"The Fact is that the French don't smile as often or readily as Americans, this does not mean that they are unfriendly, this is a cultural difference. If you smile and it's not for a specific reason you don't look serious.

In France, even if you are not the president, it is important to appear serious. Some instances in which one can smile without appearing to be an idiot are: responding to a joke or humorous situation; responding to a joyous event, i.e. France winning the World Cup; and flirting."

"A French person will not smile at you unless they find you humorous or are flirting with you. Similarly, if you smile for no apparent reason, you may be perceived as insincere, naive, patronizing, or foolish."
http://tinyurl.com/38y6sq
A little googling will reveal many references to this cultural difference.

Becket: It's a "fork" - keeps from having to wash the fingers.

Henry: Yes, but then you have to clean the fork. I don't see the point.

"I am not trying to "not look like a tourist" BUT..when in Rome ...one should make an effort to be Roman!(or French in this case) What else do I need to know???


Don't ask people how much they make. The French have a strange relationship with money.

If invited into a French home, don't bring chrysanthemums, they are the flowers you'll see in cemetaries on October 31-Nov.1.

If you feel like commenting on their very strange habits - as you should - don't do it loudly in English, lots of them understand the language. :-)

Don't try to be on a first name basis with people, this is simply not done. There is no reason you should call the waiter "Pierre" or "Jacques" when he is not a position to call you John or Tracy.

Note : when adressing people, never use their surname. Just say Monsieur ou Madame, never Monsieur Smith.

On the other hand, when referring to people, it's quite OK to say "Madame X, the owner of this shop/hotel).

French tend to be rather formal outside family/friend circles.

The business about not smiling is all very important if you are attempting to pass yourself off as a French person. If you're an American, this is a pointless and impossible enterprise. You know, they know. It's good know about cultural differences but insane to suppose that, so knowing, you have somehow become one of them. Be a tourist; it's OK. That's what you are, and that's what you're expected to be.

The French are every bit as aware of the cultural proclivities of Americans as we are of theirs, much more so, in fact. A smiling American will not be taken for an unserious or ridiculous Frenchman. A whiny bitch of an American will be taken as a pain in the behind, though, and treated more poorly for it.

I don't understand why the idea that you should be pleasant to people in a foreign country is controversial.

Please don't eat with your fork up-side down. The tines are curved upwards for a reason. Would you try to eat soup with an up-side down spoon?

Also, if you didn't grow up eating that way, chances are you will have difficulty balancing your food on the up-side down tines. I've seen tourists - and pretentious people on the Food Network - trying to eat that way, but they don't have the natural balance, so their hands shake and they make choppy movements, trying to keep the food from falling off. Or, they press their knives against the fork for as long as they can (raising the knife/fork combination to their mouths) before finally shoving the food in before it can fall off.

It looks fairly ridiculous.

"The tines are curved upwards for a reason"

Other way round, they are turned downwards for a reason, pronging....

That said, I have never worked my way around the pea dichotomy. They are neither squashable or prongable, and not very balanceable......

I eat my peas with honey
I've done it all my life,
It tastes kind of funny
But it keeps them on the knife.

Hi B,

>Please don't eat with your fork up-side down. The tines are curved upwards for a reason. <

Mind giving us the reason?

As far as I can tell, about half the folks who use forks have the tines up and the other 1/2 have the tines down.

((I))

The spoon theory is a perfect explanation:

You are served with your meat and two veg (fnark), and an American, eating as if with a spoon, will hold the food secure with the spoon/fork, and cut it into pieces with the knife. The cutting process over, the utensil switches hands to scoop up the cut stuff. Try eating left handed with a spoon or a "right way up fork", and you will find it is far easier to drop the knife and switch.

A Yoorpeen has no need to switch hands or drop the knife, as the fork in the left hand, held 'upside down' can comfortably hold, prong, and lift to the mouth, with the exception of peas.

I have a not so cultivated friend, who is so exasperated by the pea dichotomy, and so well indoctrinated that he can't bear to turn the fork over, eats them off his knife.

The spoon theory is a perfect explanation:

You are served with your meat and two veg (fnark), and an American, eating as if with a spoon, will hold the food secure with the spoon/fork, and cut it into pieces with the knife. The cutting process over, the utensil switches hands to scoop up the cut stuff. Try eating left handed with a spoon or a "right way up fork", and you will find it is far easier to drop the knife and switch.

A Yoorpeen has no need to switch hands or drop the knife, as the fork in the left hand, held 'upside down' can comfortably hold, prong, and lift to the mouth, with the exception of peas.

Why would anyone try to balance food on upside down tines when they could simply spear it with them instead?

>Try eating left handed with a spoon or a "right way up fork", and you will find it is far easier to drop the knife and switch.<

Pish tosh. Nonsense. Bosh.

The more important problem is that a goodly fraction of Americans under 30 weren't taught how to properly use a knife and fork, or how to properly write with a pen or pencil.

Which is why they are always on their cell phones while standing at the sink eating takeout chicken.

((I))
Not to mention drinking beer from the bottle or can in public.

