I suppose I do one strange thing that others do not do. Following the convention for fried chicken (finger food), I follow suit with most fried or boiled seafood (except for fried stuffed crab, which really does need scooping out with a fork, and crab cakes, which tend to be creamy and fall apart). But fried or boiled shrimp, crawfish, lobster (with appropriate cracking and picking implements), fried clams, oysters on the half shell or fried, frog legs (very much like fried chicken)... fingers. Batter or cornmeal fried fish... I break small pieces off neatly with my fingers or eat individual fried whitebait; I do not do this with grilled fish obviously

Yup I think I've seen British people eat pizza with a knife and fork ... Or did I imagine that?

For me it depends on the tensile strength of the pizza base. A deep pan base can be picked up easily, but a thin woodfired type base can have little structural strength at the centre and have a tendency to allow the toppings to slide off before reaching the mouth if picked up as a "wedge".

My New Jersey pizza colleagues showed me the 'fold' trick - you basically crease the pizza into a 'V' and treat it more like a sandwich. Works great!

I'd pay good money to see you eat one of the 6 inch tall jobbies you can get served either side of the pond by picking it up. especially the ones with a skewer down the middle...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dABoLDOArMA



I don't think such burgers were created with any form of practicality in mind ...

Quite some years ago, my mum took my nieces and their friends shopping. They must have been 12 or 13 at the time, and decided they wanted to go to mcdonalds for lunch. It was my mums very first (and last) experience of McD and she embarrassed the hell out of them when she called the "waiter" over and asked where to find the cutlery...

Have you been snooping through my dining room window?
Not just your mum, mine too. .... She had a very similar experience with a friend's daughter.
I think it's the sheer strength (not tensile), bit aside from issues of materials engineering, I find the opposite to be true: a deep pan pizza is usually too soft and soggy to support itself, whereas a thin pizza crust when fully baked is often crisp and rigid enough to support itself.

Look outside. I'm there right now.

I was taught to eat pizza with a knife and fork by my Italian friends.

Challenge for someone ... can you find a youtube video of the 'proper British' way of eating peas and corn? I'm sure there is one out there!

This is the best video for eating peas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiUQ9wdhGLM

Nothing is available for eating corn, at least not as such. There may be a video of a formal, proper dinner where someone is eating cut corn in the manner prescribed by British etiquette, whatever that manner may be, but I am unaware of the precise manner so I cannot find it for you, so sorry.

Of the methods available for eating peas in the above video, only the "use another food to help" method could be readily applied to corn, so I suppose that in the serving of corn without a suitable "glue", the etiquette violation really is the host's. This site http://www.gourmet-food-revolution.c...etiquette.html implies heavily that the only graceful way to eat peas, corn, rice, or similar foods is with the fork in the right hand, "tines up".

The proper way to eat plain white rice alone is with chopsticks; I don't care what anyone else says.

I don't think cooked maize would be served in a proper British meal, would it? I believe it is fed to livestock, though.

The funny thing is, that my mother, who has a history of being distinctly antiAmerican in almost all respects, and is a stickler for proper use of the knife and fork, used to serve corn-on-the-cob at lunch and family meals from when I was a small child. The only difference between her presentation and how it is served in the US, is that she served it as an appetizer, not as a vegetable with the main course.