http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/bo...ower.html?_r=0

Reviewed by DWIGHT GARNER
DEC. 13, 2016

First paragraphs:

We no-nonsense Americans have long sneered at fussy Old World etiquette. One senators account of a meal with George Washington during his presidency included this observation: €œAt every interval of eating or drinking he played on the table with a fork or knife, like a drumstick.€�

Yet we understand why civility and courtesy matter. As Arthur M. Schlesinger wrote in his study of advice books, €œLearning How to Behave€� (1946), €œEven the outward motions imply a certain kindliness and consideration for others.€� Mr. Schlesinger added that manners dont €œcomplicate social life as much as they simplify it.€� Good manners arent snobby but egalitarian. Theyre free to all.

Jeremiah Tower, the author of €œTable Manners: How to Behave in the Modern World and Why Bother,€� is not the first person you would expect to deliver a book about decorum. In the 1970s, when he was the co-owner (alongside Alice Waters) and executive chef of Chez Panisse, the venerable restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., he was the food worlds best-known libertine, snorting cocaine in the kitchen while imbibing magnums of Sauternes...

(snip)


Here's what caught my eye:

....He drops a precision strike on so-called palate-cleansing courses, like sorbets: €œAll that untimely ice is a vicious attack on ones palate and a fraudulent attempt to put class into a meal. Just serving it shows that you dont know what you are doing.€�...


Well, he's a chef, so I assume he knows what he's talking about IF we're planning a meal to impress someone we don't know well. Otherwise, what's the big deal, if the host happens to like sorbet? No one has to eat dessert, last I heard.

Of course, maybe he's talking about serving it BETWEEN courses, but I've never heard of that.


Lenona.