We feel sorry for food, especially steaks and chops. We've notice that today's diners prefer attacking their food instead of eating it. They hold their fork in one hand as if they're about to drive a stake through their steak or that the steak is going to fly away and then they saw off a piece of meat with a knife. The position of the fork continues to be interesting. It's held between the third and fourth digits. This looks very odd and not at all elegant. It's not clear, at least when we tried it, how the food gets to the mouth gracefully. When did this become the proper way to hold a fork and a knife? We don't know and if you do, please email us.
We don't want to say what's right and what's wrong. But there's something to say about the way Europeans eat with the fork in the right hand and the knife in the left. They use the knife to gently put food on the fork. It looks very nice and the knife never becomes a shovel.
Some start out the European way and then do a switcheroo with the knife and fork. This can become very tiring for the diner and everyone else at the table because it's distracting.
Growing up, we held the fork with our right hand and did what the adults did, kept our left hand on our lap. This is very weird and who knows where the knives were. It's all right to rest your left hand on the table just be careful to keep your thumb from popping up, you don't want to look like a hitchhiker.
One of our favorite books is Tiffany's Book of Table Manners For Teenagers. We were adults when we bought our first copies. There was so much we didn't know and we're so glad to know it now. It doesn't make us better people, it just makes our steaks happier.
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