Fork only, in right hand, scoop style.
That’s the American way. The European style doesn’t switch hands.
I’m a little unclear on this, but I think that’s the “scoop” way, similar to how you hold a spoon. But with the European style, the fork is held in the left hand, “upside down,” in the same position as if cutting a steak.
Here’s a direct link to a youtube video explanation.
Oddly, she says that you load up the back of the fork with soft food (potatoes, peas, whatever; I guess) and eat it that way. That’s a bit off-putting to my American senses. I don’t think I could buy into an eating style where I use the back of my fork to hold non-cutting food.
I assumed that you’d turn the fork “rightside up” in your left hand to scoop food, as opposed to using your knife to scoop the food onto the back of the fork.
As I mentioned above, that is the polite way. But I would hazard to guess that most of us proletarians do in fact scoop soft foods like mashed potatoes and peas.
I hear this a lot from slurping defenders (as an American, I find slurping gross, like eating with your mouth open), and yet I eat soba noodles often and don’t have any trouble not slurping. Maybe that’s just my superpower.
You sound as classy and thoughtful as your username would lead me to expect.
:mad: That’s for hoity-toity dandified pussies! Real Americans eat without using our hands!
Yeah, you just start by putting one end of a noodle in your mouth. Then you grab the noodle again partway down and put that in your mouth as well. Continue doing so until you have as much noodle as you want, and then bite it off. Unless, of course, you’ve put the whole noodle in your mouth.
Same thing applies to any long noodles.
I find the slurping thing incredibly difficult. My face puckers up and the noodles usually go nowhere. And if they do, they slap me in the face. Too annoying. So I actually place the food in my mouth instead.
Slurping is also just completely disgusting to me. I have a coworker that can slurp literally anything. Lollipops, salads, yogurt, soup, vegetables, rice, you name it, he slurps it. The sounds he makes. Euuuuuuugh
What an disturbing thought.
I’m a European that switches the fork sometimes. When I feel like it. I guess I’m an equal opportunities cutlery user.
I try not to get too hung up on things.
Interesting. after watching that video, I guess do a mix of both. European style for the meat and American style for the sides. I always thought Europeans put the knife down when going at the sides.
Here’s a pic WRT how I hold the fork. I think we were talking about the same thing.
What do you have against, um, fingers?
Or SKINNY Americans… who do they think they are fooling? Nobody. Half of it they just scoop out on to the floor.
The upper classes in Britain have always wished we were French — the lower classes that we were German.
Excepting when we are being incited to hate either.
Does anyone use the knife with their left hand? I got tired of switching hands, so I just started cutting with my left so I could keep the fork in my right hand. Using a fork left-handed is a lot more awkward for me than using a knife left handed.
So many rules.:eek:
If you can pick it up without burning your fingers and/or making a mess everywhere, fingers are fine.
I’ll sometimes put the knife down and go right handed fork, but not often. usually it’s knife and fork, fork tines pointing down. Use fork with tine pointing up to scoop mashed veges or small things like peas.
I do, but I have an excuse… I was about 7-8 when I learned how to cut my own meat and food, but I learned it from my aunt (RIP) who is left handed. You’d think that doing it the same way would be difficult for me, but instead it was much more easier and intuitive than the opposite way. For some reason, something as silly as holding down the meat with the left was harder than just slicing through it with the knife back and forth. And obviously the skill of “take piece of food with left-hand and shove it in your mouth” was/is lacking.
So I get strange looks because I’m a right handed that cuts like a left-handed. And I don’t switch instruments since the fork is already in my dominant hand.
I personally think things like that are very silly to get worked up over. As long as you know to cut the meat/food into smaller pieces and shove it in your mouth, why complain about the mechanics?
I’m a left-handed American, and this fork-switching practice is new to me. So apparently some people switch forks so that they can hold the knife in their dominant hand when they use it? Being a lefty it seems like a lot of us pick up on a lot of righty things out of necessity, like using right-handed scissors.
I hold the fork in my dominant left hand exclusively. When I need to cut something, I pick up and use the knife with my right hand. So I guess that’s European style? But I do hold the fork scoop-style when I eat soft foods. So I guess that part of my table manners is uncouth American-Style. 
When I want to spear something with my fork or hold meat with it when I’m cutting I will turn the fork around in my left hand and hold it with the tines pointing down. Sometimes if I want to combine a bit of veggie or potato with my bite of meat I’ll add it to the back of the fork. I do have a lot of British relatives so maybe I unconsciously learned to eat partially European from them. Nobody ever told me I was ever doing anything incorrectly.
Amazing the things, large and small, learned in this forum after being alive for almost 50 years! Hadn’t ever really considered my fork and knife style before.
I work as a retail store cashier, and I cannot tell you how many people hand me empty bags to scan. You couldn’t wait five minutes to scarf down the chocolate.
The idea of eating as fast as you can puzzles me. In her autobio “The Jean Nidetch Story” the Weight Watchers founder tells of hiring a skinny assistant with the stipulation that “you eat out with me at a restaurant once a week. I’ll pay.” The first thing Jean noticed is that the woman took a bite and put down her fork. She looked at the artwork, listened to the music, etc.
Jean was amazed. She noticed all overweight people cling to their forks and eat very fast, while skinny people put it down and enjoy one bite.
This drove my guy nuts when we first got together. We’d go out to eat and he’d be looking at his empty plate, ready for dessert, and I’d still have half my meal on my plate.
IMO, the fast-eating thing is from school cafeteria lunches. In high school, I had 20 minutes from the time the “before lunch” class ended and until I had to be at the “after lunch” class. That included going to my locker and standing in line with my food tray.
My first trip to France was a wake up call. What do you mean, closed 3 hours in the afternoon for lunch???
Which leads to a meal we had once in a restaurant in a tiny village. Sat down and when I was finished, I checked my watch and two hours had passed without my even noticing it.
Why is this seen as a good thing? The art and music at your average restaurant is worthy of perhaps thirty seconds’ appreciation, at most. I’ve got shit to do. Let’s eat and move on.
In my case, I suspect it started as part of a large family. Slowest eater doesn’t get the extra pork chop very often.
I do this too. I’m right-handed but I do a lot of things left-handed, including using the knife. I also get a lot of strange looks doing this. 
If I eat with my hands I use my left hand, and my beverage is also on the left side of my plate.