Dear Etiquetteer:
In the last several weeks, I have eaten twice at restaurants where they put out bread with a saucer of olive oil. I’m not sure if I should just break off pieces of bread and dip them into the common saucer, or should pour some of the olive oil from that saucer into my own. Which do you recommend?
Dear Dining:
Your first instinct is correct: break off a small piece of bread, dip in the common saucer, and enjoy. When only one saucer of oil is provided, it’s for everyone at the table. Pouring oil from one saucer to another risks spilling a lot of oil; #resist. What Etiquetteer wishes more restaurants would do is to serve a small cruet of oil for the table, from which everyone could pour what they want. What could be more Perfectly Proper?
This is, of course, the exact opposite of how we handle butter*; we already know that each diner helps themselves from the common butter dish and puts their butter on their own bread plate.
Sometimes it’s tempting to park one’s entire bread or roll into the saucer and let it soak up all the oil at once. Etiquetteer must advise you that this is Not Perfectly Proper, no matter how satisfying that first bite might feel. Restrain yourself.
Dear Etiquetteer:
How would you respond to this one? I’m friends with Party A. He meets Party B and they are in a relationship for years. I become friends with Party B. A and B go through a bad breakup.
Party A would like me to stop being friends with Party B out of loyalty to him. I’d prefer to remain friends with both. What is the right way to handle this?
Dear Friend:
Friendships evolve just as relationships do, and it’s not unusual for someone to become just as friendly with a Significant Other as one is with the Original Friend. It’s also not unusual, when a relationship ends, for the Dividing Parties to want to revert to their original friend groupings. This gets tougher the angrier they might be.
All you can control in this situation is your own feelings and actions. If you wish to remain on good terms with both parties, do so — but Etiquetteer would not recommend inviting them to the same functions. If Party A calls you out on this, explain gently that you prefer to remain on good terms with all parties. And if Party A finds that unacceptable and withdraws, well — that might hurt. But Etiquetteer encourages you to keep your friendship available to him. In the year after a breakup new patterns of communication and socializing form, and it may be that you interact more (or less) with one (or both) of the Dividing Parties, and that the issue of your perceived disloyalty fades away.
Etiquetteer wishes you, and the Dividing Parties, a smooth transition.
*In the words of the late Julia Child, “Butter!”