Before a French-style wedding meal, I couldn't even remember the word for the knives, forks and spoons. Cutlery. Right. A promising start.
The bigger worry was which piece to use first. A row of forks can make dinner feel like a practical exam before you've tasted anything.
Then I looked at the table: 1 knife, 1 fork. That was it.
No outside fork, no inside fork
At a formal setting with several pieces, you generally work from the outside in as the courses arrive. Here, there was nothing to compare. If there's only one fork, that's the fork you use.
When the staff replace or add utensils as needed, you don't have to figure out the next choice yourself. You can't accidentally choose the fish fork for the meat when there's no selection to make.
No cutlery quiz? What a relief.
I hadn't suddenly mastered etiquette
The table had simply removed the choices I could get wrong. That was the helpful part.
“Here are 6 pieces; remember the rules” is a lot more work than “here's the one you need now.”
A factory can shape a fitting so the wrong part won't go in. A website can make the right button easy to spot instead of adding more instructions. At this table, the same idea meant putting out one of each.
The cooking can be elaborate without making eating complicated. Instead of wondering which fork to pick, I could think, “This tastes good.”
The easiest way to avoid failing a cutlery test was to leave the test off the menu.
