Dining styles in different countries explained
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 8, 2026
[ 🍽 Steven Moore] pic.twitter.com/cFxPvAtGSK
from Steven Moore.
In America, they do something which we find strange. This is how we eat in Europe, but in America they swap the fork into their dominant hand and then eat the food. It's known as the "cut and switch," and there's actually a historical reason for it. Because in Europe until the middle of the 19th century, the cutlery wasn't always either side of the plate. It could be on the right hand side. You'd have a knife a fork and a spoon, and you would simply use which Implement you needed in whichever hand you chose. That's because we dined in a star known as Service a la Francaise, where all the the food will be on the table and you simply helped yourself to what you wanted. When we changed at around 1860, 1870 we started dining in the Russian Style, Service la russe, whereby each course came out and was eaten separately. So it made sense to then have that cutlery on either side and you worked your way in. So you'd have your knife in your dominant hand and your fork in your other hand, and you would eat like so. So when early Europeans went to America, they took that previous dining with them, which is why Americans think nothing of swapping their hand to the fork and eating like so. The reason it became embedded in American society is because when people took wagon trains out to the West pioneering new States, they had to be very careful about how much weight they took. So taking a fork was sensible. Taking a spoon was sensible, but a dinner knife like this was pretty useless. So they used the side of the fork in place of the knife to cut food and put it into their mouth. So the start of switching hands became embedded in America.
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