A former co-worker of mine used to eat all of her candy bars one item at a time. A single Twix bar took forever. She’d first carefully nibble all the chocolate off, then gently eat the caramel, and finally bite into the cookie. Ludicrous. And then it was time to start the other bar.
Perhaps people in this situation should order smaller portions, rather than waste good food.
You have clearly never had pizza in New York. You have to fold the slice in order to eat it or the cheese and sauce slip off because it just kind of hangs from the crust at the back. Fold it, wear it, or use 2 hands. Your choice 
Same thing applies to Philly pizza.
I do this. Not because I have any particular, uh, phobia about biting into a muffin or anything, but because eating it that way causes a cascade of crumbs down my front. Tearing off bite-size pieces is just neater.
I have a recipe for you.
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Make olive oil gelato
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Make your “strawberries macerated in balsamico” as you describe, plus a bit of sugar, but only for a couple of hours (you want chunky, not wet pulp)
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Drain thoroughly (reserve strawberry-vinegar syrup for another use), and use the thick paste to make deep-fried ravioli (the basic concept)
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As the ravioli are cooling/draining, dust lightly with confectioner’s sugar
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For each serving, use two scoops of the gelato and two still-warm ravioli
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Thank me profusely
Most of the people I know do not take the time to prep and cut up their entire stack before eating them. They just sort of cut as they go.
Frankly, I think my method makes more sense. Once I’m done cutting them up, I no longer need a knife. And cutting into your pancakes with the side of the fork is just plain silly. It’s all about efficiency, baby!
I don’t think I’ve ever been to a restaurant where you could specify portion sizes. But at home I only cook what I will eat.
Funny, I don’t remember this. 
Checker’s seasoned fries inside the burger, though, is delecious.
Regardless of what I’m eating, I always save the best part for last. A sandwich, including burgers, gets eaten around the edge first, then the middle. Pizza, or pie, crust first. Cake, the cake first, then the frosting (which isn’t always easy). Oreos, first all the wafers, then a huge blob of the white stuff. Mixed nuts follow a specific sequence, ending with the cashews.
The only problem was in my childhood, when I’d be saving the best for last, and my brother would snatch it away.
Of course I try not to do this in public.
Nonsense. That’s why Chicago is the ***second ***city.
I salt my Coke. It gets strange looks, but hey, it seems to mitigate the sweetness.
Try using your non-dominant hand for the knife. It’ll take some practice, but I think you’ll find it easier than the traditional European method. I’m a lefty, and I spent some frustrated time trying to do (what for me would be) the European method (fork in right hand, knife in left), until I realized that the knife usage really doesn’t require as much coordination as the fork usage. So I tried fork in left hand (my dominant) and knife in right. A little practice to get the back-and-forthing down with my non-dominant hand was all it took. Now I can hold the fork tines-down while cutting, then smoothly flip it over, tines-up, to do the eating, if I want, since the flipping is easy with my dominant hand.
A guy I used to hang out with would only eat part of his french fries. He’d never eat the end where he was holding the fry. Same thing with chicken fingers. He just refused to eat the part of the food that his hand touched.
I always eat the cake first, then eat the frosting with a spoon. Then eat the other people’s leftover frosting with a spoon. Then eat the frosting left on the cake plate with a spoon.
I have a thing for eating frosting. With a spoon.
I just ate a corn dog in an odd way. Okay, it’s a hot dog, on a stick, covered with cornbread, essentially. So the normal way is to hold the stick. My normal way is to pour some mustard onto a plate, dip the corn dog, and eat it.
But this one split in the microwave. So I had to eat it with a fork. And then I needed a knife, in order to get it cleanly off the stick. So yeah, that was a bit unusual.
Fortunately I performed most of this operation in my office so nobody questioned why I needed a knife and fork to eat a corn dog.
As a young person, I was once taken to a nice restaurant in Italy. Dessert was a pear. A whole pear. Which was fine…
But the pear was served on a plate, with a knife (good) and a fork (WTF?). Fortunately, although I was 15 at the time, I had already learned the trick of “when served something strange, or in a strange way, watch what other people do.” The other people used their knife to cut a piece of the pear, then used the fork to, well, fork it up to their mouths. So that’s what I did.
That’s the only time I’ve ever eaten a pear with a knife and fork. But I haven’t been to Italy in a long time.
In the South, it’s pretty common to put salted peanuts in Coke and other sodas. In India, people make masala Cokes. They take a glass with ice cubes and add some salt and pepper, and then pour in the coke (or so I’ve heard from people from India.)
I haven’t tried this with your typical, popular sodas (Coke, Pepsi, 7-Up, etc.), but I have done this with some fru-fru sodas (Clearly Canadian, for example): Add cream. Not fake-o Oreo cream or canned whipped cream, but cream from the little cartons in the dairy case. It turns a regular soda into a cream soda. Very fattening, but very addictive.
One of my favorite breakfasts is Irish oatmeal with soy sauce and furikake.
I’ll have to try that some time.
More yummy cross-cultural food eatin’ weirdness:
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Haldiram’s hot mix with olive oil, picked up on warm bread or pita. Starchy, salty, spicy goodness.
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Olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and chaat masala–mix for a great salad dressing.
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Chicken soup with miso mixed in. That stuff is good! In winter, you can make a pretty satisfying soup by heating up a can of good chicken broth (I recommend College Inn) and adding some cracked wheat and tofu cubes. When the soup comes to a boil, add the miso, stir so that the miso gets distributed thoughout the soup. The cracked wheat cooks quickly, and the soup is delicious.
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Semi-Greek milk shake: Vanilla ice cream, milk, and baklava. Put in a blender, whip like crazy. (Maybe I should try this with balsamic vinegar next time!)
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Semi-Indian ice cream: Vanilla ice cream with blended-in soan papri (sometimes spelled soan papdi–check your local Indian grocer to see if they have it.) Similarly, ice cream with just about any of Haldiram’s snack mixes blended in is great too. Unless you use chocolate ice cream or ice cream that has chocolate pieces or chips in it. Then you just end up with slightly icky weirdness.
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On the other hand, chocolate ice cream with cinnamon mixed through it is delicious, as is chocolate ice cream with cayenne pepper and mint extract, crystals, or a tiny bit of essential oil. No, I’m not making that up. And I guess this isn’t really all that cross-cultural, but it came to mind, so I threw it in the list, anyway.
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Oh, and a rich, highly flavorful vanilla ice cream with Chinese 5-spice mixed through is terrific.
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French fries with applesauce and/or sour cream. This one should be pretty easy to get used to for those of us who remember enjoying latkes at Hanukkah.