Mind your Manners

If you intend to be well mannerd here hen going out for dinner you run into some ‘issues’ as a continental European.

Sitting at any fancy Restaurant in town you will observe the following:

• You get 3 pieces of silverware (flatware in Texan) - being usually 2 forks and 1 knife for 2 courses.
• The well polished people at your table will eat their starter usually with only a fork in their right hand and their other hand in their lap. (assuming it is not soup)
• If a salad is served with the main course it will be brought out prior to the main course and you are supposed to finish it right then. It will be taken away once the actual main course arrives.
• Once the main course arrives (called Entree on the menu) most people will proceed sticking the fork vertically into their food, holding it in a fist, whilst cutting off in quick sucsession bite size pieces from their meal. Once done the knife is put down, the fork moves to the right hand and the left hand moves to the lap once again and eating commences.
• No matter whether any of the other people at your table are done your plate will be taken away at the slightest hint that you may have finished eating.
• Even in the fanciest place you will be offered a ‘to go box’ for whatever remains on your plate to have later.
• If you are after 3 or even 4 courses not out of the Restaurant in under 2 hours you have received bad service and likely can skimp on the tip (normally 15 - 20%)

So here we sit in the Restaurant trying to have a fork and a knife in our hands with every dish, munching away at our way too big 1st course as we thought the entree was the starter. If we leave the cutlery side by side in the 2nd quadrant of our plate to signal we enjoyed the dish the waiter responds annoyed and puts our used knife back on the table. Whilst we are awaiting the kids at the table next to us being reprimanded for having their hands under the table during dinner, we eye the salad but are saving it for the main course, only to see it being taken away untouched once our main dish arrives. We try to elegantly cut up our dish with the way too blunt knife without looking as if we are ‘attacking’ the dish and see people looking at us not in understanding but amazement. If I put down my cutlery to have a sip of wine and smile to my husband as we have all the time of the world on our rare date night I need to fend of the staff 3 times as they try to take away my still 75% filled plate.

Oh well, I guess the 1st rule of manners is to adjust to your company / environment, and with a child in your lap it actually is easy eating with one hand! The more unnerving issue is to find myself in one of my first parenting dilemma’s. I realize now 1. that I care about table manners more then I ever thought and 2. that I actually think there is a right way and a wrong way and 3. that I hence want my kids to learn the ‘right way’ whilst there is no reasonable explanation to claim one manner to be more right then the other.....All these people we see in the Restaurants behaving as the above are perfectly minding their manners.

Fortunately, I can teach them and blame Oma Joke (as I promised her my kids would eat not with just a fork in return for them being allowed to call her ‘U’ and hence learn the more formal vs informal version of You which does exist in Dutch but not English) and I found out I am not the only mom who was ‘irked’ by it all - right Barbara?!?