Find your own plate
At a crowded table, your bread plate is on your left and your glasses are on your right. Touch the tip of each forefinger to its thumb with the other fingers straight: the left hand makes a lowercase b for bread and the right makes a d for drinks. Silverware is used from the outside in, one course at a time. If you still are not sure, wait a moment and do what the host does.
The meal, start to finish
- Put the napkin on your lap when you sit.
- Wait to begin until everyone at the table is served, or until the host lifts a fork or tells you to go ahead.
- Pass dishes to the right, and hand over the salt and pepper together even when only one was requested.
- Tear off a bite-sized piece of bread and butter only that piece, rather than buttering the whole roll.
- Cut one or two bites at a time, and bring the food up to your mouth rather than your head down to the plate.
- Rest your knife and fork on the plate, never back on the tablecloth, whenever you pause.
- Lay the knife and fork side by side across the plate, handles toward four o'clock, when you have finished, which tells the server to clear.
- Leave your napkin on your chair if you step away, and loosely folded to the left of the plate when the meal ends.
Pace, phone and small disasters
Eat at roughly the speed of the table, so that nobody is left chewing alone. The phone stays off the table and out of your hand, and if a call cannot wait, excuse yourself and take it outside the room. Remove a bit of gristle or a pit the way it went in, quietly with the fork or your fingers, and set it on the edge of the plate. If you spill, blot it, apologize once and let it go. Tell a neighbor privately about spinach in their teeth, because they would want to know.
When you are the guest
At a restaurant, take your cue on price from the host: ask what they recommend, and order in that range. In someone's home, try a little of everything you are able to eat, skip the rest without commentary, and compliment one dish by name.
Note American diners usually switch the fork to the right hand after cutting, and Europeans keep it in the left. Both styles are correct anywhere.
