How to Eat Bread, Cheese and Soup

Soup

Push your soup spoon from the front of the bowl away from you to catch a mouthful. Bring this to your mouth and tip the soup in from the side of the spoon; don't try eating with your spoon at 90 degrees to your mouth. Don't suck or slurp. Tilt the bowl away from you in order to get the last few spoonfuls. Put your spoon down while you break off pieces of bread. Leave your spoon in the bowl, not on the side plate, when you have finished.

Bread

Bread rolls are eaten from a side plate to the left of a place setting. You should break your roll into bite-sized pieces that are eaten individually. Break off a new piece for each mouthful, rather than dividing the roll into chunks in advance. Butter, if desired, is taken from the butter dish and placed on the edge of your side plate. Each piece, or mouthful, is individually buttered.

The same applies to the artisan sliced bread often found in restaurants and to melba toast. Hot toast may be buttered all in one go but if it is to be spread with something such pâté for a first course, follow the bread roll method as above. Brown bread and butter, served with smoked salmon, is ready buttered on the table on a plate, usually cut into halves diagonally.

Cheese

Always use the cheese knife provided to cut cheese from a communal board, not your own butter knife. Round cheese must be treated like a cake: cut triangular portions. With a wedge such as Brie, cut slivers lengthways. Never, ever cut the nose off a triangular wedge. Stilton is usually sliced, but if a spoon is provided, scoop a portion of cheese from the middle. Rind may be eaten or left, as you wish. Bite-sized morsels of cheese and biscuit should be brought to the mouth, rather than biting off mouthfuls from a great hunk of cheese on an entire cracker. It is fine to use fingers to eat hard non-messy cheese with no biscuits or bread, perhaps with celery or grapes. Cut it into small pieces first.