The Partial Observer by Gayane Torosyan
Tables Without Borders
It always warms my heart to see couples of all ages blushing their way through lunch or dinner on Valentine’s Day. February blizzards notwithstanding, they somehow make the restaurant feel as if spring has already slipped in through the door. But nothing chills that pleasant illusion faster than watching a young diner spear their food with a fork clenched upright in a fist. A fork is not an ice pick, nor is a dinner plate a block of frozen earth waiting to be conquered. And the accompanying sawing motion, full of the determination of a lumberjack, only deepens the assault.
Most of what we eat today, after all, is cooked and yields easily to gentle movements. In the same gentle manner, instead of spitting out pits or bones, or fishing them from our mouths with our fingers, we quietly lift the fork to our lips and let the inedible bits rest upon it before depositing them at the edge of the plate. And we most certainly do not attend to our gums with our fingers.
Why such fuss over small gestures? Because eating is part of culture, and culture has a long memory. At the table, we are never just feeding ourselves—we are participating in a history of manners that reminds us how to live with one another, gracefully.
Not an aristocrat myself, I can relate to these working-class people who want to feel liberated from the confines of formality at a dining table. But eating nicely is a sign of respect toward the food, the company and the surrounding. The ambience of a dining establishment can be easily ruined without proper eating manners. We do bother with those because, as it turns out, dining etiquette has accompanied the shaping of civilizations for centuries.
Before launching into the history and intricacies of using cutlery, here are a few observations on patron-server interactions. In an otherwise forgettable television show, a European server pokes fun at American customers who order food by saying “I will do…” instead of “I will have.” Please, save the “doing” for your Valentine’s date. Food is for eating, and eating only. This type of food shaming falls into the same category as “are you still working on it?” For a former Soviet “starving Armenian,” eating is the exact opposite of work: We labor to put food on the table and are not ashamed to admit that we are enjoying that last bit of flavor while the server is trying to pry it out of our “working” hands. In fact, it is disrespectful to clear any portion of the table until every diner has finished and placed their utensils parallel to each other in a 10/4 o’clock position. While taking a break during a meal, we put the knife and fork in a reversed V position or prop them on the edges of the plate, admitting without shame that yes, we are still eating.
Flirting with waiters is every bit as stomach‑turning as speaking to them in a patronizing or condescending tone. Equally unappetizing is the diner who sends back a brick‑oven pizza because one corner of the crust dared to darken, or who rejects a dish simply because the menu was skimmed rather than read. After all, if you do not care for a restaurant, feel free to go elsewhere. Attempting to “educate” the staff is a task better left to SUNY Oneonta’s Human Ecology Department, not to a customer who dutifully returns week after week only to catalogue the establishment’s perceived shortcomings. And while Oneonta and Cooperstown may not offer the culinary sprawl of New York City, they have more than enough restaurants and cafés to satisfy even the neediest diner. If you disagree, feel free to cook and eat at home, where you can practice alternative sets of manners. However, in public spaces, please stick to the ones accepted by all.
At the other end of the spectrum lies the patron who treats the wait staff as an audience for their charm offensive. If someone is truly intent on sweet‑talking the server, they would do better to ask them on an actual date instead of embarrassing their companions—or, worse yet, their potential or actual date. Anything else crosses the line from poor judgment into plain harassment.
After months of regular breakfast meetings at Hartwick’s Freight Wheel Café, my Oneonta friends began treating the owners as extensions of their social circle. They invited them to dinners, traded e-mails to coordinate around the café’s occasional closures, and folded them naturally into the gentle rhythms of daily life. Casual chitchat, free of flirtation, free of entitlement, became the social glue that held this small community together. After all, communities (Gemeinschaft) form the foundation of society (Gesellschaft), to use the terminology introduced by Ferdinand Tönnies in 1887, and societies, in turn, shape culture.
As rituals go, eating remains one of the most powerful ways to cultivate social solidarity. Émile Durkheim argued as much, noting that shared meals can generate a kind of “collective effervescence,” a feeling he explored most fully in “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life” (1912) as the heightened energy, emotion, and sense of unity that people experience when they gather together for shared rituals, ceremonies, or collective activities. In our own modest way, those Sunday mornings at the Freight Wheel Café proved him right.
So overall, every time we sit down to eat, fork in hand, napkin on lap, we are participating in a cultural performance thousands of years in the making. Eating, the most basic of human needs, became one of our most symbolically charged activities. Across centuries and continents, the way people brought food from plate to mouth has reflected etiquette, hierarchy, religion, and even geopolitics. Today, it signals respect to the establishment or home and to all those who labored to bring our food to our table, from farmer to cook. For those who eat animals, it also signals respect to the lives sacrificed to feed us humans.
