I'm sad to say that this will be my last Table Manners column, since I am leaving to pursue another project. Plus, as the mom of a one-year-old, I am now usually the person committing the faux pas. It would be hypocritical of me to demand elegant behavior from others when, for example, I recently picked a booger from my child's nose while having a friend over to tea. (I'd like to say I did not then flick it on the floor.)

Nearly five years have elapsed since it was suggested to me that I write this column. At the time I said: "There's nothing to say about etiquette that Emily Post hasn't already said. It's a stodgy subject, and people just don't care." Boy, was I wrong. The first letter asked: If a friend gives you a food gift, such as cookies or leftovers, are you obliged to return the container? I had no idea that my answer—no—would be so wildly controversial. One reader emailed: "Helena, you are an idiot. ... To suggest that [people] steal their friends' containers ... is unbelievably WRONG ADVICE. How did you get this job. I'm feeling sorry for the spineless girls who listen to you." But his hatred didn't sting—I was delighted. Apparently, people did still care about etiquette. A lot.

In the beginning, I had many doubts about my expertise (as did my friends and loved ones, who pointed out that I ate salad with my fingers and forgot to RSVP). But readers seemed to believe that I knew what I was talking about. Their letters filled my inbox. Some had contemporary etiquette questions that Emily Post had never had to think about: "If I take a girl out to dinner, will I look cheap if I ask the server to apply my Groupon?" Some had questions that I couldn't answer because the answer was too obvious: "Is it permissible for children to be excused from the dinner table to use the bathroom, or should they be expected to 'hold it' until the meal is over?" And some had questions that were too big for me to answer: "I was in the U.S. Army for we'll just say a lot of years, and most of those years were spent in the woods or deployed to foreign countries. Now I would like to entertain the thought of dating and eventually settling down. Is there a book for this?"

For every reader who thought my opinion was worth asking, there was one who thought I was a moron, a bimbo, and/or an alcoholic. These readers were often witty and convincing. In 2007, I argued that bringing your lunch to work could hurt your chances of promotion. Chowhounds passionately defended the lunch brought from home—thrifty, healthy, and delicious—and I later retracted my advice. My most inflammatory column of all addressed the question of when women can use the men's bathroom in a restaurant. "Squirming in Line" wished to know: "if there's no line for the men's, and I'm desperate, I'll duck in there instead. Is that OK?" My answer: Yes, if it's a one-unit stall and there is therefore no chance of intruding on someone at the urinal. That column was published in 2009 and people are still disagreeing with it.

Why do people care about etiquette so much? I used to think it was because most of us learn about manners from our parents, and it's natural to get upset when others challenge beliefs that have been ingrained in us since childhood. This may be partly true; but really etiquette matters because it's about much more than place settings and thank-you notes. The restaurant-bathroom question is about feminism and what it means for women to have equal rights. The office-lunch question is about changing workplace politics.

Etiquette questions also intersect with personal politics, psychology, history, fashion, and much more. This is why the debate is often more interesting than the answer, and why you, my amazing readers, are the ones who have really made this column a success. Whether you love me or hate me—or, most typically, love to hate me—I've been awed by your intelligence, passion, and commitment to proper behavior. I will miss dishing out advice, but more than that, I will miss receiving it.

Dear Helena,
I am on a quest to find great sushi, but I have found dining at a sushi bar to be frustrating. I am bothered by this nagging sense that the chef is giving me his second-best work because he thinks I'm just another ignoramus, and is secretly judging me for my unwitting faux pas. I would like to know the "correct" way to behave at a sushi bar, so I can win the chef over and sample his masterpieces.
—Sushi Paranoiac

Dear Sushi Paranoiac,

Here's how to make the sushi chef into your new best friend:

Build a relationship.
The best way to learn about sushi is to find a great sushi chef and be loyal to him, says Trevor Corson, author of The Story of Sushi. "Your" sushi chef should also be someone who is willing to engage with customers. People are sometimes afraid to talk to sushi chefs, says Corson, because of "the stereotype of the mean sushi chef, like the recently retired 'Sushi Nazi' of LA. We misinterpret that meanness as authenticity." Some chefs are indeed curmudgeons, so keep looking until you find one who enjoys talking to customers. Unless you enjoy being abused, that is.

Dine at off hours.
The chef will be more willing to chat if he's not slammed. "I always tell people that the best time to eat at a sushi bar is 6:30 on a Tuesday night," says Corson. Ask the chef to guide you through the menu or, better yet, make what he thinks is best.

Don't fiddle with your chopsticks.
Rubbing your chopsticks together in order to remove splinters is like saying, "Your chopsticks suck," says Hajime Sato, owner of Mashiko in Seattle. Needless to say, this behavior is rude. In fact, when there are splinters, it's often the Western diner who is causing the problem, not cheap chopsticks. Corson explains: "We [Westerners] stick the chopsticks in our mouths and suck the food off, which is a great way to get splinters. Watch the Japanese eating with chopsticks, and you'll see the chopsticks never even touch their lips." Sato's pet peeve is "people who use their chopsticks to drum on the bar."

Be sparing with condiments.
Don't slather your sushi with soy sauce or wasabi. Fine sushi is designed to showcase the delicate flavors of fresh fish, but you won't be able to appreciate this if you have too heavy a hand with the condiments. Furthermore, the chef will treat you accordingly. "Chefs have told me as soon as they see customers dumping wasabi in their soy sauce they'll stop serving that customer their really good, freshest fish," says Corson. Putting pickled ginger on top of sushi also makes the chef's skin crawl. "It's supposed to be a palate cleanser," says Sato. He says the problem is that Westerners are used to thinking of sushi as akin to a burrito or a sandwich.

Don't get your chef drunk.
There's no need to buy your chef a beer. According to Sato, a serious sushi chef doesn't drink on the job. Not only does drinking compromise the fine motor skills you need to construct great sushi, it also messes up your palate. He says, "You can't taste the salt after a couple of drinks." As for tipping, it's fine to tip as you would in any other type of restaurant: when you pay your check. It's unlikely that the chef is going to take offense if you leave $20 on the bar, but it's not expected. "In Japan we don't tip anybody," says Sato.

Dear Helena,
I was at a restaurant the other night and asked the server to turn the music down. She seemed irritated. She launched into a long speech about how the owners like the music loud to create "ambiance." In the end she did turn it down a notch (or so she claimed, I couldn't really tell the difference). She acted like she'd done us a huge favor. Were we rude to make this request?
—Ringing Ears

Dear Ringing Ears,
As well as drowning out conversation, overly loud music can make you feel like you're being manipulated. You've probably heard that loud music makes people eat faster and drink more. A recent UK study found that loud music can actually make alcohol taste sweeter.

But annoying as the volume may be to you, it's likely that the restaurateur has carefully considered what music to play and how loud to play it. Some restaurants purchase programs from companies like Muzak or Audiostiles, but others craft playlists that are the musical equivalent of house-made charcuterie or pickles. Some restaurants even tailor their playlists to the time of day or day of the week. Colin Camac, service director for New York's Fatty Crab (which has three locations), says the restaurants tend to have four playlists: "Early Evening, Mid–Dinner Rush, Late-Night, and Saturday-Crazy." If the room seems to lack ambiance, staff might switch between playlists, trying to find the right tune for the moment. So asking a server to change the music in any way is tantamount to asking her to bring you a different menu or get rid of the unisex bathroom: The music is part of the whole restaurant package, and if you don't like it, you should probably turn around as soon as you walk in the door.

But you can always ask for the music to be turned down. It's not a rude request, and if it's a slow night your wish may even be granted. But be prepared for the answer to be no. Fatty Crab's Upper West Side location is known for being particularly noisy, yet Camac says he would simply tell the diner: "I'm really sorry, but people come here for this type of experience."

It Might Not Be the Music
It's worth noting that if you're having trouble hearing your companions, the volume of the music might not be the problem. Echoes may be the real cause of your irritation, and there's not much the server can do about them, since they are essentially caused by the décor. Soft surfaces of course absorb sound, but when there are multiple hard surfaces, a single sound can bounce off one surface after another, causing multiple echoes. Unfortunately, hard surfaces have been in vogue for the last decade or so. Kellen Beaver, a sales consultant at soundproofing company SoundproofCow.com, explains: "For about 10 years, it's been concrete slabs instead of hardwood tables, tile floors instead of wooden ones."

Echoes compromise conversation even more than high volume. Why? According to Anthony Grimani, president of PMI, an acoustical firm, the part of the brain that distinguishes between sounds and echoes developed in prehistory. We evolved with this skill in order to defend ourselves from predators. "Imagine if a predator is after you, sound is bouncing off the cave walls, and you have to figure out exactly where it is," says Grimani.

When we hear a loud sound, our brains identify it ("loud electronica," for example) and then can choose to ignore it. But according to Grimani, we can't switch off the "ancient ear-brain system" that sorts out sounds and echoes. So if echoes are the source of your auditory discomfort, turning the music down won't help as much as you think. Next time you go out to dinner, consider picking a place with carpeted floors, even if it has loud music. The place with exposed-brick walls and poured-concrete tabletops might look good, but you'll have to work twice as hard at conversation.

Dear Helena,
Last year some friends invited me to what was billed as a "casual Seder." This turned out to mean over four hours of religious readings and questions, and many different courses. It took so long that my wife and I left before dessert. This year we have not been invited back and my wife claims it was because we left early, and also because I opted to pass on the gefilte fish. My position is (a) gefilte fish is widely accepted to be a divisive food and it's therefore OK to refuse it, and (b) the hosts should have been more up front with us about how long the event was going to be. I'm grateful they invited us, and we had a great time, but after four hours we'd had enough. Were we rude?
—Everyone Likes Matzo Ball Soup

Dear Matzo Ball Soup,
At a regular dinner party, you can leave after four hours, provided you have a token excuse. But at a Seder, it's rude to leave before the end. If you do, your host will be offended, says Joan Nathan, author of Jewish Cooking in America. She herself has only once left a Seder early—but that was because it went on until 2 a.m. Last year, two guests left her Seder before dessert, and they won't be invited back. (Nathan had slaved to make a "huge dessert buffet.") More importantly, says David Levy, managing editor of JewishBoston.com, those who skip out early may miss important elements of the celebration, such as singing Passover songs and opening the door to invite in the prophet Elijah, symbolizing the hope for peace.

So how long should you schedule for a Seder? There's no one-size-fits-all answer to this question because, as Nathan puts it, "there are so many ways of being Jewish," which means there are many ways of celebrating Passover. Some families may abbreviate the liturgy, while others, says Levy, "will add ... things that speak more to contemporary experience, like talk about the Holocaust or Israel," or devote a lot of time to "asking and answering questions," a traditional part of a Seder. So how are you supposed to know if you're looking at a five-hour marathon or a quick retelling of the Passover story? Just ask, says Nathan. But no one asks how long an event will last unless they expect it to last too long. So my advice is to add a reason why you're asking, like "Our babysitter wants to know what time we'll be back."

HOST GIFTS
While on the subject of Passover etiquette, I should talk about suitable host gifts. As some Chowhounds point out in this thread, it's best not to bring food. You may think you understand the rules—no grains, no legumes—but there's so much variation in different families' dietary restrictions that you risk messing up. For instance, you may think your flourless peanut butter cookies will be a hit, but not everyone eats peanuts on Passover, as the peanut is technically a legume. If your hosts are very religious, they will have removed every speck of grain and every legume from their home—an exhaustive process that includes completely emptying the kitchen cupboards and vacuuming the cutlery drawers, says Susie Fishbein, author of Kosher by Design. It's best if you don't undermine their efforts by unwittingly bringing in a forbidden food. The ideal gift, says Fishbein, is a bottle of wine labeled "Kosher for Passover": "Part of the ritual is drinking four glasses of wine."

As for refusing gefilte fish, your wife is right that this was a faux pas. A Seder is like a regular dinner party in this respect, says Levy: You eat what you're given, whether you like it or not. At the very least, you must take a few bites. This is true whether the food in question is one of the symbolic Passover foods, like parsley or hard-boiled eggs, or simply a traditional Passover food, like gefilte fish. You can always wash it down with copious gulps of Passover wine.

Dear Helena,
I don't want to sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but I feel like things just aren't what they used to be. People are getting ruder and have less and less respect for those around them. They talk loudly on the phone in coffee shops, regardless of whether those around them want to hear about their dinner plans, adventures in online dating, or the bunion on their foot. Parents today apparently don't care to teach their kids manners, since they let them run wild in restaurants. I feel like modern etiquette is in decline. Don't you agree?
—Grumpy Old Man

Dear Grumpy Old Man,
People have been lamenting the decline of manners pretty much since Hesiod vetoed cutting your fingernails at the table, about 2,700 years ago (according to The Rituals of Dinner by Margaret Visser). But I've been reporting from the front lines of etiquette for nearly five years, and I've got news for you: We're not getting ruder. We're getting more polite.

Exhibit A: increased respect for those on special diets. Once, many restaurants offered no vegetarian options, and if you asked the server which items were gluten-free, the reaction was a blank stare. Hosts didn't inquire about guests' dietary preferences in advance, and if you didn't eat, say, meat, your only option was to hide it in your napkin. Nowadays, it's OK to notify your host of your dietary quirks, and more often than not, your host will ask you if there's anything you can't eat. And if you tell a restaurant server you are gluten-free, he won't write you off as a total neurotic. He may even ask the kitchen to cook the rice pasta you've brought with you.

As for vegetarians and vegans, Alex Bury, a fund-raiser at the Humane Society of the United States, has noticed a dramatic improvement in how accommodating other people are. As recently as 1995, they were downright rude. "If I brought a veggie burger to put on the grill ... people would say, 'How could you eat that?,' make vomiting noises, or joke about 'killing a juicy animal.'" People often tried to argue her into eating a burger or steak. These days, hosts are usually happy to accommodate her or let her bring her own food. And vegetarians at formal dinners are no longer treated as second-class citizens, says Carla Ruben, owner of Creative Edge Parties in Manhattan and a caterer for 30 years: "Twenty years ago, the vegetarian was the kooky college nephew; nowadays it could be the chairman of the board."

Exhibit B: the decline in cigarette smoking. Once, people smoked in bars, restaurants, and even on airplanes. They smoked so much that Emily Post felt the need to point out that gentlemen should remove their cigarettes, cigars, or pipes from their mouths when speaking. Smokers usually asked permission when smoking in other people's homes, but they expected the answer to be, "Yes." "My mother always provided an ashtray," says Peggy Knickerbocker, author of Simple Soirees and a longtime hostess.

Today, smokers wouldn't even dare to ask. Sean Driscoll, owner of Glorious Food in Manhattan, has been in the catering business for 40 years. Whereas once smokers expected to light up inside, nowadays, he says, hosts pre-emptively refuse permission. "You can go into the foyer of someone's Park Avenue apartment and there'll be a huge bouquet of flowers, and leaning against it there'll be a sign saying, 'Thank you for not smoking.'" Now that smoking has been banned from restaurants and bars, it's easy to forget that there was a time when even nonsmokers came home with their clothes and hair saturated with the smell of cigarettes.

I anticipate many of you will disagree with me, and point out that rude cell phone behavior has increased, just as the culture of RSVPing and writing thank-you notes has deteriorated. These things may be true. But I believe etiquette exists primarily to show respect to our fellow humans and put them at ease. And what could be a more important way to do that than to accommodate their health and nutrition?

Dear Helena,
Last Saturday I went to a new pizza place and it was packed. The waiter asked if we wanted drinks and we said, "No, just tap water." When we ordered our pizzas, he asked us a second time if we wanted drinks. We said no again and he basically checked out for the rest of the night. Should we have felt guilty about taking up a table on a busy night without ordering drinks?
—Healthy Liver

Dear Healthy Liver,
Are you really surprised that big spenders get better service? Servers do work for tips, you know.

Of course, servers won't admit this kind of discrimination on the record. The official line is that all diners are potential repeat customers—not to mention online reviewers—so everyone gets the same attention, whether they are a couple who split a salad or a table of six who order everything on the menu. But once I grant servers anonymity, they confess the truth: On any given night, the prospect of a big tip trumps long-term considerations. As Michael Nagrant, dining critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, says: "There is a direct correlation between the amount of Bordeaux you order and the quality of service you receive."

Alcohol has a high profit margin, but that's not the only reason servers prefer drinkers. Nagrant explains: "Drinkers spend more, and not just on booze." A drinker, Nagrant included, is more likely to order a cheese course, dessert, a postdinner drink, and some coffee. "The kind of person who doesn't order alcohol [usually] won't order all of those things," says Nagrant. "Nothing breeds hunger like drinking." Drinking also breeds nonchalance toward long-term consequences. Who cares what the check is? Let's live a little and order a round of 30-year-old Cognac!

I'll get in trouble with some readers if I say that drinkers have more fun, so let's just say that drinkers often end up in a more convivial mood—and so leave a big tip (unless, of course, they're so drunk they forget to tip altogether).

Obviously, you're perfectly entitled to order as little as you want—though on a busy night, you should avoid "camping" at your table. But you get what you pay for, and in this case, that means less attentive service. Servers may peg you as abstemious or even cheap. Furthermore, nondrinkers can make annoying beverage requests, one server told me. "Hot water with lemon is the bane of everyone's existence": It's time-consuming and free. In other words, the server doesn't get a tip for it.

So yes, unless you order six bottles of San Pellegrino and ask for fresh truffles to be shaved over your pizza, as a nondrinker, you'll inevitably get less attention. But look on the bright side: You won't wake up with a hangover.

Dear Helena,
I'm making dinner for my girlfriend this Valentine's Day. I want to make something that will be delicious, but will also create the right romantic atmosphere. What do you suggest?
—Master Chef & Seducer

Dear Master Chef,
Festive meals usually include rich, extravagant foods that we don't eat every day, like fine cuts of meat, butter, cheese, and chocolate, not to mention plenty of alcohol. That's fine if it's Thanksgiving or Christmas and you can undo the top button on your pants and veg out afterward. But on Valentine's Day, after-dinner activities are more, er, athletically demanding. So you need to plan a menu that will leave your girlfriend feeling energized. This isn't manipulation; it's simple good manners.

In order to figure out what to serve, we need to first understand what is wrong with the traditional meal. The dinner on offer at the Addison at the Grand Del Mar in San Diego may be more elaborate than most, but the ingredients—meat, cheese, chocolate—are typical Valentine's Day fare. The menu weaves its way through smoked pork agnolotti, squab rôti, and a cheese course before ending in a chocolate tart with homemade marshmallows. Dr. Melina Jampolis, a physician nutrition specialist, is unimpressed: "Heavy foods that are more slowly digested, like meat, are going to impair your friskiness. ... A large meal that is high in carbs will put you to sleep, instead of putting you in the mood."

So what should you serve? Jessica Crandall, a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, recommends combining "good" carbs and proteins "for better endurance later on." If you want to avoid feeling bloated and tired, then the protein serving size should be "no bigger than your cell phone." "Good carbs," she explains, comprise fruits, vegetables, and, of course, whole grains.

This probably all sounds a bit too healthful. A carefully measured portion of poached chicken breast will make your girlfriend feel like she's at a weight-loss spa. You want to cook a meal that will make her feel like you really made an effort.

So what can you serve that is celebratory but won't weigh you down? Fish is ideal. Ronna Welsh, owner of Purple Kale Kitchenworks, a cooking school in Brooklyn, suggests skate wings. She recommends that instead of serving depressing brown rice you choose a whole grain like polenta, finished with a really good extra-virgin olive oil instead of butter. (Fish with polenta is a traditional Venetian dish.) On the side? A watercress salad, says Welsh.

As for dessert, Crandall suggests chocolate-dipped strawberries, which are easy to make yourself. "Chocolate has caffeine and chemicals that will make you a little bit more alert," explains Dr. Jampolis, and will "offset the more sedating effects of alcohol." (Apparently, all dietitians love chocolate-covered strawberries.) And the meal must of course include alcohol, though in moderation. If you want to maintain energy levels, "no more than a glass for women, two for men," says Jampolis.

If this menu still seems too punitive, then do as Crandall suggests and "engage in activity beforehand." Then you can eat and drink as much as you want.

