Rules for Modern Life by Tang Sir David

Author:Tang, Sir David
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241258521
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

SERVING

When entertaining at home, is it more polite and elegant to serve the ladies round the table before the men? Is it also acceptable to serve the food already on the plate? Is it considered pompous nowadays to make people wear black tie for a dinner party?

Serving the ladies first smacks of antimacassars. The practice is often considered, pretentiously and erroneously, to be ‘the proper thing to do’. It also takes longer for the food to go round, making it cold. It irritates me, as a man, to see all that food criss-crossing before my eyes with untouchability. I spot a particularly well-charred chop, only to see it snatched by someone else before I take my turn. Besides, in an age of equality, I am sure feminists would not expect to be treated as the superior gender in a queue for grub. At any dinner I give, I am served first, along with the person opposite me, and we go round clockwise and anti-clockwise with understated haste and everyone is expected to start as soon as the food lands on their plate. Second, plated food is definitely not for me. The format belongs to refectories at schools or monasteries, commercial restaurants, or corporate social functions. It’s silly to apportion everyone the same of each part of a dish. We should be able to exercise personal preference and take more meat or less veg, or vice versa. As for black tie, the trouble is that there will always be the egalitarian or someone with a jacket potato on their shoulder refusing to wear one, thereby spoiling the whole visual effect.

My wife and I disagree about the convenience of waiting for all to have been served the second course of a meal before starting. While I don’t feel comfortable beginning the second course when there is still somebody with an empty dish, my wife prefers to ask the convivium to start eating. Do you think that the correct procedure depends on the number of people around the table, as she says?

Unless the Queen is present, one should always start without waiting. This is only sensible because otherwise the food will get cold. Even if what is served is cold, it just seems rather superfluously middle class for everyone to wait before tucking in. It’s like saying that we should not behave like schoolchildren eating in a refectory at a boarding school. But that’s exactly how we should behave – never losing our juvenility. It also takes the pomposity out of dining. Whenever I am host, I am always served first, and I always start eating first so that others can follow – and I tell them to. But of course I would have to change this selfish habit if Her Majesty were ever to come to a luncheon or dinner.

Having yourself served first at dinners that you are hosting reverses accepted mores – and your ‘follow me’ justification seems weak. Doesn’t it generate many uncomfortable moments?

‘Accepted mores’? We are only talking about having dinners, hardly an ethical issue.

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