This reminds me of a time when a friend and colleague ordered rabbit at a restaurant. While thinking of my beloved Bunny Torosyan carelessly snacking on my furniture at home, I still acted as a grown up and assured my friend that I did not mind if he ate a roasted bunny in front of me. He ordered the dish, took one bite and decided he was finished. I could not help feeling sad that, for that single bite, the animal could otherwise have lived. That is, in my fictional world, where factory farms have long since been replaced by farm sanctuaries. I also could not help thinking that next time at the restaurant I could try and order a Pomeranian or a baby to eat in front of my dog-owning and family-loving friends. After all, I vote as a Democrat.
They say in Japan diners are encouraged to take only as much food as they intend to finish. Not every plate has to be piled high and then discarded; that, too, appears disrespectful to the food and to the people who made it. And not everything needs to be transformed into a sandwich or a wrap. A carefully balanced plate is best enjoyed as it is, without folding it into a messy, dripping blanket consumed with bare hands.
In Barbara Streisand’s 1996 movie, “The Mirror Has Two Faces,” her character Rose Morgan explains to Gregory Larkin, played by Jeff Bridges, her method of eating: By carefully arranging different elements of her food on a fork, she creates a perfect combination of flavors. The scene became popular with fans as something inspired by a real-life habit of Streisand, later influencing a pasta recipe by Chef Nino Mosca, who aimed to create a “perfect bite” in her honor. For readers interested in learning more about the European and American styles of using a fork and knife, the American entrepreneur and women’s advocate Carla Shellis created a short YouTube tutorial.
Essentially, the proper way to use a fork, contrary to how some diners behave, does not involve treating it like heavy machinery. Instead, the fork should be held with the easy confidence of someone who knows dinner poses no structural engineering challenges. In the Continental style, the fork rests in the left hand, tines down, working in polite partnership with the knife. The knife nudges a small, civilized morsel toward the tines—one morsel, not an entire payload—after which the fork conveys it upward with the dignity of a maître d’, not the urgency of a forklift operator on overtime.
Even in the American style, where the fork switches hands and tines turn upward, the principle remains the same: Lift a modest, well‑behaved bite. No teetering mountains of mashed potatoes poised to avalanche, the way they do on my 3-year-old grandson’s plate. Used properly, the fork becomes a graceful extension of the hand, not a front‑loader. And the meal becomes a meal again—an act of dining, not excavation.
Back in history, long before cutlery drawers and formal place settings, hands were the universal eating utensil. But contrary to modern assumptions, early hand‑eating was anything but crude. In ancient India and across the Middle East, elaborate etiquette dictated the correct use of the right hand only as it was considered cleaner, purer, and more respectful. Diners were expected to use fingertips delicately, never letting food smear the palm. Shared dishes demanded restraint: One ate only from the section closest to oneself.
Even in ancient China, where chopsticks would later reign, hand-eating was common for large foods, breads and fruits. Utensils arrived slowly, and etiquette always followed.
Knives and spoons emerged early, but they served practical purposes long before they became symbols of refinement. Spoons appear in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, carved from wood, bone or precious metals depending on one’s social rank. Knives, originally personal tools, were brought to the table as part of daily life. In medieval Europe, a guest was expected to carry their own knife, using it not only to cut food but also to make room for a portion on crowded communal boards, where diners often shared large serving surfaces without individual plates. Over time, European courts encouraged blunter, round‑tipped table knives, signaling a shift from weapons to implements that suggested civility and safety.
But Europe, as always, layered tools with symbolism. A blunt table knife became a mark of civility, signaling that the dining table was no place for aggression. Clinking of glasses served the same purpose as it was believed that if one of them was poisoned, the liquid would splatter into the poisoner’s chalice as well. By the late Middle Ages, nobility adopted ornate spoons and knives as signs of refinement, not merely practicality.
The humble fork, today’s indispensable utensil, once used to cause outrage. When Byzantine nobles introduced forks to Europe around the 11th century, they were denounced as decadent. “God gave us fingers,” one Venetian cleric reportedly remarked, “and therefore it is an insult to Him to substitute them with metal.” For centuries, forks were viewed with suspicion—foreign, effeminate and unnecessary.
It wasn’t until the 16th century, thanks to Italian aristocrats obsessed with cleanliness (and preserving their delicate gloves), that forks took root. French courts soon followed, turning the fork into a symbol of continental sophistication. By the 18th century, it had become a fixture at the European table.
While Europe debated the morality of forks, East Asia embraced an entirely different approach: the chopstick. Originating in China, possibly as early as the Shang Dynasty, chopsticks reflected not just culinary style but philosophical ideals. Confucian teachings encouraged moderation and nonviolence; chopsticks, unlike knives, emphasized harmony over aggression.
Japan refined its own etiquette: lifting the bowl toward the mouth, guiding each bite with precise flicks of the chopsticks, and never, under any circumstance, pointing them at anyone. Korea paired metal chopsticks with spoons, producing one of the world’s most distinctive table settings. In Vietnam, communal meals came with their own quiet choreography, ensuring every dish was shared fairly and respectfully.