Dear Helena,
The other night I was sitting at a bar having a glass of wine and catching up with my girlfriend, and this guy leaned over to listen to my conversation, clearly eavesdropping. He let out chuckles from time to time. We tried to ignore him. Then he leaned over and abruptly told us that he thought we were "boring." He was clearly drunk, and the bartender could see he was bothering us. Was it the bartender's responsibility to cut him off?
—Stay Out of My Conversation

Dear Stay Out,
Some people act like oafs whether or not they have had anything to drink, and the bartender is powerless to do anything about that. But bartenders are obliged to stop serving alcohol when customers are obviously trashed. For one thing, according to "dram shop law," bars and/or individual bartenders may be held liable if a drunk harms a third party after leaving the premises. (Exact laws vary by state.) And of course drunks can cause plenty of harm while they're still at the bar. Mike Ryan, head bartender at Sable Kitchen & Bar in Chicago, recalls a recent guest who drank seven or eight vodka martinis, then offended two female customers by suggesting a threesome.

So how does a bartender decide when someone has had too much? That decision shouldn't be based on quantity consumed, says Ryan. "There are no set rules, like people can only have five drinks. ... Some people are wasted after one cocktail; some can drink seven drinks in a row and still stand up." So the poster in this Chowhound thread was right to be annoyed: The bartender seems to have cut him off purely because he had consumed three drinks in a little over an hour.

In fact, the cutoff should be based on behavior. The symptoms of extreme drunkenness are pretty obvious: slurred speech, glassy eyes, and the loss of fine motor control.

Curtailing a customer's booze intake is a three-step process:

1. Anticipate. The bartender can ward off trouble—especially if he has seen the customer overdo it before—by taking a really, really long time to serve them. If the bar is busy, says Ryan, "they usually find someone to talk to and forget they've ordered a beer." If the bar is half-empty, it's trickier to explain why you're taking half an hour to make a vodka tonic.

2. Deflect. "Saying, 'No, you're trashed,' is a good way to provoke them," says Ryan. Instead of a direct refusal, Ryan prefers to "slide over a glass of water or Coca-Cola and say, 'Why don't you try this for now?'" Jeffrey Morgenthaler, bar manager of Clyde Common in Portland, Oregon, says he has to cut someone off about once a month; he serves coffee or food on the house, or offers to pay for a cab home.

3. Stand firm. Most drunks take the hint, says Ryan. "Usually if they order beer and get water, they say, 'Am I that drunk?' and I say, 'Yeeeeeah, sorry.'" But every so often, "they're feeling great and they just want to keep the party going." Some of the worst offenders are wedding guests, who frequent Ryan's bar because it's adjacent to a hotel. These people may have been drinking since lunchtime. "I've had to physically throw people out a couple of times. ... I've had to cut off the father of the bride because he was drooling on himself. He said, 'I spent all this money in the hotel. I demand a drink.' I was like, 'Well, you got what you paid for: You're trashed.'"

Dear Helena,
The other day I went to a restaurant with an open kitchen. I was psyched because I got what I consider to be prime seating, at the counter where I could watch the chefs at work. But they ignored me, not even bothering with a smile or nod. At one point, I even noticed one of them sending a text. If chefs aren't going to acknowledge customers or put on a show, they might as well be behind closed doors. What's the etiquette for staff behavior in an open kitchen?
—At Least Put on Clean Whites

Dear At Least Put on Clean Whites,
Contrary to what you seem to think, sitting at the counter of an open kitchen is not equivalent to being an audience member in an episode of Molto Mario. You shouldn't expect the cooks to banter with you or guide you through their mise en place. This is because, unlike TV chefs, they have actual cooking to do, and a lot of it.

So don't lean over and say, "What is the brown stuff in the squeeze bottle?" or "I'd like to add that fried-shrimp thing to my order." This is annoying and distracting. Nonetheless, diners do it all the time, says Richie Nakano, a chef who has worked almost exclusively in open kitchens. "Pretty much every single night a guest would try to talk to you or sometimes order food or drinks from you. ... You learn to smile, nod, and break eye contact and go back to what you were doing."

But you should expect an open kitchen to be cleaner than a restaurant kitchen typically is. Nobody should double-dip a tasting spoon in front of you (even though it's common practice behind closed doors). When Nakano worked at Va de Vi in Walnut Creek, California, there were strict rules about hygiene, he says. "As soon as your coat got dirty, you had to put on a new one or fold it over to the other side." It's also good hygiene for cooks to refrain from using their phones, not to mention good manners. You don't want to feel like the chef is so disengaged he's already making his afterwork booty call.

An open kitchen should also be relatively quiet, without the usual ribald remarks and pan-clanging. At Va de Vi, says Nakano, the chef didn't even allow talking during service. But it's unnatural for chefs to be unceasingly quiet and polite, and sometimes they revert to business as usual. At Va de Vi, the chef would lose his temper when an underling messed up, says Nakano. "He would let loose on the kitchen with a guest sitting right there. ... It was like watching Gordon Ramsay happen for real." Nakano says guests may have enjoyed it, but one woman complained. Personally I think that while everyone enjoys watching a chef eviscerate someone on TV, only a sadist could take pleasure in watching this in real life.

The problem is that many restaurateurs include an open kitchen in their design merely because it is trendy—though much less trendy than it was a few years ago—or because it saves space. (Eliminating the dividing wall between the dining room and the kitchen opens up space for extra seating.) The open kitchen is a default design element that they haven't put much thought into.

Thankfully, nowadays many restaurateurs are starting to realize that expecting chefs to be quiet and polite is like expecting the lions at the zoo to put on dinner jackets. As a result, says Cass Calder Smith, an architect who designs restaurants, clients are requesting open kitchens that are entirely enclosed in glass. That way if the chef has an outburst, it doesn't reverberate around the entire room.

Dear Helena,
Restaurant work is not exactly my vocation (I am a nursing student), but I've been a server for a few years and think of myself as fairly professional. Currently, I work part time in an Italian café. The other day one of the cooks threw together a quick cheese panini for me to eat on my break. It was pretty quiet so I took it behind the counter so I could talk to the other girl who was working there. A customer came up and placed his order. Then he gave me a strange look and said it made him "uncomfortable" to see me eating a sandwich in a place where food is served, and he wanted to give me a chance to explain myself before he posted a "negative online review." WHAT????? I don't get why he made such a fuss.
—Low Blood Sugar

Dear Low Blood Sugar,
You messed up. As a server, you shouldn't eat in front of customers, for the same reason you shouldn't talk on the phone or reapply your makeup in front of them. These activities are bad for the ambiance and are potentially unhygienic. The customer sees this and may think: "Yuck! That server may not wash his hands after eating, and may leave cheese grease, crumbs, and microscopic traces of saliva on my cutlery!"

I understand that you have to eat on the job. If you're on your feet for six or seven hours, carbo-loading at the preshift family meal isn't going to carry you through to the end of the night. But you should take your snack out of customers' sight. Max Belkin, a server with 25 years of experience and creator of the blog Waiternotes, says even when the kitchen is an open one, "every restaurant has places [customers] would never see, like … where they wash the plates." One former restaurant cook told me that when he worked in an open kitchen, he and his colleagues crouched down behind the counter rather than let customers see them eating.

