Sunday, August 9, 2009

"Dinner" Etiquette II

I'm going to poll the audience on this one.

How do you feel about the family and guests starting to eat before the hostess finishes serving?
Do you have any rules about this at your table?

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

rude, rude, rude!!

BLD said...

My kids BH would never do that cause if they did, they would leave the table in the business end of ambulance.

efrex said...

As we tend to take a while to bring everybody's dishes out, I usually give reshut for people to start before we do, generally with the hilarious (to me, anyway) witticism of "at this house, we don't stand on ceremony; we jump on it with both feet until it breaks." The Lovely Wife (tm), of kind disposition and infinite patience, has allowed this travesty of chinuch to continue for the time being; however, with our oldest (b'eztrat hashem) starting his yeshiva education this fall, I feel that this is not likely to be allowed to continue at chez Efrex, as this will naturally damage his shidduch chances (as if having a father who posts blog comments isn't sufficiently devastating).

tnspr569 said...

Goes against what I've been taught. (Please tell me I'm not forgetting something and contradicting myself based on my visit to your house)

However, if the entire family starts eating, and the hostess encourages the guests to start eating, then I wouldn't feel quite as bad about it.

By the way, I like the no-guest cleanup rule- though I'm more than happy to help!

tnspr569 said...

efrex - seeing as you don't have much of a blog anymore, and that it would require some work to attribute your comments to your real-life persona...

harry-er than them all said...

only soup

frumcollegegirl said...

the only three things you can start before the hostess finishes serving (As i learned from my dad) are hot things (Soup), cold things (ice cream) and if the host/hostess tells you not to wait for them

Ezzie said...

By us the expectation is (though most people don't unless threatened) that the guests start eating before everybody is served, because we're serving so many people/because we don't want them to wait around for us. If we see people (usually newbies :P ) waiting, we tell them they better start. :)

But it's nice to see people's default is to wait.

Leora said...

You must eat the soup. We insist. Otherwise, polite to wait.

If it's my own family only and I'm really hungry, I get someone else to do the serving.

Yekkishe Bekishe said...

As in all Yekke homes, we were taught to show Hakoras Hatov to the person serving - mother of the house, one of the children or a volunteer - by waiting for the server to sit down. The only problem is when you have an OstJudishe grandparent who demands to be served first & has finished their portion prior to the server even having sat down!

Anonymous said...

I usually like to wait for my wife to sit down before starting, but when we have a lot of people over I will take and eat first so no one else feels like they have to wait.

daughtersintheparsha said...

BLD would you escort them?

toby said...

When it's just our immediate family, we all get the food ready together, and so naturally begin eating together. When we have guests, though, I don't like them to wait - it makes me stressed about not serving quickly enough :)

That said, when playing cards, I get VERY annoyed if someone starts picking up their cards before all are dealt...

Shosh said...

it is strange that i dont think one way or the other would bother me if guests did this at my table? i SO dont care about stuff like this. maybe im really laid back. or maybe i just have no manners. :)