Reply to VERY British BIL and SIL

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "VERY British BIL and SIL"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

WTF are "British table manners"?!

British person[/quote]

My question exactly. I am a Brit, my husband is American. There are certain table manners that I prefer and that he is lax on. Didn't occur to me that it was actually a cultural difference. There are a couple of cultural differences around food/eating that I can think of -- we don't cut food with the fork; we don't leave hot food on the table while we eat a salad course; in general, we prefer food hotter and are less tolerant of food which has cooled off ... but that seems to be all I can think of. [/quote]

I have one for you....

Brits flip the fork over, tines pointed down, and keep the knife in the other hand, stabbing the meat or larger veg with the tines and cutting off a piece. Then they eat it, the knife still poised to cut the next piece. Stab, cut, eat upside down on turned-over fork, repeat. We were raised to cut several pieces of food, lay down the knife, turn the fork over so the "right" side was up (because why are the tines curved up anyway? To hold food) and then eat. I'm sure there are places in the US where the British fork-and-knife style is also done, but where I was raised, it actually was considered bad manners to eat that way, with the fork upside down and the knife always in the other hand. My grandmother once saw my brother doing it and told him that it was how people ate if they were in a huge hurry to get back to their job and didn't have time to cut a few pieces and lay down the knife. I never saw anyone eat like that at people's houses, school or when I got to college....Call it snobby if you will, but I never lost the feeling that it seemed rushed.

I'm married to an Englishman. We go to England at least annually, sometimes more often. And it still nags at me when everyone's eating with the fork flipped over. I know! It's nothing! But it's a cultural difference to me. Now it's just funny to me. But I cannot bring myself to eat like that even after all these years![/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics