Table manners are as unique to a culture as the food before you—though not always as easy to navigate
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You have good manners, right? After all, you (usually) keep your elbows off the table and say "Please pass the salt." But when you head abroad, things get a little more complicated. Case in point: Rest your chopsticks the wrong way, and you might remind a Japanese friend of their grandmother's funeral.
In Thailand, don't put food in your mouth with a fork.
Instead, when eating a dish with cooked rice, use your fork only to push food onto your spoon. A few exceptions: Some northern and northeastern Thai dishes are typically eaten with the hands—you'll know you've encountered such a dish if the rice used is glutinous or "sticky."
In Japan, never stick your chopsticks upright in your rice.
Between bites, your chopsticks should be placed together right in front of you, parallel to the edge of the table—and nowhere else, says Mineko Takane Moreno, Japanese cooking instructor and co-author of Sushi for Dummies. (If there is a chopsticks rest, you use it, putting the tips you've been eating with on the rest.)
In the Middle East, India and parts of Africa, don't eat with your left hand.
In South India, you shouldn't even touch the plate with your left hand while eating. That's largely because the left hand is associated with, um, bodily functions, so it's considered to be dirty.
At a traditional feast in Georgia, it's rude to sip your wine.
At what Georgians call a supra (traditional feast), wine is drunk only at toasts. So wait for those... and then down the whole glass at once.
In Mexico, never eat tacos with a fork and knife.
Worried about spilling refried beans and salsa all over your front? Tough. Mexicans think that eating tacos with a fork and knife looks silly and, worse, snobby—kind of like eating a burger with silverware. So be polite: Eat with your hands.
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