Lamer

Most interesting site, but a bit stultified especially re invitations for dinner.
How does one "contribute" to your page?

"Why would anyone try to balance food on upside down tines when they could simply spear it with them instead?"

With squishy food, mash etc, it simply sticks with the fork any side up.

Getting back to peas, far too time consuming to spear, and Granny would throw a blue fit if the fork was inversed. I have found not eating them at all in polite company is the optimum solution.

Rice is a bugger as well, the technique here is to secure a piece of something solid to the end of the tines, such as a piece of meat, and balance the rice against the meat and the tines. Works a treat!

I agree 100% with Ira, while maintaining it is easier to cut and switch, sophistication always implies a degree of extra effort.

It's far easier to eat with your fingers than with a knife and fork, and "Yo Wassup?" is far simpler than "Hello, how are you?"

As Audere will surely tell you "manners maketh man"

My apologies to any Europeans - my comment was related to Americans who are not practiced at eating with tines facing downward, resulting in awkward eating motions.

Europeans, who were raised eating with tines down, can manage much more smoothly, so it does not appear as comical. I would think people raised on chopsticks would likewise be more adept at it than someone who picked it up later in life.

I don't mean that Americans who cannot eat with tines downward do not have manners - on the contrary, in the old days we were taught that proper American manners require a person to cut no more than two pices of meat at a time, then place the knife down and eat those pieces before cutting two more.

So if you were NOT raised to keep your knife in one hand at all times while eating with the other hand, then kudos - you were raised correctly according to etiquette, which sadly is dying out.

My only real point was, if you are not used to eating with tines down, it will appear awkward.

I don't believe this! Do you mean there are actually people that drop the knive in their right hand after cutting meat, then put the fork in their right hand and use it to eat? No joke, I've never seen grown ups eating like this. Maybe I never cared to watch.

In Switzerland, you wouldn't dare drink from your wine glass without clicking each other's glasses, looking the person IN THE EYE and saying "Prost" or "Zum Wohl".

Not obeying this custom is just slightly worse than leaving your shoes on in your guest's home.

And we found in Holland that not filling the shot glass to the rim with Jutterbitter (or whatever) was downright rude - just being cheap.

logos999, in case you are serious, yes, that is how Americans eat. We cut our meat with the knife in our right hand and the fork in the left, put the knife down, switch the fork to the right hand and pick up the meat.

>in case you are serious
Yes, I am. I'll be watching (unobtrusively
;-) )the next time there's an opportunity.

Why? What a great big faff. Why can't you just stab that cut off piece of meat with the fork that's already in your left hand? How is it easier to stab it with the other hand? (or can you only do it with your 'strong hand' so lefties do the opposite, cutting with the left hand, then swapping the fork from right to left to stab the food?) It must take you twice as long to eat a meal, surely?

Well anyway, on the whole, hide/keep your hand on show business, if you hide your hand on your lap in Europe, everyone will assume you are doing something very unsavoury with it!

I believe the discussion is about what constitutes acceptable table manners in various cultures, not what is "right" or "efficient."

As far as swapping hands taking longer - I believe the time at table is mostly consumed by chewing and swallowing (and, in many households, by polite conversation).

I know there is a correct way in France to let the server know you are still eating or done eating on how you place your knife and fork on the plate. Please refresh my memory. thanks PJ

If you're stil eating and she tries to wrestle the plate from you, you can say "back off bit£H" - if you are finished, you can burp loudly and she'll get the message.

Think it's crossed knife and fork to show you've finished - I had a French waiter do this to my plate once in Paris (I'd already left the cutlery side-by-side as we do 'en Angleterre' to show we're done).

He did it quite bad temperedly, but his mate serving at the next table winked at me so I don't think it was the worst of faux-pas! Anyway at least I'd held my fork tines down in my left hand, knife in the right as God intended, so didn't get pulled up on that one 8-)

nona1, I am an American left-hander living in Europe. Eating European-style was the way I always ate, as did the other lefties I know. The only difference was that in the U.S. I sometimes ate with the fork tines up, sometimes down, depending on the food. It took me all of 3 seconds to adapt fully to the European style when we moved overseas. It's really a non-issue, or non-starter, as Tony Snow would say.

I guess I was too busy on my last trip to Paris smiling and changing hands while eating to notice any of this nonsense. We even had a couple of wisecracking, smiling waiters on our trip (obviously nouveau French, not those old, staid French folks you guys are talking about).

Outside of the "fork Nazi" at Le Tastevin on Ile Saint Louis, the trip went off without incident. Well, I guess you shouldn't beat up blind guys at the metro, but in my defense, it was dark out.

((H))

(Quote from Margaret Visser: The Rituals of Dinner, 1991).

