What is everyone talking about this week: The curious case of American dining

Oh, the US of A. Land of the free, home of the brave. Land of the people who switch their knife and fork from one hand to the other. Home of the strange.

I am being entirely facetious, of course. It is, after all, a great American tradition. (‘I hope you’re all Republicans,’ Ronald Reagan told his surgeons as he went under the knife having been rushed to hospital following an assassination attempt.) Allow me, then, to return the favour for a moment — starting, bien entendu, with the matter of the knife and fork.

The knife and fork is one of the few cases in which the American makes life unnecessarily difficult for himself. It is also one of the few cases in which the European does not. For the uninitiated: Americans believe that one should use their dominant hand to cut their food and that the knife then be returned to the subjugate hand, so that the fork can be transferred to the stronger one for picking. The habit, of late, has become a popular talking point in British circles keen to dissect our so-called ‘special relationship’ with Uncle Sam as The King embarks on his very own State Visit.

For some time now, the President has been lamenting how far the British have fallen. He believes the only way we can now save ourselves is by adopting the Anglophile ways of our great-great grandparents. Last I checked, however, the Anglophile tradition held that the knife should always be placed in the dominant hand. This doesn’t exactly square with American dining etiquette.

Perhaps our transatlantic cousins ought to rethink their table manners, at least for as long as they believe that aping a chocolate-box version of Britishness is tantamount to cultural salvation. After all, you wouldn’t be caught dead swapping your knife and fork from one hand to the other on this side of the pond: it would be considered wholly inefficient, and that’s without even having to contend with American portion sizes. Just imagine having to swap your knife and fork around non-stop for so large a meal as is customary in the US. It could take several days.

Perhaps the President, in his remembrance of things past, intends for us to ape the mannerisms of our yet further-flung ancestors, who didn’t use forks at all — viz., the Tudors. It’s a logic that might explain his own predilection for cutlery-less foods and may recast my own penchant for 2am chicken wings as a grand, patriotic gesture.