Dining Customs Quotes

Basil Stag Hare tut-tutted severely as he remarked to Ambrose Spike, 'Tch, tch. Dreadful table manners. Just look at those three wallahs, kicking up a hullaballoo like that! Eating's a serious business.

The first time I saw a fingerbowl was at the home of my benefactress. [...] The water had a few cherry blossoms in it, and I thought it must be some clear sort of Japanese after-dinner soup and ate every bit of it, including the crisp little blossoms.

At the Last Supper how come no one sat on the other side of the table? See, I think originally there were people sitting on the other side but those were the people going, You know, the air conditioning hits me right on the back on the neck.

Sitting down to a meal with an Indian family is different from sitting down to a meal with a British family.

You can fake your way to the table, but ultimately you have to learn how to eat.

You eat a lot of goat stomach when you're in North Africa. You eat whatever's put in front of you. I am a big proponent of that.

The Chinese are much too sensible to like turkey - come to think of it, I don't think I've ever encountered turkey anywhere in East Asia, either in a market or on a menu.

There are two good reasons to put your napkin in your lap. One is that food might spill in your lap, and it is better to stain the napkin than your clothing. The other is that it can serve as a perfect hiding place. Practically nobody is nosey enough to take the napkin off a lap to see what is hidden there.

So Stapes conducted a dinner for just the two of us, then informed me of a dozen small but important mistakes I had made. Setting down a dirty utensil was considered crude, for example. That meant it was perfectly acceptable to lick one's knife clean. In fact, if you didn't want to dirty your napkin it was the only seemly thing to do.

There are a lot of people who must have the table laid in the usual fashion or they will not enjoy the dinner.

Let the progress of the meal be slow, for dinner is the last business of the day; and let the guests conduct themselves like travelers due to reach their destination together.

And I find chopsticks frankly distressing. Am I alone in thinking it odd that a people ingenious enough to invent paper, gunpowder, kites and any number of other useful objects, and who have a noble history extending back 3,000 years haven't yet worked out that a pair of knitting needles is no way to capture food?

If the Japanese are so smart, why do they eat with sticks?

You never see a French person eating alone.

I remember so clearly from when I was five years old, my mom and dad arguing over - not over whether it was better, but whether it was proper or whether it was correct to eat with a fork or to eat with your hands, like we do in Sri Lanka. Proper. Like, what is the correct way to eat?

I don't like people's table manners. That really puts you off eating food.

The first American word that I learned was cheeseburger. And the first sentence I learned was, "I'm sorry but we don't serve breakfast after 12 o'clock."

I had been invited to speak after the lunch. But I did not go to the table until the feast ended, as I never like to eat or talk before speaking.

You don't take food home from restaurants in Sweden.

In proceeding to the dining-room, the gentleman gives one arm to the lady he escorts--it is unusual to offer both.

Civilization has taught us to eat with a fork, but even now if nobody is around we use our fingers.

More than any other in Western Europe, Britain remains a country where a traveler has to think twice before indulging in the ordinary food of ordinary people.

On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners.

When someone watches us eating, we feel exposed. We might also harbor a suspicion that the person staring wants to steal food from our plate. The taboo, in any case, is long-standing.

Forks and spoons have probably done more to reconcile people who cannot agree than guns and bombs ever did