Eating outside of your comfort zone — especially at a fancy restaurant — can be a nerve-wracking experience.
Recently, Twitter users @blgtylr and @Nicole_Cliffe got people tweeting about the cringiest faux pas they've ever made while eating — and their stories will make you want to never eat anything new ever again:
1. Like this wine story the waiter is probably still telling:
@Nicole_Cliffe A waiter once told me a nice wine 'pairs' well with a certain food. I took a sip and said to the waiter 'Wow, you can really taste the PEARS' - my date literally face palmed
2. Ditto for this one:
@Nicole_Cliffe The first time I ordered wine at a fancy restaurant in college and they did the little pour for you to taste/confirm it is up to snuff I went full Oliver Twist and was like “oh....... is this glass just very big???? That seems like not very much wine!!!!!”
3. This edamame nightmare:
@blgtylr @Nicole_Cliffe The first time I tried edamame I was 18 years old and with a group of cool older kids. I didn’t know you DONT EAT THE OUTSIDE SKIN so I sat there for 15 min chewing that gross piece of sinuous vegetable and NO ONE SAID ANYTHING TO ME!
4. And this dessert disaster:
@blgtylr @Nicole_Cliffe As a teen went to a faux Irish place at Universal Studios Orlando for food. They brought out a dessert trolley at the end and my mum insisted on taking the one she wanted from the trolley. The server offered to bring her a "fresh" one, but she was insistent. They were plastic.
5. This husband's cringeworthy moment that probably still wakes him in the dead of night:
@Nicole_Cliffe On our honeymoon at a fancy Fiji resort, a server was walking around the pool handing out slices of watermelon on toothpicks. He held one out a bit awkwardly for my husband, and my husband panicked, leaned in, & ate the watermelon straight off the toothpick in the guy's hand.
6. And this poor husband who equally embarrassed himself in front of his wife:
@blgtylr @Nicole_Cliffe A story is as old as the hills. Legendary in my family: parents were young, at dinner party for Navy officers. My Dad, from a family of mill workers, asked the hostess would she please pass the “little pieces of toast.” Didn’t know from “croutons.” My mother sank into the floor.
7. This cocktail-party newbie's horror story:
@blgtylr @Nicole_Cliffe Me at 1st cocktail party. There was a dish of what looked like almonds? I took a couple and popped them in my mouth. They were not almonds. It was a communal discard bowl for the pits from the fancy olives. That's right. Olive pits spat from the mouths of god-only-knows who.
8. This menu mistake — on a dinner with clients, no less!
@antonycourtney @blgtylr @Nicole_Cliffe I was 29. Fancy Italian restaurant with clients and my now-husband. I ordered carpaccio with gusto. He gave me a very strange look which I couldn’t decipher. When my meal arrived, everything was illuminated.
Carpaccio = thinly sliced raw beef, so...yeah.
9. And this raw-meat awkwardness that went in a different direction:
@blgtylr @Nicole_Cliffe Friends made a point of getting tuxed up, and asking maîtres d (until they got an affirmative), if they 1: had Steak Tartare. 2: Could get it well done. Number 6 blinked, tilted his head, “If Messieurs, desire steak tartare well done, it shall be well done”. Said it was great.
10. This unfortunate tail tale:
@Nicole_Cliffe Finished my first plate of shrimp, looked up, and realized everyone else had the tails on their plates.
11. This expensive ordering error:
@Nicole_Cliffe I ordered a $79 glass of Champagne because I thought I was ordering a bottle of it.
12. This fancy soup story that will make you gasp:
@Nicole_Cliffe At my first High Table at Oxford, I moistened my fingers in what I thought was a finger bowl. It turns out to have been consomme. Worse: my neighbor's consomme. He didn't notice me doing it, and he drank it before I could warn him.
13. And this awkward moment from a poor guy was probably trying to order the cheapest thing on the menu, lol:
@VelocityWong @Nicole_Cliffe Ha! I wasn’t there for that one, but: A friend who was a fancy waiter had someone order the corkage fee, pronouncing it cork-AHZH fay, and my dude helped him save face, saying, “I’m so sorry, sir, but we’re all out of the corkage fee.”
A "corkage fee" isn't food — it's what a restaurant charges people to bring in their own wine to drink (instead of buying wine from the restaurant). 😂
14. This Mexican-food mistake:
@blgtylr @Nicole_Cliffe For the first 30 years of my life, I thought I didn't like tamales. My friend convinced me to try one. The pitifully aghast expression on my friend's face when I wrinkled my nose and bit into it, husk and all, will haunt me forever. "Oh, sweetie..."
15. And this Mexican-dessert doh!:
@blgtylr @Nicole_Cliffe I once mistook a stick of cinnamon (meant to flavor apple cider) for a churro...
16. This kid's "that's not what that's called" humiliation:
@blgtylr @Nicole_Cliffe I was so schooled by being served octopus I yelled out “my god, they left the testicles on!” The people I was dining with were horrified. I was 14. Humiliation that burns many years later.
17. And this very relatable mistake on a first trip to a sushi restaurant:
@blgtylr @Nicole_Cliffe First date, she suggested sushi, also a first. I ordered what she ordered. When it arrived, I immediately chopsticked a little ball of unidentifiable green mush into my mouth. Teaspoon of wasabi hits my mouth straight, felt like a whole molar exploded.
Eating out like:
