Last week, during lunch at a fry-up-and-pho type Vietnamese café, I discovered an unpalatable truth about myself: I am an awful, detestable foreign food snob. There's no use denying it. When one of my friends politely asked the waitress for a fork, I actually felt myself wince with embarrassment.

The cutlery swiftly arrived, without a hint of condescension, and, as the rest of us smugly shovelled in noodles with our chopsticks (all no doubt silently congratulating ourselves on our skills), someone else remarked that you could tell a lot about a person by the way they held their sticks. Only children and peasants grasped them anywhere but the very top, she claimed. We looked down, and simultaneously realised the truth. For all our airs and graces, none of us were any more sophisticated than the average Vietnamese three-year-old.



Of course, chopsticks aren't appropriate everywhere east of Kathmandu: sushi, for example, is properly a finger food. Picking it up with your hands helps you to appreciate its delicate texture, allows the chef to vary the density of the rice according to the type of fish, and makes life a whole lot easier for the people who clean the tables. But now we've got the hang of the damn things, it seems we're determined to use them, on sushi, on spring rolls ... I've even seen people demanding a pair in Thai restaurants despite the fact that in Bangkok they prefer a fork and spoon.

And it's not just the exotic flavours of the east which get us in a (daikon) pickle: 20 years ago, the received wisdom was that "the only graceful and satisfying way to eat real Italian spaghetti … is … with a large soup spoon and fork". It's since emerged that, like hinged chopsticks in China, in Italy, "spoons are for children, amateurs and people with bad table manners in general". These days most of us have mastered the art of twirling it against the plate instead, but debate still rages about whether it's more 'authentic' to pick up a slice of pizza with one's hands – or just more American.

Come clean. Are there any terrible cross-cultural faux pas that make you wince in shame at the perpetrator, yourself, or both? Shouldn't we all be free to eat in the way that feels most natural to us?