Generally speaking my food isn’t all scattered about on the plate to begin with. If I have beans, they’re in a little pile of beans. You position the fork next to the side of the pile, move it sideways, and it goes under some of the beans, the rest of the beans providing some resistance to having the whole thing just slide over. It does get trickier when the plate is almost empty, and I have at times used another utensil to keep the food from scooting around, but it doesn’t happen often. Usually the fork is the only utensil I bother putting on the table unless I’m having soup or something needs to be buttered. Honestly I’ve been doing it this way my whole life and never seen this to be a massively difficult skill. Maybe if all your food was as light as styrofoam peanuts it would be tricky, but with most food, it just isn’t a problem. Heck, a lot of food you can slide the fork under it even if it isn’t next to something else.
I never said I looked like I was gobbling my food, and I eat quite slowly thank you (my food is usually stone cold by the time I’m done, actually). I just think that someone sitting there holding a fork in one hand and a knife in the other the whole time just looks far too eager or impatient. I’m not saying that their actual eating speed is necessarily fast. Picture the stereotype from cartoons and such: someone sitting there expectantly with a fork in one hand and a knife in the other, waiting to be served. It is used as a visual cue in cartoons that the person is very hungry or impatient.
In the 35 years that I’ve been in the US, I’ve never seen anyone serve tomato and mushrooms at breakfast except as part of an omelette or mixed in with something in some way. I saw it when I was in the UK all the time, but it’s just not considered breakfast fare in the US, especially not on their own.
Oh, and regarding the bacon comments: I haven’t eaten real bacon in over 21 years, but I do eat vegetarian bacon. It’s definitely a finger food (it actually can’t be cooked other than crispy). Back when I was a child and I still ate bacon, I only liked it crispy. If it was chewy I wouldn’t eat it. I think that in general this is a common preference in the US, so saying that you can “ask them not to cook it to a crisp” is the same as saying “ask them to cook it so that you don’t like it as much”. Maybe like telling someone who likes steak well-done to ask for it rare or medium for some reason. It may be edible but it isn’t the way they like to eat it. Pretty arrogant to say that someone is a “fool” for cooking it like that when that is the most popular way it is asked for over here, just because you personally can’t stand it that way.
(Bacon with maple syrup is typically because the bacon has come with pancakes or french toast which have syrup on them. A lot of people will push the bacon over into the syrup because they like the taste. Most people don’t just ask for syrup for their bacon if they aren’t eating syrup-topped food to begin with (though some do))
Next you’ll be telling me it’s rude to stare at my fellow diner, and imagine him morphing into a giant ham.
Exactly. And this is good because?
It depends where you eat. I suppose they don’t at Denny’s but if you go to a nicer place for breakfast or brunch, you might get all sorts of things on your plate depending on what you have, including fruit and tomatoes. And, really, tomatoes with French toast and bacon or eggs and bacon or a Benny are delicious (you don’t put syrup on the French toast but rather salt & pepper and eat it savoury rather than sweet).
And you can have food cooked per your wishes, again if you go someplace other then El Cheapo’s Mass Appeal Diner.
Bites When Provoked I wouldn’t worry too much. In a land of ‘can I have my dressing on the side’, you can ask your waithuman if they will alter your order per your wishes. In most places, they don’t squawk or balk.
…because if I eat quickly I get full too fast and feel sick? Why do you care? I specifically eat slowly on purpose. It was a skill I had to learn and I’m a much happier person for it.
Brunch isn’t breakfast. Brunch will often have more lunch-type foods. Breakfast in a restaurant in the US (unless it’s a restaurant that specializes in foods from other cultures) isn’t generally going to offer things like tomatoes and mushrooms and baked beans. It’s just not American breakfast food.
Wait, what?
How common is this, outside of the US?
Plenty of places. You are, in fact, permitted to eat French toast without maple syrup if you really want to, you know. Try it with tomatoes (fried or not) and salt and pepper for dinner. Deeelicious.
You realize that you people are making out a nation of several hundred million people (and probably a couple or so million restaurants) out to sound awful bland and boring, do you not? I’ve had very interesting meals there, but then again, I avoid the chains. You get very tasty meals in a lot of non-chain places that are not all from the same recipe book.
Opal, I forgot about your issue but that you need to eat slowly doesn’t mean that everybody else is supposed to eat food that’s ‘stone cold’, too. Like, ewww.
I switch, but tend to use my fork tines-down. I have no idea how I arrived at that. I don’t tend to notice things like how other people are using their utensils unless it’s specifically pointed out to me.
