The real crime is putting lettuce in a Greek salad

I dined with a group of Americans at a Greek restaurant in Athens once and every one of them ordered a Greek salad as their meal. They were all sitting with the enormous meant-to-be-communally-shared salad bowl in front of each of them. The Greek waiters never even blinked but I bet there was a bit of banter about it back in the kitchen.

I saw a funny take at "food sharing" a year ago or so in in a really posh restaurant in Venice, a couple of American tourists (clearly a couple, boy/girl) ordered a portion of pasta and then they passed the plate back and forth between them while the one not eating took pictures of the other one eating...

LOL. Backpackers, for sure!

doubt it, average meal price €400? when i was backpacking (admittedly, a few years back), i wish i had a tenth of that for spare for food
it was really funny, the missus still tells the story and gets itself in stitches

No wonder they shared one plate! And photographed it for posterity.

for posterity? I've seen another group of (American) tourists take picture of each other in front of McDonalds , they keep those piccies for posterity too?

I do find it odd that the Swiss go yucky about food sharing and eating with hands in Asia and yet they stick their utensils straight from their mouths into fondues, fondue chinois, have no problems taking a taste of your drink by putting their lips on your glass/straw, and eating little apero bits with their (unwashed) hands.

I think that even sharing must have its limits... and I think that the line should be drawn to the "double dipping"

average meal price €400...?!?! Hopefully not for just pasta and hopefully for primi, secondi and many more piatti!!

I don't want to sound rude but Venice and "Tourist Trap" spring to mind...!! You can find some stunning places to eat if you wander out towards Isola/Murano side and see where the locals are going

Nobody mentioned Lebanese. That's a classic many plates/many people sharing cuisine.

And the nicest Etheopian I've been to is just near Acton Town tube in Lahhhhdon.

I was at a wedding a few years ago here, where there were some nice dips and lots of dippy things to dip into them, and the woman next to me, would dip her carrot, suck the dip off the end and nibble it a bit, then re dip it again in the dip . So disgusting

I see your point, but I come from there, so I'd like to think that I can avoid the tourist traps. And the restaurant is near Fondamente Nuove (not going to mention the name in case someone sees it as improper advertisement ), which is the North side of Venice towards Murano et al. the €400 fr is approx for 2 starters, 2 (small) primi, 2 secondi, dessert, bottle of wine, bottle of water, coffee and grappa. best chef in all venice bar none though...

maybe this is one of those 'not so subtle' hints that women give?

Try the steamed jellyfish sometime...

Before or after the meal?

The Dessert Song
He: "Would you like dessert?"
She: "No, thanks...."
She: "...I'll just have some of yours."
He: "No. If you want dessert, we'll order you some."
She: "I just want a little of yours."
He: "No. You'll eat most of mine. You always do."
She: "You're so selfish."
.

This is definitely a tourist trap! I was in Venezia and i paid the normal 30-50 euros. If they charge you so much ask for the menu to make sure that the price is correct (there are some very expensive ones, but those are rare) and call for the Carabinieri or Police. It is illegal in Italy to overprice anyone, tourists in particular. If they get caught they get in big troubles, with fines, bad publicity, and even the possibility that they will close down.
Tourism is a big resource in Italy and the tourist must be treated well if you want that it comes back and brings more tourist.
I always get mad when such people plays this dirty tricks, because they give a distorted and false idea of what italians really are.

Mythbusters did an episode featuring that. It is not actually as bad as you think it would be afterall we are quite happy to get up close & personal with another persons mouth when kissing without too many ill effects.

I don't mind eating family style. What I do mind is when someone says "Oh, would you like to try a piece?" from their half-eaten steak, or says, "oh I'm stuffed. Do you want the rest?"

No matter how good it looks or smells, I don't want to eat a piece of something anyone else had already started gnoshing on.

And I love to use chopsticks. I have noticed though that Germans seem to prefer the knife and fork for their Chinese food.

Dougal, may I ask you what is your principal regarding chopsticks? I am curious to know!

I love to eat with them, I actually like to eat with them when ever I fancy it. I find it very comfortable.

For sharing food, it depends. From my family background, we aways had our own plates to eat and never shared (except the salad, etc) always put your food in your plate and eat from that plate only.

I got used to the turkish way of eating. Many cooked dishes in the middle of the table and everyone take some to put in their plate.

So you eat what you like.

Sometimes we eat also from the same plate in the middle of the table. As much as I am clean freak and OCD, I am surprised that I don't have a problem with that! Wow! I am getting better!

The kurd turk in me is comfortable with it.

Sharing food is definitely something that's very ingrained in Asian culture. It has to do with communal spirit, family and whatnot, which explains why our dining tables are round. (None of that 'Head of table' nonsense )

I always find it interesting to see how different cultures approach the ritual of dinner. The traditional Western approach being more 'dignified', individualistic and somewhat methodical with the 34254123 different rules of etiquette and several more courses and degustations-- compared to the slightly 'messier' approach found in most Asian cultures, where people tend to talk as loud as possible, eat whatever's on the table and dig their chopsticks into the same dish without paying much attention to who ordered ("owned") it. In fact, it can appear selfish ordering one plate for yourself and refusing to share.

Then again, it's always easy to share a plate of sweet and sour pork, where there are numerous bite-sized individual pieces vs. a portion of grilled salmon with risotto. It all depends on who you're eating with rather than the food itself, I think.

Interesting how some people refuse to use chopsticks and then don't like sharing food.

The whole point of chopsticks is so you can share without passing so many germs around. Chopsticks hold the food which you then put into your mouth, using your teeth to take off, or just dropping it in there. If you're using then properly the chopsticks don't touch your mouth. Hence they are still pretty clean to put back into the communal plate.

If you're doing it all posh then you actually use the opposite end of your chopsticks to take out the communal food, drop it into your bowl of rice, then flip them around to eat. In China, people used to do that but now they just use spoons to get the food from the communal plates to your rice bowl. Same as having soup ladled out for you from a communal bowl.

However, each to their own. The idea is to enjoy the meal, there's no requirement to eat it a certain way or stick to defined ingredients.

Right at the top of this thread someone posted that they still have nightmares when their grandfather put their spoon in their food. And demanded another plate to eat from. That's a phobia, not a normal reaction. Unless he had the plague of course.

Being asian, im used to the round table with the middle part elevated that you can rotate. We always have "serving spoons" even for our sauces. This is important because usually theres always 2 types of a sauce, spicy for adults and non-spicy for the kids.

I dont know if any of you have experienced this in school camp or so but we have 2 years military training (mandatory in public schools) and on special occassions we all eat together on a table covered with banana leaves (one leaf could be as big me). We put ALL our food there usually the rice in the middle and we dig in! with our bare hands...i miss those days.

Chopsticks--i only use when eating from a bowl.