Many restaurants let their employees eat unlimited amounts of certain foods, like bread, salad, or soup, says Belkin. But many customers have no idea that servers sometimes also help themselves to diners' leftovers. Some are squeamish about this, but according to Belkin, there has been at least one scavenger in every restaurant he has ever worked in. As with many areas of food hygiene, people vary wildly in how fastidious they are. Belkin knew one server who, rather inexplicably, "would only eat off a woman's plate, never off a man's plate." Geoff*, a server in Chicago with seven years of experience, says that many waiters will help themselves to a half-finished plate of finger food, like fried mozzarella sticks, but would shudder at the thought of eating food that a customer's cutlery had touched. Then there are people like former server Michael Jones-Morales, who admits that when he worked in high-end places, he wouldn't think twice about helping himself to half-finished "$40 filet mignon."

Geoff says that even when he and his coworkers were scraping leftovers into a doggy bag, "we would grab a forkful here and there." Now that's something you definitely don't want the customer to see you doing.

*He did not wish his last name to be used.

Dear Helena,
An online review of the restaurant where I work complained about "smelling alcohol on the server's breath." The review mentioned a distinctive feature of mine (my neck tattoo), so I knew that server was myself. I feel really insulted. Yes, I did have a couple of drinks, but it was near the end of my shift. It was not affecting my performance. If anything, it was helping me deal with annoying and overly demanding customers. I am not an alcoholic. Please explain to restaurant diners that it is perfectly OK for servers to drink, in moderation of course, while they are working.
—Forgot My Breath Mints

Dear Breath Mints,
You're certainly not alone in the practice of taking the edge off during service. Geoff*, a server in Chicago with seven years of experience, recalls that when he worked at Buca di Beppo in San Francisco: "We served giant three-liter jugs of Chianti. People would leave half of it, and we would often take them back to the server station and mix them with Sprite." Sarah*, a former server, says that when she worked at a very high-end restaurant in San Francisco, servers kept bottles of wine and glasses stashed in various secret nooks: "There was a bottle of white Burgundy underneath the computer in our back room."

Some Chowhounds argue that servers deserve a drink to relieve the extreme stress of their job. At the risk of tarnishing my reputation as a party girl, I have to disagree. Like getting high, swigging a rum and Coke during your shift is just going to make the job more challenging, not less. Waiting tables is a physically demanding job. Just as you wouldn't have a glass of wine before a five-mile run (however yoga might be the exception), you probably shouldn't be drinking to sustain a fast-paced, on-your-feet-for-six-plus-hours job.

That said, there are some exceptions to the rule when you get into the topic of wine at higher-end restaurants.

Michael Jones-Morales, a former server with 24 years of experience, says: "Generally speaking, wine education will take place in a preshift meeting, and every server needs to have tasted and be familiar with every wine that is served by the glass."

Other restaurants do the same with cocktail specials. After all, how can you recommend the goods if you haven't tried them?

And there are other upsides to fine dining for the server.

Jones-Morales says: "If the server has a good rapport with the table, a lot of times the table will leave the heel of a 20-year-old Burgundy or Bordeaux." In this case, it's only fair that the server share the wealth with his coworkers. Above a certain price, it should be considered wine education, not drinking on the job.

*These servers did not wish their last names to be used.

Dear Helena,
I've resolved to drop 25 pounds in 2012 by strictly limiting portion sizes and cutting out refined carbs, red meat, and sugar. The other day I went to lunch with a coworker. I ordered a salad, and she chose pasta, saying, "It's healthy." I tried to explain to her that refined flour is not healthy, and she exploded: "Nobody wants to hear any more about your diet!" I was totally humiliated. I'm just trying to talk about it a lot so that I keep myself honest. Is that so wrong?
—Slim by Spring

Dear Slim by Spring,
You should tell close family members or friends about your diet, says Jessica Crandall, a registered dietitian and a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: "Studies have shown that [other people's] support is linked to weight loss." But there's no need to tell your coworkers. They could even undermine you with offhand remarks like "Diets don't work" or "Don't high-protein diets give you bad breath?"

In fact, as a general rule, it's best not to mention your diet in conversation at all, because diet talk is intensely boring. Nobody wants to hear about the weight loss app you just discovered, what juicer model you recommend, or how a handful of almonds is a high-protein afternoon snack. Kudos for trying to slim down, but when you impose rules and restrictions on eating, you make food depressing for other people, when it should be a source of joy. Furthermore, if those other people are overweight or unhealthy, your diet talk will make them feel guilty for not being on a diet themselves.

Needless to say, you should never, ever question other people's dietary choices or imply that they should follow your example. Rachel McGough, a lawyer in Paris, recalls the time she went to a London gastropub with a dieting friend. "She took one look at the menu and said, 'We can't eat here. Everything's fried!' ... I didn't expect her to go for the battered pig's trotters, but she caused such a fuss it almost put me off my food."

Granted, when you are on a diet, it's hard to avoid talking about it, because dieting makes you obsessed with food. As you lose weight, your brain chemistry actually changes, making you want high-fat food more, and therefore think and talk about it more. In a 2010 study conducted at the University of Pennsylvania, mice that had lost weight showed an alteration in several hormones that govern stress and appetite, and when exposed to stress, the mice binged on fatty foods. In other words, dieting actually reprogrammed their brains to intensify their cravings for pizza and doughnuts.

What can you do to stop yourself from turning into a diet bore, or worse, a diet evangelist? First, says dietitian Crandall, don't get too hungry. Before you go to a social event, have a healthy snack. Second, avoid situations where you'll have to explain your food choices. Meet your friends for a hike instead of dinner. Rather than going to a gastropub where your friend will feel judged for eating crispy trotters, tell her you want to check out a new Vietnamese place (where you can fill up on nonfattening soup).

The only time you need to mention your diet is when you're explaining why you can't eat something that someone is offering you, be it cookies a colleague has brought in or dessert at a dinner party. Even then, there's no need to be specific, as this only invites follow-up questions. Crandall advises: "Maybe say that you're trying to be healthier ... as opposed to saying, 'I need to lose 15 pounds in the next 10 weeks.'"

Dear Helena,
Every time I go home to my parents' house, the state of their kitchen drives me nuts. They are crazy food hoarders. They often have moldy bread, packets of spaghetti from 1992, and assorted bits and pieces in murky Tupperware containers. Their freezer is always chock-full. This drives me nuts, and I get an uncontrollable urge to clean out their fridge, freezer, and pantry. But when I do, they get annoyed. One time I tossed a block of Valrhona chocolate that was ancient and beige and powdery, and my mom was pissed. Is it rude to clean out your host's kitchen, and how can I convince them that contrary to their beliefs, no food stays good forever?
—Mold Patrol

Dear Mold Patrol,
The rise of food hoarding began with advances in canning techniques in the late 19th century, says Harvey Levenstein, author of Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America. In the 1950s, people thought that canned food would virtually displace fresh, and that in the future, people would barely cook at all. (Little did they know that many people would revert back to doing their own canning.)