The first step is to hold your chopsticks properly, not clenched together like kindling you are about to ignite, but balanced neatly between the fingers. One chopstick stays put, the responsible adult in the relationship; the other does the moving, opening and closing with quiet confidence. When the two cooperate, they manage small triumphs: lifting noodles, cradling a dumpling, capturing a rogue piece of tofu. When they don’t, dinner becomes a slapstick (or chopstick) comedy.
And then there are important rules of what not to do, each one posing a tiny cultural tripwire. Planting chopsticks upright in a bowl, for instance, may look like a convenient parking place, but in many East Asian cultures it is the culinary equivalent of announcing a funeral, as it evokes the incense offered at such rituals. I learned that lesson in Kyoto, where a fellow diner gently corrected my mistake. Fortunately, the adviser was an American friend. The cultural offense, I told myself, felt slightly less grave under the circumstances.
Pointing with chopsticks turns you into a sort of accusatory orchestra conductor. Spearing food with them defeats the purpose entirely and makes your dumpling look like a samurai fallen on a battlefield. And tapping them on the bowl? That is the ancient way beggars signaled for food; it also makes you the noisiest person at the table, a distinction nobody covets.
Chopsticks, then, are less a test of dexterity than an invitation to dine with a touch of grace. Handle them well, and the meal stays calm and civilized. Handle them poorly, and suddenly it’s dinner theater—unintentionally comedic, but unforgettable for all the wrong reasons.
The Western table got codified further by the 17th and 18th centuries, when European dining became a theater of etiquette, largely shaped by French courts. Courses were formalized; place settings acquired symmetry; napkin rules emerged, requiring to place it to the left of the plate and waiting for the highest-ranking diner opening theirs first, signaling others to follow; and “no elbows on the table” became gospel.
The Industrial Revolution, with its expanding middle class, democratized these rituals. Manuals taught proper posture and utensil handling, turning etiquette into a marker of education rather than aristocratic birth. Specialized tools soon followed: fish knives, oyster forks, dessert spoons, butter spreaders—the full orchestra of Western dining.
The modern table has no borders. Food has become so global that etiquette has become a kind of cultural conversation. Using your hands is expected for Ethiopian injera, a fermented, pancake‑like flatbread that serves as both food and utensil, or when eating Indian curries. Chopsticks are commonplace from New York to Paris. Western forks and knives appear beside sushi platters or noodle bowls in all kinds of restaurants.
In our interconnected world, the true mark of good manners is cultural respect: knowing when to lift the rice bowl, when to use your right hand, and when to leave the lone asparagus spear to the fork. The answer to the last one is when the spear is drenched in sauce, cut up in pieces as part of a dish, or sitting in another person’s plate. For firm and whole spears, use your hands, unless everyone else in your company uses utensils. If eating asparagus with your fingers would make you feel like you are conducting a science experiment in public, switch to the fork. And always follow the host or the rest of the table when in doubt.
Another note on intercultural encounters: Especially in the greater New York City area, a new class of workers has taken shape in the form of bike delivery riders. I have genuine empathy for them, even when I am nearly knocked off my feet at the Lackawanna station by someone riding side‑saddle through the concourse instead of walking. Their daily hustle puts bread on everyone’s table—ours and their own.
But empathy does not require me to enjoy their dusty, sweat‑soaked presence in the dining hall where I go to unwind, especially when their phones erupt with multilingual reels played at full blast. Call me a hypocrite if you must, but I would prefer their labor not place them at odds with the rest of New York’s working population. Respect for shared space is not too much to ask, whether from delivery riders warming up for a moment or from the patrons seated around them.
Speaking on a cell phone while dining has long been considered disrespectful. Yet we now have a generation of diners who insist on elevating the offense: They put their caller on video, on speaker, and on full display, turning the restaurant into an unwilling audience. Since we agreed that delivery workers need not bring the chaos of the street in with them, then neither should the patrons themselves.
And it is not only diners. From patients and their families in hospital waiting rooms, to shoppers in grocery stores and delis, no public space seems immune. My most recent encounter involved a shopper video‑chatting at full volume on a selfie stick, held triumphantly and dangerously close to a vat of steaming halal beef, as though broadcasting from a culinary battlefield. I could not help but look for sword-stabbed “samurai” dumplings. Everywhere, it seems, the private call has become a dramatic performance.
We need to remember that eating has always been more than mere nourishment. It is a story about who we are, how we interact, and what we value at the table, whether at home or in a restaurant. Whether a meal is cooked at home, ordered at a restaurant, or delivered by bike, it should be handled with the same care as any shared ritual. And if purchased at New York’s iconic Tashkent Market, it certainly does not require a breathless play‑by‑play for an audience of strangers.
Dr. Gayane Torosyan is a professor of media studies in the Department of Communication and Media at SUNY Oneonta.
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT NECESSARILY THE VIEW OF ALLOTSEGO AND ITS AFFILIATES.
