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Dining Etiquette	Table Manner Basics	General Rules of Conduct
Guest Etiquette	Serving and Being Served, a Few Pointers	Wine Etiquette

Since anyone wishing to integrate himself into a group must eat with it, there is no surer way of marking off those who are in and those out than by food etiquette.

The order in which foods are eaten, which really does not matter, becomes highly ritualistic: Soup, fish, poultry, meat, dessert (which echoes the process of evolution) becomes a standard. Sweet should not be eaten before savory, and rarely (in France never) with. The French eat salad after the main dish, the Americans rigidly before; the English, to the disgust of both, put it on the same plate as the (cold) meat. In the East, it is more common to serve all the food together, often in communal dishes, and allow a wide sampling of different items. In the more individualistic West, place settings are rigidly set of from each other, and so are “courses.” The serving of wine with food becomes even more rigidly a matter of protocol, and operates to mark off differences of status within classes: those who “know” wine and those who do not.”