If you wanted to do that, you would hold the bacon by one end, and dip the other end in the syrup.
There are lots of Americans who don’t eat bacon with maple syrup, though- you won’t look like a freak if you don’t.
Speaking of things that are finger food vs fork-and-knife food, ISTR hearing somewhere that the default way of eating pizza in some countries is with a fork and knife. Pizza’s a finger food to me, unless the bottom crust is too floppy or has too many toppings for that to work.
Indeed. In fact, I feel safe in saying that bacon + maple syrup is somewhat exceptional in the U.S. Not exactly rare, but exceptional all the same. Some seem to be giving the impression that bacon-&-syrup is the American default. It very much is not, in my experience. Perhaps it’s more common in some parts of the U.S. than others.
Actually I often get up and microwave my food again halfway through. I wasn’t intending my comment to imply other people should eat as slowly as I do, but rather illustrating the inaccuracy of the comment that I (me personally) needed to slow down.
American breakfast is in general complete shite. We eat lots of eggs and bread and lots of sweets and not much else. What we call bacon is very fatty salt pork cut into very thin strips (about 2-3 cm by 20 cm) and fried (usually until crisp). It is nothing like “back bacon” or rashers, which are generally thicker-cut rounds about 10 cm in diameter, and have no major sections of fat.
You can find “English breakfasts” in the US at some places - we had an English pub that served breakfast on the weekends, and now we have a nearby bistro that serves English Breakfast. Thank God. You get 2 fried eggs, half a fried tomato, baked beans, home fries, fried toast, rashers and a banger. It is high-calorie heaven.
God I have to get out of here. Do any European countries accept American refugees?
You’re having trouble finding good places to eat in the East Bay?
Canadian here. I don’t switch hands with my fork, don’t know anyone who does, and have never heaard of this “tines down” thing. As long as you’re eating with your mouth closed and not spreading food all over the table, it works for me.
The one thing I have heard is my father-in-law’s idiot girlfriend’s insistence that the polite thing to do with the last bite of food is to balance it on the BACK of your fork. Christ alone knows where she got this, but she’ll come up with anything that gives her an excuse to be mean to my sister-in-law.
When I’m in polite company I just try and restrain myself from throwing my semi-gnawed lamb bones over my shoulder. Everything else is just toffee.
I cut up my food before eating, call me a typical Japanese-American.
I’ll cut what needs to be cut at the beginning of the meal. The first bite generally occurs without fork switching. Once I’m done with the knife, it gets set aside and the fork switches hands.
That said, I usually eat with a spork.
My boyfriend, when eating pancakes, french toast, or waffles, will first cut the whole thing up into bite sized squares, then he puts the syrup on and eats it. It makes me giggle because it’s what I would expect a small child to do. He does the same thing with spaghetti, except after the sauce goes on. But before he eats it, he cuts the whole plateful up into small pieces. My mom would have a heart attack, since she is a firm believer in the fork+spoon=twirl method of eating spaghetti.
I must say this thread is utterly fascinating to me. FTR, I don’t switch, but nor do I hold my fork ham-fistedly; hard to describe in text, but the butt of the fork is in my palm, held in a relaxed manner with thumb and middle finger, with the index finger providing downward pressure. Tines down, of course.
I do tend to eat more quickly than my dining companions, although that’s just my tendency rather than how I hold my utensils. If I need to do anything other than devour meat, I set both my utensils down. If the food doesn’t require using a knife, then my fork/spoon/chopsticks/spork is in my right hand.
I’ve never been given much in the way of dining etiquette aside from ‘don’t make a mess’ and ‘keep your damn elbows off the table’, and frankly it’s never come up. In fact, I’m kind of surprised at how many people in this thread talk about people’s eating habits in a restaurant. I look around and observe other people from time to time, sure, but I’ve never been concerned with how they eat, nor laid value judgments on anyone due to their style. Then again, one of my favorite foods is a good rack of ribs slathered in thick sauce, so maybe I’m at the bottom of the social ladder anyway. 
In South Asia, French toast is never eaten sweet. The batter includes eggs, salt, pepper, onions, chili peppers, cilantro leaves, and perhaps green peppers and tomatoes. No milk or powdered sugar in sight. And it’s eaten with chili ketchup, not with syrup. It’s fried in oil, never baked. The idea of sweet French toast with sugar and syrup is as strange to Indians as savoury French toast is to Americans.