Frozen food became popular in the late 1920s/early 1930s. At first, explains Levenstein, people looked down their noses at it, associating it with the fishmongers' practice of freezing leftover fish at the end of the week to make it last until Monday. But then Clarence Birdseye dramatically improved the quality of frozen food by introducing flash-freezing and waxed-cardboard packaging. More importantly, says Levenstein, Birdseye banished any lingering associations with old fish by relabeling his products as "frosted" food, which sounded classier.

Since then, food has become increasingly cheap, and with the rising popularity of wholesale price clubs like Costco, it has become even cheaper. No wonder people are hoarding, whether it's canned soup, "frosted" dinners, or flats of vitaminwater.

Some may ask what's wrong with stocking up? After all, if disaster strikes, such as a major hurricane, you won't go hungry. But stocking up easily leads to overstocking, and the result is food waste, a growing problem.

Unfortunately, you can't clean out your parents' pantry without permission, any more than you can take their old sweaters to Goodwill without telling them. And you'll never succeed in motivating them to de-clutter the pantry on their own. Hoarding has all kinds of complex motivations, and probably has its roots in childhood. You're not equipped to untangle the psychology behind it, and if you attempt to do so, you'll only unleash anxiety and rage.

Ignoring best-by dates might gross you out, but let me reassure you that this habit is unlikely to be toxic. Scott Hurd, director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Risk Assessment and Hazard Identification in Foods of Animal Origin at Iowa State University, says: "The sell-by date ... is a tool for inventory control [by the retailer] more than anything else; it has virtually nothing to do with food safety." The only generally reliable way to figure out if something is edible is to give it a good sniff, explains Hurd. "Canned food will probably keep almost forever until the can actually starts to decompose, as long as there are no holes or rust spots."

And what if you encounter an ingredient that could actually be dangerous to consume—beans in a rusted can or perhaps a bag of flour infested with moths? My advice is to stuff it deep, deep into the trash. Trust me, your parents have no idea what they actually have in their pantry, so they won't even notice that it's gone.

Dear Helena,
I recently attended a party where the first thing the hosts did was offer a tour of their palatial pad. My husband and I live in a modest apartment. We thought it was tacky. Was it?
—House Proud

Dear House Proud,
Unless the host's wine cellar is haunted, his default assumption should be that his guests do not want a tour of it. All your dinner guests need to know about your floor plan is where the bathroom is. Even when the occasion is a housewarming, you should wait to be asked before showing guests around. Maxi Lilley, an interior decorator in Oakland, California, is proud of the way she and her husband renovated their Craftsman bungalow, but she doesn't automatically offer guests a tour. As she points out, "If you say, 'Would you like a tour?,' there's no polite way to decline."

The fact is that while some guests are fascinated to learn every detail of how you selected the backsplash behind your kitchen counters, many are not. Geoff Gibson, an architect in San Francisco, has a professional interest in the subject, but even he confesses to home-tour overload: "I guess in general I feel like they can be really pretentious and tedious. Like looking through 100 pictures of someone's kid or cat."

Todd Lappin, a technology product manager, painstakingly decorated his San Francisco home in accordance with his quirky vintage-industrial aesthetic: A large chunk of a Boeing 707 serves as wall art in the living room, and the kitchen is designed to evoke a "Cold War naval laboratory." But even Lappin waits for a sign from guests before offering a tour. "You can tell by the way people are looking at the house if they are curious." A good rule of thumb is to wait for your guests to ask a question, like, "What kind of view do you get from upstairs?" If all they say is, "Nice place!," then go straight to drinks.

When you're showing guests around, there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. Showing off your money is always in bad taste, but that's particularly true nowadays, when the 99 percent is seriously disgruntled. Emphasize features that are of general interest, or features that you are particularly proud of because they are your own handiwork, like the Scandinavian Airlines food cart that Lappin repurposed as a bar cart.

Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, a writer who divides her time between Sausalito, California, and New York City, says: "If someone bought their own house [and fixed it up] ... I respect that." But a house tour is annoying, she says, if "they have this McMansion because they are spoiled trust-fund people, and they don't appreciate it, and you think they don't deserve to live there."

To avoid parsing whether or not you are middle-class or DIY enough to show off your home without offending people, just use this guideline: If you're better off than the person who came in, proceed with caution. If your friend cooks on an ancient, gunk-encrusted stove that his landlord refuses to replace, it's bad form to remark, "This Viking stove is one of the reasons we fell in love with the house." And if your friend lost his home in the mortgage meltdown and now lives in a communal house with a bunch of freegans, he may not want to see your second guest bedroom. Don't make your guests want to start an Occupy movement.

Dear Helena,
The other night I went out to a restaurant with a couple of friends and ordered a bunch of small plates. All the plates were beautifully composed with sprinkles of this and fronds of that. In one of the dishes, the centerpiece was a cylinder of stuffed grilled squid. When I tried to cut it, the filling squished out everywhere. Then I had to chase all these lentils and microscopic bits of chorizo around the plate to make sure each of us got some. How the heck do you share these kinds of small plates, anyway?
—Dots, Daubs, and Fronds

Dear Dots, Daubs, and Fronds,
For those who haven't followed recent dining trends, let me clarify what type of restaurant we are talking about. Sharing little dishes of this and that is, of course, nothing new. Many cultures have a tradition of doing so, from Spanish tapas and Middle Eastern meze to Japanese izakayas. But the contemporary composed small plate is as different from a rustic tapa as a Manolo Blahnik pump is from a wooden clog. Take the "pintxos" served at Txoko in San Francisco. As Jonathan Kauffman, SF Weekly's restaurant critic, explains, in the Basque Country pintxos are "pieces of bread or potato with stuff on them, spiked with a toothpick." But at Txoko, a pintxo might consist of a tempura-fried, ricotta-stuffed squash blossom perched on a baguette slice and topped with "micro-chives."

Precious though they can be, such restaurants are increasingly common, says Jonathan Gold, restaurant critic for the LA Weekly: "Half of the interesting new restaurants that open [in LA] are of that sort." These restaurants are designed, says Gold, "to expose people to the variety of a tasting menu without the expense or formality. ... Lots of people in their mid-30s and younger are profoundly uncomfortable with white-tablecloth formal service."

But while tapas, meze, and the like are usually easy to share, it's quite a challenge to split a Jenga tower of sweet potato tempura and sea urchin blobs balanced on a few dots of shiso-scallion purée. It's hard to make sure every diner gets a bit of every element. Gold says: "There's often a purée or a swirl of something or a little tile of Sichuan peppercorns or some special salt that probably only one person gets the benefit of."

