Last night Etiquetteer very much enjoyed dining out with a friend who also enjoys French bistro fare, but the meal did not go entirely smoothly. Etiquetteer shares this with you in a spirit of solidarity; we have all had our dinner table mishaps. Etiquette is what gets us out of them.
This was one of those bistros with quaint white marble-topped tables that could be a little bit larger, where you get a small service plate, a tumbler, and one fork and one knife rolled in a napkin. That one knife serves for the butter as well as the meal; when this happens, take all of your portion of the butter at once so that you don’t have to put a soiled knife back in the butter. Placing the knife on the plate, Etiquetteer watched it slip off and slide underneath the feet of the diner at the next table to the far end of the wall. If it had been an Olympic ski jump, the Swedish judge would have awarded a 9.9. The waiter then brought a clean knife — to the innocent diner at the next table. His presentation of the new knife to Etiquetteer couldn’t have been more Perfectly Proper, but how embarrassing to have so many people involved.
The first course, oysters, offered no difficulty. Just remember to squirt your lemon over all your oysters at the beginning and return the shells upside down. But the second course, cailles frites*, offered more of a challenge. Because quail is so rare, it necessary to order it in memory of Babette’s cailles en sarcophage in Babette’s Feast. Gourmets already know that quail means tiny bones. As luck would have it, Etiquetteer drew a large tiny bone in the very first bite. And this was a bone that wanted to stick someplace painful no matter what! Throughout its extraction, Etiquetteer was conscious of hunching too far forward toward the plate, exactly opposite one’s training to Sit Up Straight No Matter What. “Bring the food to your face, not your face to the food!” But the quail was delicious — absolutely worth it — and any other bones were successfully avoided.
Etiquetteer doesn’t know who first captioned this photograph “Jackson Pollock’s Mother,” but it’s a Perfectly Proper description.
Finally, Etiquetteer was served a large profiterole for dessert, drenched in the most succulent chocolate sauce, but with only a spoon to defeat it. Profiteroles — a cream puff with ice cream inside — can feel awkward because they are so tall and compress so easily. Not only that, the tide of chocolate sauce could have lapped over the rim of the plate at any moment, and Etiquetteer was wearing a light seersucker suit that spots with the rain. It would have been very easy to leave dressed like Jackson Pollock’s Mother, since a napkin is not properly placed under the chin**. Extra care had to be taken gliding the bowl of the spoon over the rim of the plate to prevent drips.
Part of Perfect Propriety is projecting not just familiarity but “careless ease”*** with table manners. Etiquetteer shares all this with you to show that sometimes anxiety lurks underneath that projection, but that it can be overcome in the moment. Etiquetteer wishes you smooth dining with congenial companions.
*On the menu it was given as cail frit, which Etiquetteer understood to mean one fried quail, which was what was served. An online translation website, however, translated cail frit as “fried curd,” which might create difficulties for vegetarians being served an Unexpected Little Birdy.
**Etiquetteer has written more on this subject here.
***Lillian Eichler’s marvelous phrase.