose!" the sad truth is that she IS imposing by virtue of standing there. So she needs to either sit down with them or else skee-daddle on out of there because she is burdening the entire table with her prolonged standing.



Here's another one: eggs! Soft-boiled eggs! The correct way to eat a soft-boiled egg involves the need to sharply strike the shell only once or twice --not too loudly and don't make a huge production out of it-- and then deftly peel away the shell with your fingers, then slice up the egg (it is usaully a bit runny BTW) onto your toast. You need to discreetly discard the peeled shell onto your plate. Often the egg will come on an egg pedastal atop a smaller plate and so you can toss the peeled shell onto that smaller plate that the pedastal is on. Now, there is a very firm rule that allows for few exceptions: NEVER touch your food with your fingers. Soft boiled eggs need to be SLIGHTLY handled with the fingers during this peeling process, but you need to be as subtle and discreet about it as possible. And some really anal people only allow their fingers to touch the shell, but never the actual egg white. Instead, only their spoon touches the white and their spoon then lowers the peeled egg down off the pedastal and onto their toast. As for the "eeh gads!" possibility here: a blue collar person might have been schooled in the very fast and very efficient way of rapdily peeling the shells off of several dozen eggs at once. This quick and dirty method I am about to describe is fine if you are a kitchen worker in the back of a restaurant, and the head chef has just ordered you to take these two dozen boiled eggs here and devil them--and you've got only twenty minutes to do it. But it's not an acceptable way to conduct oneself at the table. The back-of-the-house method for peeling a boiled egg is to smash the egg downward onto the table and then roll the egg back and forth on the table top like a rolling pin to cause the shel to crack finely on all sides. This is loud, very indelicate, it almost looks like you are PLAYING with your food (like a child rolling play-do back and forth), you need to use a sizeable amont of table space to do this rolling thing so perhaps you have crudely shoved a bunch of plates and glasses aside to make room, it has serious potential to soil the tabelcloth, and it violates the firm rule of never touching your food with your fingers. And what's REALLY sad about this one is that such a young woman might actually be pretty darn good at this kitchen-only method and assume she's doing the right thing, maybe her mother taught her to do it that way, and perhaps she has always been complimented that she does it rather well. So all the more reason for her to be confused at the unanimous mortification of those at the table.



You want a real show-stopper? Have her eat a piece of food and a bone winds up in her mouth. Now, the correct way to get a stray bone out of one's mouth is to NOT call attention to the fact that you have a bone in your mouth, and NOT use your napkin. Instead use your fork, stick your fork into your mouth, manouever the bone onto the fork, and then lower the bone to your plate on the fork and set the bone off to the side wit the garnish. No one willl be the wiser. (Some advocate just fishing it out with your fingers, but then you've got your fingers in your mouth, which to me is a faux pas. And if a lady is wearing opera gloves, I would highly advise against that one.) But your character isn't going to do it the correct way. She's going to make a spectacle of herself. Maybe she'll break a tooth on the bone. Maybe she'll choke on it. Maybe she'll try to do the napkin thing, but the napkin just draws attention to what you're doing--in fact maybe you should have her hide behind the napkin while she does a lousy job of extracting the bone. Maybe she takes way too long to meneouver the bone and by this time, everyone is looking at her with this napkin hanging in front of her face.

And choking! Oh my God! I personally had a choking experience in a restaurant! I sometimes "swallow wrong," and the swallow goes down my wind pipe. And then the gag reflex naturally kicks in causing me to cough uncontrollably as my trachea tries to expel the unwanted spit. I once did this during the dinner rush in a very busy and very fine restaurant with a boyfriend and --you know that background "din" in a restaurant? You know that unmistakable room-wide mumbling of fifty very quiet conversations in a large restaurant dining room? Well ....... I started choking on one of those incorrect swallows of mine, and the hacking and choking just woudn't stop. And within less than five secnds of my over-the-top coughing and choking, that background din instantly evaporated. Every head in the restaurant turned to look at me. The silence was unbearable. I was worried someone was perhaps going to come up and perform the Heimlich maneouver on me.

Plot Device said:

I got my own education on table manners from




And before anyone here thinks I'm some high-falutin' snob, I make plenty of faux pas myself from time to time. I was out with my family at Olive Garden last month and the waiter brought out a giant bowl of tossed salad for us. I picked up what I tought was a salad plate at my mother's place setting so I could dish out some salad for her. As I was dishing, I noticed the small plate was rather warm, but I figuerd it was par for the course that they would be silly enough to bring us warm salad plated--perhaps the plates had only just come out of the dishwasher maybe. So I ignored how warm the plate was and just kept dishing. But then my sister-in-law spoke up and said "No, no, dear-- that's a warm bread plate there. You want to use the chilled salad bowls for that." and then I looked and realized the waiter had also brought out a stack of small bowls along with the giant salad bowl, and they were indeed quite chilled. I apologized to my mother and gave her my clean bread plate and took from her the bread plate I had just soiled. (And I also dished out some salad for her into her chilled salad bowl.)