The favored plating method isn't much help. Instead of the now-classic vertical-stack approach, these chefs often favor "the vortex method," as Jason Fox of Commonwealth restaurant in San Francisco, calls it: "We like everything to flow into each other so we imagine everything being spun out of a vortex." It's not easy to divvy up a vortex, and you usually end up with a mess.

So pause a moment to admire the artful composition before you each take your portion. When ordering, if you suspect a particular dish is going to be popular, get multiples. That should also help you avoid the problem of how to split, say, two scallops among three people. After that, the basic approach is the same as for sharing any dish, be it a pan of lasagne or a porcini flan topped with frico shards: Each diner should take a portion from the common dish and eat it off his own plate. If there are no separate serving utensils, as will be the case at this type of restaurant, diners should use a clean knife and fork to take their share, and be careful not to double-dip.

It would, of course, be easier if all of you just ate from the original plate. But this is a bad idea, and not just because it may spread germs. Back when I was a naive young thing, I once made the mistake of splitting a crème brûlée with my boss. We each ate from our own sides, until finally all that remained between us was a fragile wall of crackle-topped custard. As soon as our spoons shattered that wall, my boss immediately made sexual advances. Lesson learned: Unless you want to indicate that you would be receptive to saliva-sharing outside the dining room, it's always better to have your own plate.

Dear Helena,
Every December, I throw a fabulous holiday party. And I mean fabulous. I have an eight-foot tree. I make three kinds of cheese balls, and I decorate the entire house with yards of red tulle and real pine branches. And every year a few slacker guys show up in jeans, looking as if they are coming over to watch the game. Some of the women are not much better. Am I asking too much if I expect people to dress up? IS it micromanaging to specify a dress code on the invite, and if I do, what is the appropriate terminology?
—Sparkles, Not Sweatpants

Dear Sparkles,
For most people today, dressing down is the default mode, even at a holiday party. Jessica Morgan, cocreator of the blog Go Fug Yourself, suggests that female guests wear "a cute sequined top, nice jeans, and heels"—an outfit that is only a few notches above yoga pants.

Compare this to previous decades. Dr. Patricia Warner, a costume historian, says that up until the early '70s, "most men wore suits or, for a casual party, a tweed jacket and gray flannels, but definitely a tie and shirt." Women were expected to wear a smart dress or skirt. John Tiffany, author of Eleanor Lambert: Still Here and a fashion historian, says it was hippie culture that ushered in the new era of down-dressing. "The casualness of the drug culture [of the '60s and '70s] really changed everything. Jackie Kennedy had bouffant hair ... but people became hippies and never went back to that style of dressing." By the early '70s, pants were generally accepted party attire for women. Before that, says Warner, women in pants were often barred from restaurants. Male party guests began to substitute the turtleneck for a tie and shirt. And nowadays, casualness has gone so far that jeans are worn nearly everywhere.

So do you have the right to expect your guests to depart from their fashion comfort zone just because you spent hours turning your house into a winter wonderland? In a word: yes. Guests should dress up for a fancy party, just as they should dress up for a fancy restaurant. In both cases, it's a mark of respect for the labor that went into creating the occasion. And as at a restaurant, part of the pleasure of a party is the human spectacle. It is more fun to look at a roomful of festive outfits than it is to look at a bunch of people who are dressed for a night in front of the TV. Also, dressing up makes people look sexier, and therefore encourages the innocent flirtation that is the lifeblood of many a good party.

But most people are not going to dress up unless you tell them to, for fear of being overdressed. So specify your dress code on the invitation. Keep your wording simple, as in "Dress: Cocktail Attire," or just "Dress: Up." Don't try to be clever. As Go Fug Yourself's Morgan says, "There's nothing worse than getting an invitation ... and the dress code is something they've just made up like 'casual festive.'" Tiffany dislikes the phrase "creative black tie," but even more opaque is "downtown black tie," which the host requested for an upcoming dinner party Tiffany is attending. His interpretation: "It means the husband wears cowboy boots."

Finally, beware of using the word "festive," because some guests may take you too literally and show up in reindeer antlers or Santa sweaters that play "Jingle Bells." As Morgan says, "[The holiday sweater] is sort of hard to pull off, unless you're eight or eighty."

Dear Helena,
Last year I went to a friend's annual holiday party and spent the evening standing in the corner of the kitchen, chatting and joking with the two people I knew there. The next day, the host called me, ostensibly to have a party postmortem, but then it turned out he wanted to know why I had been "sulking" in the kitchen. Does a guest have some sort of obligation to mingle?
—Secretly Shy

Dear Secretly Shy,
When hosting a party, part of the fun is introducing separate friend groups to each other and watching new connections form. So although your primary job as a guest is to have a good time, yes, you do also have to mingle. It's true that all the people in the host's other friend groups may be boring, self-absorbed, or just not simpatico, but what's the worst-case scenario? You return to your clique or to your significant other with some amusing tidbits to report. If I hadn't bothered to mingle at a party recently, I would never have met the woman who told me her 18-month-old is not potty trained, but does not wear diapers and still sleeps in the family bed.

Fortunately, mixing at a party is easy. Remember that SAT trick "Scan, select, discard, move on"? The strategy for mingling is rather similar.

1. Scan
Survey your options. Some people are more receptive to conversational overtures than others. It can be very hard to break into a conversation where all the participants know each other already. Look for situations where people are briefly separated from their friends, such as when they are standing in the bathroom line or getting themselves a drink.

2. Select
Don't lurk, or you will look creepy. There's no need to hang about trying to come up with a clever opener—you're not at a bar trying to pick this person up. But don't begin the obvious way, by introducing yourself. This automatically commits you to at least a few minutes of chitchat, and you can't immediately sidle off if the person turns out to be a dud. Instead, just make a casual remark about the situation at hand, such as: "This champagne punch is pretty potent. What do you think is in it?" If you're stuck for a follow-up, know that most people will be alarmed if you start with a probing inquiry such as "What do you do for a living?," or, as scary hippies like to ask, "What are you passionate about?" Instead, just ask the other person how he or she knows the host. This is a hackneyed question, but asking hackneyed questions is an accepted social ritual. From there, you can transition to a more interesting topic. "You met at banjo camp? Are you in a band too?"

3. Reselect
Most people tend to ignore guests who are hanging around on the edge of a conversation, but this is unkind. A really good guest creates a microparty within the party by welcoming strays into his or her immediate circle. So draw them in with a simple remark like: "Hey, just to fill you in, we're talking about whether gravity boots are due for a comeback." If one person in your group is in the middle of an epic anecdote, it's OK to say: "Sorry, let me interrupt you for a minute," and then tell the stray, "Quick backstory: Marcia here is telling us about the time she accidentally picked up a prostitute."

4. Move On
It can be especially hard to escape from a conversation if the other person is the type of bore who never stops talking. An unceasing monologue can inflict a kind of paralyzing drowsiness that makes you unable to come up with a getaway line. But you don't need to. Simply say, "Well, I'm going to get another drink." This is the universally understood code for, "I've enjoyed talking to you, but now I'm going to circulate."

