Holding the fork

A person could pick out the American in any restaurant here just by looking at how a fork is held after cutting meat with a knife.

Typically, a right-handed American, when cutting meat on the plate, will hold the meat in place with a backward-turned fork in the left hand and cut with the knife held in the right hand. After cutting the meat, the American would put the knife down and switch the fork back to the right had to continue eating.


The right-handed Briton would do this differently. After cutting, he would keep the piece of meat on the fork - still held backward - and would then put that meat directly into his mouth. There would be no shifting the fork back to the right hand. In fact, many Britons would use the knife in their right hand to slide on some more food to the fork along with the meat, like potatoes or other vegetables, then they would continue to eat the rest of the meal with the fork in the left hand turned backward.

One evening when we were dining out at a restaurant, I couldn't help but watch the man at the table next to us. Using his knife, he piled so much food on top of the meat on the backward fork - mashed potatoes, gravy, vegetables, that it required a special skill to get this very large pile of food into his mouth at one time. It was quite a feat, but he managed every time.