Etiquette on the table: The basics!

When we decide to go out and eat at a fancy restaurant or at a formal event, there’s always this tiny bit of fear we feel about proper protocol: What are all this silverware items for? Where do I place my utensils after I finish? When do I start eating? While all this might cross your mind at that particular situation, let be honest: Those are not every day occurrences, so I will give you a heads-up of the basic rules. Now, shall we begin?

The first thing to remember in terms of manners is that they apply even before eating and there are some things which are tagged as a huge “NO, CAN’T DO!”. One of those is the habit of placing the elbows on the table; it’s something as frowned upon as eating with you mouth open, or pinching several items of food at the same time. The idea is to remain sat down with our back straight and no more than five inches away from the table, placing our forearms slightly on the table. Another common doubt is when to start eating: The best is to do it when your hosts start or most of the table is served. This applies to formal and informal situations, as it doesn’t look good to be over-eager while having dinner or lunch.

The next step it’s a little trickier: How do we use the silverware? Most of the times, you hold the knife and spoon with the right hand, this is due to the use of the force of that hand to cut and the spoon to pick up liquid or creamy food. You rarely use the fork on the right hand, and this happens only if you don’t have another piece of silverware on the left hand. The water and drinks are served to you from the right side, and they are placed there beforehand; in more informal situations the bottle or jug is left for you to serve yourself. The setting is only changed if the placing of the items don’t interfere with the other guests. Now, as far as food placing goes , the services normally happen in three possible styles: french, english and russian. Those are defined by the setting, but the most common one is the french service style where the food is placed in front of you and you serve it on the plate yourself. Next in occurrence is the english one, when the food is served by a waiter from an auxiliary cart, and the next is the russian, where your plates are made right in front of your eyes.

These are the basic manners you need to manage at a table. Now that you know them, you can act the part when eating out at a fancy restaurant. I’ll tell you in another post how to place the different sets of silverware. And remember that RG Cocina Mexicana has a special promotion on deliveries when using the code “RGSummerDelivery”!