Dining Etiquette - What to do with particular foods
 

Candy
Take one piece at a time.  Remove the paper frill with the candy. Never leave behind evidence of how much you have taken.  Take the one you touched.

Chips and Dip
Never return a partial chip from which you have taken a bite to the dip container.

Raw Vegetables and Dip (Crudite)
Never return a partial piece of raw vegetables from which you have taken a bite to the dip container.

Éclairs
Éclairs should be eaten from a plate with a fork, not as a finger food.

Cherries & Berries
Put a berry in your mouth and pull the stem while holding the berry in your teeth. You may remove a pit from a cherry with your hand.

Stewed Fruits with Seeds or Pits
If you put it in your mouth with a spoon, the seed or pit should come out on your spoon. (Try to clean the pit before you put it back on your spoon.) Place the pits/seeds on the plate under the dish in which your fruit was served.

Olives with Pits
If you put the olive in your mouth with your hand, you may take the pit out with your hand.
Lay the pit on the edge of your plate.

Club Sandwiches
Remove the frilly pick and lay it on the edge of your plate. Eat the sandwich in sections. Don’t attempt to eat the sandwich with a fork. You may use a fork to eat whatever dropped out of the sandwich onto the plate.

Shish Kebab
If served for the meal on a metal skewer, hold the skewer by one end in the left hand while you slide the meat and vegetable cubes carefully onto the dinner plate using a fork in the right hand.

If served as an hors d’oeuvre on a wooden skewer, eat one piece of meat or vegetable at a time by holding the ingredient between your teeth and pulling the skewer out. It is not considered a finger food, so try not to use your fingers.

Spaghetti & Pasta
Use a fork, plant it on the plate, and gently twirl the pasta around the tines of the fork. When you have managed to twirl a small fork full, gently raise it to your mouth. The smaller the amount of pasta on your fork, the easier it is to get it to your mouth without splatters.

Fresh Fruits
Use a fork and knife to cut into bite-sized pieces, removing the pit or core, and eat with a fork.
For a banana, you will want to peel it entirely, then cut and eat with a fork.
Use a spoon to eat berries, although you may eat a grape using your hand.

Artichoke
Artichokes are usually served steamed with a dipping sauce. To eat it, pull off a leaf, dip it, scrape the flesh from the base of the leaf with your top teeth, and discard the leaf on the plate provided for that purpose. (Or you may encounter a special plate made with a central niche for the artichoke, a niche for a small bowl of sauce, and a sort of moat all around on which the leaves are to be discarded.) Continue eating the leaves until the prickly "choke" is revealed -- this is the point when it is clear you have a species of thistle in front of you. Switch to fork and knife, first to remove the choke, then to eat the heart and base.

Asparagus
Asparagus may be eaten with the fingers as long as it is not covered with sauce or otherwise prepared so it is too mushy to pick up easily. Of course, it is also just fine to use a fork and knife to eat asparagus, even when it is perfectly al dente and sauce-free.

Bacon
When bacon is cooked until it is very crisp, and there is no danger of getting the fingers wet with grease, it is okay to pick it up to eat it. This is an instance of practicality winning out over decorum, since trying to cut a crisp piece of bacon usually results in crushing it into shards that are quite difficult to get onto your fork.