Knife and fork vs. eating with your hands

Regarding use of knife and fork, do you switch hands or not when you use the knife to cut up something? I am a hand-switcher. I grew up using my dominant hand (left) for the fork, but switch hands when cutting up food (right hand has the fork to hold the food; left hand has the knife).

Apparently switching hands is an American thing. My English friends do not switch hands. This issue came up with the Monty Python team. The Pythons were filming on location in Torquay and stayed at the Gleneagles Hotel. The hotel's rude and acerbic owner was the inspiration for Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers. Among the rude things the owner did was to criticize and mock Terry Gilliam (the American Python) for switching hands when using knife and fork.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

I also am a switcher. Pick up fork with left hand, use knife with right hand, cut, put knife down, move fork from left to right, eat.

It's inefficient. I've tried to learn to shovel things on the back of a fork like the British do, but I can't learn it. And I'm a fast eater so it's probably best that I do the slow thing anyway.

Restaurants refusing to follow a patron's wishes is a tough one. I can see both sides of that - on one side patron is paying and wants what they want, but on the other side, a fine dining restaurant does food the way they think it should be done and declining to alter it to order is understandable. I once saw a diner ask for ketchup in a French restaurant and they were refused although the maitre d' did offer to bring them some other course - they wanted to dump the Heinz on seared foie gras.....

That's in an old "I Love Lucy" episode! She orders snails and then wants ketchup to cover them up.

I am not a switcher. I've learned enough dexterity with my left hand to get food to my mouth three out of four times.

I am a 'when in Rome' guy. If the chef said it's good like this, well, after all, I'm paying for his opinion....