&quot;There was a fashion in Europe during the nineteenth century for downplaying the knife* to such an extent that one was not only to use it as little as poosible but also to put it aside when it was not in use. You cut up your food with the knife in the more capable hand and the fork in the other; you then put down the knife, being careful to place it with the blade's edge towards the centre of the plate, not facing neighbours. Then the fork changed hands, and was used to take the cut food to the mouth....Eaters adhering to this fashion thought that people who ate with both hands holding onto the cutlery were gross and coarse. [<i> ed: There's just no pleasing anyone...</i>] What Emily Post calls &quot;zig-zag&quot; eating was <b> still customary among the French bourgeoisie in the 1880s, when Branchereau describes it. </b> [bold added by yours truly.] He says, however, that the English are successfully introducing a new fashion: they hang onto their knives, and take the food to their mouths with the left hand which is still holding the fork....&quot;

&quot;...[the fork with the tines held down] encourages the mouth to take the food off it quickly and close to the lips - it is quite difficult to push the fork, with its humped tines, far into the mouth. [<i> note: the book earlier explains how table knives and forks evolved from being weapons, and how polite dining behaviour required one to downplay the less genteel role of forks and in particular, knives....</i> ]&quot;

...&quot;...the former way of eating [zig zag] was not dislodged in North America as it was in the rest of the world. It has been suggested by James Deetz that the old way was more deeply entrenched in America because forks arrived there relatively late....&quot;

Skeptics who doubt that the French ever ate the 'American' way can check the source for themselves. The 'Branchereau' Visser refers to is Branchereau, L. Politesse et convenances ecclesiastiques. Paris:Vic, 1885.

Point of all this ramble: Good luck trying to fit in with the culture, artlvr, because it's a dynamic thing, subject to change.

As I mentioned in my post earlier - some French ( the ruling classes)still use the zig zag method.

Chartely

Yes as a Brit I was taught to keep the elbows down and the hands in the lap when not eating/drinking.

Also taught not to eat/drink in the street. Not to drink from bottles or containers (still find this a dsigusting habit but we all have our crosses to bare), 'cause I know how clean containers and bottles are! Not to run with scissors or ask people how much they earn (and was horrified at a bus stop in a snow field in US by a guy in queue asking what my take home pay was) and no I didn't ask him how big his *** was as a response.

I tell you this world is a pretty strange place

lawchick

My apologies to you lawchick, I should have acknowledged your post. In underscoring a point you'd already brought up, I just wanted to emphasize how (relatively) ephemeral some customs are.

This issue doesn't overly bother me much - good thing, since I use continental style and my husband uses American. (By the way, the term 'bourgeoise' was in the original quote and I kept it in, as to me it is not a derogatory term, or even necessarily a political one: in this context I took bourgeoisie to mean simply 'average Joe(s).')

It wouldn't occur to either myself or my husband to ask the other to change. Manners to me is a type of body language, and not without importance where many issues are concerned, but in this case there is no clear message to send, it has been too muddied over the years. An issue like this is like the spelling of some words, say, 'colour' - I'm not about to demand that others follow the UK spelling, simply because I do, nor would I change myself if asked by anyone other than a publisher: sometimes, both versions of something can be correct, even within one and the same culture. And as the history of dining shows, both versions of eating style have been correct within European culture at one time or another.

I think Robes got it right the first time. We are, to use Mark Twain's words, innocents abroad. We can't be expected to master nuances, nor should visitors to our own shores be expected to do so.

I was amused once when we went to a Tai Restaurant in the US.
Each place had a set of chopsticks.
I asked for a spoon and fork and asked the waiter why they provided chopsticks when people in Thailand eat with a spoon and fork.
He shrugged and said that Americans expect chopsticks with any Asian food and he thought that it was also true for Australia.
It was amusing to think that the chopstick wielders thought that we were the people being incorrect.

Have to say, that I think asking someone's salary (or other personal information) is nothing to do with regional customs or 'nuances' - it's just plain bad manners!

“I don't believe this! Do you mean there are actually people that drop the knive in their right hand after cutting meat, then put the fork in their right hand and use it to eat? No joke, I've never seen grown ups eating like this. Maybe I never cared to watch.”

I actually know two people in their mid- to late-30s who cut all their food into little pieces and then eat it.

Strangest way of eating I saw was when I met some ex colleagues from Ireland for dinner in Belgium. They had with them a new South African guy.

We went out for Moules Frites. The moules as is usual came in an enormous pot with some wine/juice etc in the bottom. He spent the first half hour diligently removing each moule from its shell and put all the &quot;naked&quot; moules back in the pot, threw in the frites and then ate it all with a spoon.

Bizzaro

I am left handed and was never taught to switch hands when eating. In fact, I never noticed that other people did this until a boyfriend pointed out to me when I was in high school that I ate &quot;like a European.&quot;

And no, Ira, I am not under 30.

I'm right handed and cut with my left. My mother is European and was taught to turn my fork tine down in right hand, cut with left and turnfork back over, all in one smooth move.

Goodness! I'm amazed that this is carrying on so long, surely if you have good table manners at home, then you will continue to have them when you go abroad.

Do people really notice or care how other diners eat? So long as you don't throw food, surely it doesn't matter that much.
Having said that, it does make me laugh when i see tourists trying to dissect lobsters with a knife and fork.