Fascinating Food Customs from Around the World

Most North Americans might think nothing of adding grated Parmesan to a plate of shrimp linguine, or any type of seafood pasta, but this is unheard of in Italy, where the idea of combining cheese and seafood is seen as a culinary catastrophe.

In South Korea, it’s seen as a sign of great respect to refrain from beginning to eat until the oldest person at the table has had his or her first bite. Only then can everyone else join in.

Leaving your chopsticks sticking upright in a bowl of rice is seen as gauche in China, as that’s how ceremonial rice is typically left as an offering at funerals. It’s also seen as the height of rudeness to wave chopsticks in someone’s direction, or even to leave them on the table pointing directly at someone else.

You probably think forks should be used to spear food from your plate in order to place it in your mouth. Not so in Thailand, however, where it’s considered crude to eat this way, when everybody knows the only use for this utensil is to push food onto a spoon, which is then placed into the mouth.

Italians will give you the evil eye if you order a frothy cappuccino after dinner, as drinking milk after a meal is seen as hindering indigestion. While ordering a milky beverage after a meal in Italy won’t incite outrage, it will out you as a tourist.

When drinking tea in Britain, there are a lot of rules to observe — many involving the teaspoon. For example, when stirring tea, the spoon should never touch the sides of the cup, thus avoiding that annoying tinkling sound (and possibly chipping fine-bone china). Also, never leave the spoon in the cup; place the spoon on the saucer like a proper tea drinker.

Even if chicken drumsticks are on the menu, in Chile it’s customary to use a knife and fork to eat, well, pretty much everything. Food, it’s believed, should never be eaten with one’s hands.

In Japan and India, cleaning one’s plate is seen as honouring your host, expressing how much you enjoyed the meal. But this isn’t true everywhere. In China, for example, it’s seen as a message that your host didn’t feed you enough, and it’s considered rude to not leave at least a bit of uneaten food on the plate.

If served a whole fish in China, the worst thing you can do is flip it over to get at the other side. Flipping a fish is superstitiously known to symbolize capsizing a boat — never a good thing.