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Olive Garden is not on the list of what I would consider either "high class" or "world class". It's just a chain restaurant with pseudo Italian food and the object is to make money from customers who truly believe Olive Garden is classy. It's not - it's just a chain, it's like the Mickey D's of Italian food.

Lord, have mercy!

johnnysannie said:

Olive Garden is not on the list of what I would consider either "high class" or "world class". It's just a chain restaurant with pseudo Italian food and the object is to make money from customers who truly believe Olive Garden is classy. It's not - it's just a chain, it's like the Mickey D's of Italian food.

Lord, have mercy!

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Lord have mercy! I'm aware that Olive Garden is just a chian. Which is why I dismissed as nothing but stupididy by the server the idea that they brought hot plates for our cold salad (as I said--I assumed that maybe they had only just taken the plates out of the dishwasher). If it was a higher-caliber place I would have said something to the server. But I didn't have any expectations on a mere chain. So went ahead and dished out the cold salad onto what turned out to be a warm bread plate.

One rule I've always found strange is the soup bowl thing. I looked it up to be sure my parents weren't just weird. From Amy Vanderbuilt's Complete Book of Etiquette:
Tipping of Dishes. The tipping of soup or dessert dishes is acceptable if the plate is tipped away from the spoon, not toward the eater.

I was dining at the London Hilton one evening and the man sitting next to me, my boss, took an orange and put it on his desert plate. He proceeded to peel it by first cutting off the peel from both ends with a knife and then slicing the peel away from the orange in one inch sections with the knife, until the orange was peeled. I had never seen an orange peeled like that before. I used to peel it with my fingers but now I do it that way.

Barbara

Other potential problem areas - finger bowls and palate cleansing sherbet.

Or, harking back to my college days - imagine a dining hall of freshman facing a meal of fried chicken and having to eat it with only their fork and knife - it was quite a sight. Puma

I spent a lot of time on very high end cruise ships as a child, so I had a very early introduction in proper table manners. Hope these ideas help...

I might have missed these in an earlier post, so disregard if someone else mentioned...

When you are done with your meal, turning your fork over and putting it at about 3 o'clock on the plate next to your knife to show you are done. Does that make sense?

I've also heard been told it is rude to clean your plate. You should always leave a bit of food on your plate to signal to the hostess that she made the appropriate amount. For example, cleaning the yummy gravy up off your plate with your dinner roll isn't exactly elegant...

Also, never start eating your dinner until everyone has been served, that would raise a few eyebrows and cause a few looks between guests.

Grabbing a fork, instead of holding a fork. Eating pieces that are too big, that might cause your mouth to puff out...

Never comment or even ellude to the fact that you might not like something, just eat it and complain about it at a much later time. I ate L'ongue de Beouf one time when I was about 13 years old. yeah look it up... you might wanna hurl too, I'm just glad it was course number 10, otherwise I might have looked wierd if I hadn't eaten more...

I also know it is quite common to have a new wine glass for each course, to compliment the flavors of what is being served, declining that would not be appreciated in some groups.

Goodluck!

Here are a few I thought of:

• Don’t wipe your mouth when you’re done, pat it with your napkin.
• If you get up to use the washroom, put your napkin on the chair not the table.
• Use the glass of water that is to your right.
• Don’t slouch, you’re back should be straight, a little forward or against the back of the chair.
• Don’t guzzle wine, swish it around the glass, take a whiff and sip (This one gets me every time ) As soon as you feel its effects, drink water.

Scrawler said:

One rule I've always found strange is the soup bowl thing. I looked it up to be sure my parents weren't just weird. From Amy Vanderbuilt's Complete Book of Etiquette:
Tipping of Dishes. The tipping of soup or dessert dishes is acceptable if the plate is tipped away from the spoon, not toward the eater.

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I thought you were to tip the dish toward you, and scoop the spoon away from you. Hmm... Food for thought.

Puma said:

Other potential problem areas - finger bowls and palate cleansing sherbet.

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Yes. Don't drink from the finger bowl.

Don't pick up a pork chop with your hands to eat it. It's not fried chicken (which is acceptable to eat by hand at a picnic, but nowhere else).

However, you may eat sushi by hand instead of using chopsticks. That's a new one for me.

Biscuits or bread: break off a bite size piece and butter it, then eat. Don't slice it in half to butter it. And don't wipe it around your plate to sop up the gravy. You may use a fork impaled with a single bite of the bread to do this, but it can be tricky.

Fruit is always peeled and eaten with a knife and fork, except grapes.