“Wrong” being a way you don’t think it should be eaten.
Shortly after my sister married her incredibly pretencious, ex-farmboy husband. They took me out to eat. I picked up a roll and started preparing it for consumption. It was one of those muffin shaped rolls. My plan was to slice it down the middle with my knife then apply butter to each piece, then eat.
As soon as the knife touched the roll, he acted like I had wiped my butt with the tablecloth. “What is your sister doing to that roll?” “Make her stop.” Then my sister instructed me on the “proper” way to eat the roll, which was to tear a small piece off, then apply the butter to that piece only, then eat. And repeat until all gone.
When I first started dating my husband, it irritated me that he would eat pizza with a fork. But only in public. He prefered not to eat it that way, but thought he should.
But my irritation was mostly about the fact that he thought he should eat it differently in public, and by “public” I mean Pizza Hut.
I once heard that proper etiquette is making one’s guests feel comfortable, not nitpicking their eating habits. FWIW, your way is how I eat a roll or mufiin. I like butter, but I also like my arteries to be free and clear.
My late FIL and my BIL both put ketchup on steak. My BIL will also lick his steak knife between bites. As in, it’s a popsicle.
:eek: And you didn’t smack either one of them? I know that’s the “proper” way to eat a roll with dinner, but unless I’m dining with a Head of State, I don’t give a rat’s ass what my dinner companion thinks of how I eat my bread. I also cut up my whole steak before I eat one bite (usually).
I’m only bothered by over-use of crappy condiments, such as ketchup and ranch dressing. Don’t get me wrong - I eat ketchup and ranch dressing, but not on a filet mignon or a baby greens, gorgonzola, and walnut salad.
On our cruise, my husband’s cousin ordered ketchup for his tempura tilapia with garlic-ginger dipping sauce. He actually said, “I always eat fried fish with ketchup.” :dubious: We convinced him that this wasn’t the same kind of stuff you’d get at a church fish fry, and talked him into at least trying it before he drowned it, and he liked it enough to pass on the ketchup.
Technically formal etiquette calls for eating BREAD at the table as your brother-in-law demanded, buttering each bite one at a time. I’m not sure if the rule applies to dinner rolls or not.
However, the relatively trivial etiquette breach of improperly buttering a roll pales in comparison to the jaw-dropping rudeness of CORRECTING A GUEST’S TABLE MANNERS. My goodness, it’s the sort of thing duels were fought over in more civilized times!
It might bother me, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll say anything.
I’ve seen people at a sushi bar, piling pickled ginger on top of a piece of sushi, instead of using it as a palate cleanser between bites. Dude! You’re hiding the flavour of the sushi!
Does this count? I once got angry with my ex-husband (the first Mr. Wanna) for getting up from the table & getting a container of grated Parmesan cheese from the fridge & dumping it on top of his dinner because he thought I’d made an Italian entree (due to the fact that it contained noodles). It was Hungarian Goulash, complete with sour cream & paprika, and it chapped my hide for some reason that he did that without even tasting it first.
Not table manners so much, but it irritates the hell out of me when someone douses food with salt, pepper, ketchup, etc. without even tasting it first. My mother’s boyfriend was so bad about this I was tempted to empty the entire salt box in a dish just to see the look on his face.
I eat almost everything with a fork-pizza, pickles, french fries etc. My ex had a HUGE problem with that and would hide my fork from me when we were eating out in public if I wasn’t paying attention. Personally, I am of the opinion that as long as I am being polite and not spitting on your plate or something, you shouldn’t have a problem with how I eat my food.
As far as etiquette goes, the expert Miss Manners would agree that one NEVER, but NEVER corrects someone in public, especially in way that would embarrass him. That is *far * ruder than any possible issue of which fork to use or how to butter a roll.
My one bizarre eating habit involves pizza (which I sometimes eat with knife and fork and sometimes not.) I rip the crust off and eat it, then I tear the cheese off, I eat the dough, then consume the cheese last. I have no idea why I eat pizza like I’m performing an autopsy but I feel cheated if I don’t eat it that way. People look at me like I’m a lunatic.
Go ahead and tell my that I’m eating it “wrong.” I’ll slap you in the face with a breadstick.
Huh. So that’s what that’s for. Me, I eschew it altogether (don’t like it), so I never knew that. But I’ve never seen it used between bites. I’ve seen it either piled on top, like you said, or all gobbled down at the end.
The only eating method that drives me absolutely batshit is seeing someone eat ice cream with a wooden paddle. I will tell them to get a real spoon and if they don’t I will get one for them.
I do that because once you eat the edges of the sandwhich, you get the middle, which has everything, rather than the edges, which don’t always have any sauce left or whatever.
I butter both parts of my roll before I eat if they’re hot-because I LOVE the dripping, melted butter over the soft, warm bread.
As for the brother in law, I’m reminded of the part in To Kill a Mockingbird when Scout invites her classmate Walter Cunningham over, and she yells at him for drowning his dinner in molasses. Calpurnia, their cook, makes her eat in the kitchen for her lack of manners. “He’s your guest and if he wants to eat up the table cloth-you let him!”
To eat a roll the way he wanted would have entailed you to control the tub of butter in front of you as you ate. No one else would have been to get a dab–unless you each had your own tub of butter. I call a penalty on controlling the tub of butter–and I know my dairy. You do like you did, cut it down the middle, slather on some butter, slap them back together so it melts, and pass the tub on to the next person.
I was with my friend’s family whi is from Bulgaria, and they open their bananas upside down. They peel them from the bottom, not the top handle part. I thought that was so weird. I simply noted how unusual it was, and pointed out how we did it. They tried eating them our way, but liked theirs better. Except for the peeling part, it is handier to eat them that way. You have a cute little handle to hold it in. But you just have to remember to get rid of the little black part that it starts with. I didn’t demand they open them the American way.
My pet peeve is when people dip sushi “rice-first” into their soysauce instead of the proper “fish-first” way, however, I can get over it.
What makes me nuts, to the point where I want to start confiscating tuna, is when someone SITS there sushi, “rice- first” in the soysauce, and then let the rice absorb the soysauce until the rice is black.
Talk about distroying the flavor of the sushi - it makes me want to rip the uni right out of their hands - if they’re going to wreck it, they don’t deserve to eat it.
I lived overseas (mostly in third world countries) for a number of years and seldom in the nicer areas. The one thing I have learned is don’t take offense at the way others eat or you may not get any food of your own.
That’s the only way I eat pizza, but it works best for wider, New York-style slices. I’m always surprised to see people cut pizza with a knife and fork, or waggle a big floppy slice around, rather than folding it to avoid drippage and make it a little less awkward.