Dear Helena,
I work in food media, and knowing my job, people often ask me, "Oh, are you a foodie?" I am not sure what they mean by this. Sometimes I think it's an innocent question; other times I think the word is vaguely insulting. Is it a rude question, and what is a good answer?
—Annoyed Food-Lover

Dear Annoyed Food-Lover,
According to Barry Popik, a contributor-consultant to The Oxford English Dictionary, writer Gael Greene was the first to use the word foodie in 1980 in New York magazine, but British author Paul Levy also used it in 1982 and claims to have come up with the term independently. Levy later coauthored a book, The Official Foodie Handbook (1985). Both Greene and Levy used the term to denote "someone who has a passion for food." It did not have negative associations.

But the word quickly became ambiguous, and remains so. There is no agreement on exactly what it means or whether it's now an insult. The author of the Wikipedia entry for foodie claims that a foodie is the opposite of a finicky gourmet: "foodies differ from gourmets in that gourmets are epicures of refined taste, whereas foodies are amateurs who simply love food." But others interpret foodie to be a synonym for gourmet. Jim Leff, cofounder of Chowhound, defines the foodie thus: "They are a separate breed, an avatar of that 1960's archetype, The Gourmet. Foodies eat where they're told; they eagerly follow trends and swallow the hype."

The term certainly seems to get under people's skin. Bloggers and food websites love to rant about it. Rebecca Harrach, creator of the blog Kitchen Preserve and author of one such rant, says "Foodie applies to a person who is obsessed with super-high-end food or who would go to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market [in San Francisco] and buy carrots that are $10 a pound."

It's pretty obvious why so many people interpret the word as a pejorative: the suffix. In one of several Chowhound threads debating the meaning of the term, Chowhound maria lorraine comments: "It's the damn '-ie' ending that bothers me. A word with an '-ie' ending usually connotes something small or sweet: doggie, cookie, auntie, bootie, hankie, cutie." The "-ie" suffix makes it seem as if there is something faintly frivolous, even infantile, about being interested in food. Harrach says, "It makes it sound like food is a silly little hobby, when really it's the central health concern for most American families. It trivializes how important it is to be thinking about your food in an intelligent way."

So does the person asking you the question intend to mock your great passion and, in fact, your entire job? Probably not. David Kamp, coauthor of The Food Snob's Dictionary, says: "When people ask me, 'Are you a foodie?,' it's like nails on a chalkboard." But, he admits, "Their intent is not malevolent." The problem is that there isn't a positive or even neutral term for "someone who is passionate about food."

These days there are many different ways to be passionate about food, whether you are a compulsive online restaurant reviewer, a home-pickling obsessive, a school-lunch crusader, or an urban beekeeper. But be aware that the person asking the question may have no idea of this, and no idea that food can intersect with culture, history, politics, health, and the environment. To him, an interest in food still may be pretty much synonymous with a love of fine dining.

So how should you respond to this inquiry? You don't have to accept the label, but there's no need to flare up either. Just say, "I am really interested in food." Then go on to explain why in a way that shows that your passion has nothing to do with the truffle tasting menu at Per Se.

Dear Helena,
My office has a holiday party every year, with an open bar. This is funded by a collection beforehand, to which everyone contributes based on his pay grade. My expected contribution is on the higher end of this scale. In the past I contributed to this fund, and drank heavily. Now I am in recovery and will not be partaking. Must I contribute?
—Bitters and Soda

Dear Bitters and Soda,
I am assuming that this is a voluntary (albeit very expected) contribution. And if it is voluntary, you are not required to contribute, particularly if you have strong personal reasons for not wanting to do so. Here's how to tell the organizer without making yourself unpopular. "Don't overshare," advises a female friend of mine who is in recovery. In fact, there's no need to reveal that you have had problems with alcohol at all. Just say, "For personal reasons, I would rather not give money that goes to pay for alcohol." A polite person will not press you for further information.

However, if you intend to go to the party yourself (which I recommend, because it's an important bonding opportunity), it's only fair that you contribute something. Suggest another way you could help: "I would like to bring chips and dip/put on a skit/make decorations instead."

Dear Helena,
These days, money is pretty tight at my company. In past years the office holiday party took place in a cool bar with catered food and free drinks. This year, I feel I have no choice but to hold it at the office, and I'm asking all employees to contribute $20 to pay for drinks and snacks. I got kind of a negative reception from people when I put out the "save the date" email. Is it bad etiquette for employers to ask employees to pitch in for the holiday party?
—Times Are Tough

Dear Times Are Tough,
People will get upset if you ask them to pay for their own party, for the same reason that people get upset when charged for bread in a restaurant: Nobody likes to pay for something that they expect to be free, and that was free in the past. Ditto for asking employees to bring a dish, which for busy professionals is akin to asking them for money. It's better to cover costs out of your own pocket, or ask the bosses to do so, than require employees to pitch in. If you don't want to do that, simply skip the holiday party this year. It's supposed to be a perk, not a burden.

Dear Helena,
My brother has accused me of always being "glued to my phone." He claims that I had the phone on the table at Thanksgiving dinner last year, which I do not remember. I do admit that when we've been at a restaurant, I may have glanced at my email while he was reading the menu, and I do prefer to Google stuff rather than waste time debating whether so-and-so was or was not in a movie. Am I being rude or is he just a Luddite?
—Invite Me, Invite My Phone

Dear Invite Me, Invite My Phone,
Four years ago, I said you shouldn't have your phone out at the table except for emergencies. Things have changed. Nowadays there are endless ways you might use your phone to enhance your dining experience. It is socially acceptable to Google vadouvan or look at photos of the restaurant's banh mi on Foodspotting prior to ordering. Furthermore, you might want to consult a wine-pairing or sustainable-seafood app. In some restaurants, you can even use your phone to pay for your meal (as at branches of The Melt). And of course, you can photograph your dinner, which has become less of a faux pas and more of a fact of many people's lives.

But even in today's tech-friendly climate, you should try to be as quick about it as possible. Foodspotting cofounder and CEO Alexa Andrzejewski says you might consider snapping your photo at dinner but posting it later.

I also think it's more OK to use your phone at the table these days if it's directly related to the conversation. It's fine to pull up a picture or video of something you're talking about, whether it's your dog in his Halloween costume or your yard's "before" and "after" shots. Within limitations explained in this column, you can also use your phone to clear up a point of contention or identify a song that is playing.

Whatever you are doing, the important thing is to explain it to your companion: "I'm going to Google the etymology of the word martini" or "You have to see so-and-so's latest Facebook update—she's clearly lost it." If you don't explain yourself, the other person has to sit there for a few minutes wondering if you just felt bored. When I was growing up, if a member of the family was less than entertaining at dinner, my brother or sister would say, "Bing! Bing! The 'Boring Bell' just went off." Turning to your phone is the grown-up equivalent.