Will You Be Served?

I’m confused by the placement of Iceland over Spain.

The thought of having someone over and not offering them food is mortifying to me. Do Scandinavians allow guests access to the toilet or do they have to piss in the garden?

why do most Scandinavians think it's normal to eat in front of a guest without offering food? That's so weird. If they really don't have enough food, why not send the guest on his/her way home first and then eat?

In England do they offer you a cuppa?

[quote]why do most Scandinavians think it's normal to eat in front of a guest without offering food

It's a mercy, actually, b/c the food is so horrendous. Mostly root vegetables and pickled shit and herring.

ITA on Spain -- I lived there and you can't ask directions on the street without someone offering you a snack.

You don't expect food if you just drop by.

If you're invited for dinner, then yes.

I can't believe about Polish though. The few Polish I know would shower you in food and booze. A friend had Polish mother and she was cooking for whole neighborhood. Whereas northern Italy, not so much.

Also Spain. The Andalusians are very generous, while Catalans would hardly offer you a coffee. Cold French put in the same group as Polish and Russians?

Yeah, Brits always offer tea as soon as a person enters their home. Does food offered have to be chewable? Is this about the graciousness of making an offering to a guest or is it about fortifying them nutritionally? Also, don't Brits who offer tea also usually offer biscuits/cookies, and does that not count as food?

So many questions.

Re Scandinavians, I mean, they probably mostly only invite repairpeople into their homes to make them more efficient. And what guest would want Scandinavian food, anyway? They probably used to make such offerings and spend a lot of time preparing trays of food, only for guests' eyes to bulge when a stinky platter of herring and charred leek were graciously served to them.

I didn’t realize there was a large island just off the coast of Spain. What is it called? Can I visit this?

Martha Stewart is Polish, and she'll not only always serve you, but she'll show you all the pastel eggs and the 'only the best' other ingredients used to make your hors d'oeuvres while daring you with critical eyes not to gush about her magnificence. Surely, this was inherited from her Polish ancestry and not from her New Jersey upbringing.

Very superficial. They just divided south, central and Norther Europe and perpetuated stereotypes, without really knowing a lot about people there. Italians would be very hospitable only in the South. Spain is similar. People from Catalunya are not much better than Germans. Same goes for French. While Slavic people, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians are extremely hospitable, even though they are on the north. I don't think that they are any worse hosts than us, South Slaves from Balkans.

England is a bit misleading. In the South people tend to be clueless about hospitality, but there are exceptions. The further North you go, the likelier you are to be offered something. Scotland and Ireland you will be given tea or coffee and something to go with it. I have been to Wales just once, so I can’t speak with any authority, but the people are lovely.

Funny and perceptive scene by Luis Buñuel.

I visited my mom's cousin on the Irish west coast and she was exactly as pushy with food and drink as my mom's side of the family always was. As soon as we walked in, she put tea on. Then she took out a bunch of different cookies and crackers and put them out and asked if we wanted sandwiches. We said no thanks and ate the cookies and then she said she had something special for my dad (who doesn't really drink) and took out some ancient whiskey and made us all drink it before we left.

Then she showed us around the area my mom's family came from and we stopped at a pub where she knew the owner, who was from Northern Ireland. The woman gave us beer, tea, and two enormous platters piled sky-high with ham sandwiches and smoked salmon sandwiches on Irish brown bread and she wouldn't let us pay. It was like three times as much as the four of us could have eaten. It was really interesting because my mother's mother was Irish from Pennsylvania, descended from immigrants who came during the famine, and it's exactly how she always behaved. If you put a foot in her home, you were going to be fattened up like Hansel and Gretel before being allowed to leave. She always said, "You know it was good when it's all gone" as a way of pressuring us to eat everything she put in front of us or risk insulting her.

Based on these limited experiences, I'd make Ireland dark blue if not black.

R15 That was my impression of Ireland too.

I also learned of Ireland that it is polite/expected to refuse one's host twice before accepting any offering. That stems back to when food was very scarce and it was polite to offer food but most people didn't actually have food to share. So they would offer and the person would politely decline. They would insist and the person would decline one "final" time, assuring the host that they aren't hungry at all. If the host actually had the means to offer food, then they would insist once more and that would cue the guest it was really OK to accept.

My family has always behaved this way and it drives me batty. I'm glad to have learned there was a reason behind this custom.

We were poor in Balkans too, but guests are not expected to refuse food, they are forced to eat. I think it was the question of pride, and people wanted to show that they can afford to feed the guest.

R15 r17 My dad is from SE Ireland and all my relatives are charmingly aggressive when it comes to food. Have another biscuit. Oh you don't want it? Ah come on take it. Just take it, take the biscuit. It makes me smile hearing this is a national thing.

This is very weird. My experience in Germany and Scandinavia is that one is *always* offered Kaffee und Kuchen. Even when I did trade fairs in Germany during the 1980s-90s, offering coffee and cookies was usual in the trade fair booths. The only country where Oi have experienced anything similar to this is the Netherlands. You will be offered coffee and a tin of cookies will be passed. Then the tin is closed, returned to the kitchen, ans never seen again during the visit.

Interesting-every activity we did in Finnish Lapland we given hot berry juice and cookies after. I assumed it was about the caloric needs of traipsing about in the extreme cold, but perhaps it was traditional hospitality.

R19 Besides "You know it was good when it's all gone," my grandmother's other go-to food pusher expression was "You don't have to be hungry to eat," and then whatever she wanted you to eat. Usually pie. "Oh, come on! You don't have to be hungry to eat pie!"

Which country expects guests to present hole for their supper?

I can vouch that the Muslim Mediterranean/Levant people will offer you everything and their houses to guests. They are very warm people if you get accepted as a guest. They do have fake humility or humble brag as an art. They will offer apologies for the quality of the things offered when in reality they are giving you the best that they can afford.

R9, they serve you biscuits on their very best Royal Doulton with the hand-painted periwinkles.

R15 no, go on!

r11 I want to eat Martha's food so bad!

Can we get some context here? Was the question about unexpected drop-ins, or non-dinner invitations?

In America, a guest will be watered and fed, perhaps excessively. At least, in the Southeastern states of the US they will, that's for damn sure!

Louisiana is hospitable!

The map doesn't surprise me at all. People who know what it's like to go without the basics, are instinctively generous to strangers. It's poor folks who donate most, y'know. That's true in America.

Classic Father. Ted. Mrs.Doyle and her crazed hospitality.

Where is the entire Western Hemisphere? Why was it left out? Unfair to exclude all of us.

I was a community mental health nurse in London for years. Part of the patch I covered had a large Iranian community. Whenever I went to visit Iranian patients I was bombarded with tea, coffee, sweets, baklava etc. On many occasions I was obliged to wait while they made a meal. I felt it would have been incredibly rude to refuse the offer. I soon learned to schedule my appointments accordingly. The food was gorgeous.

I don’t understand the question at all. My home is not a hot dog stand. Why would I be serving food to people? Am I expected to give anyone who comes to the door a can of beans or something?

A DataLounger should always have turkey meatballs on hand R34.

Agree with England and Wales! Surprised by Scandi countries.

R31 but entirely accurate!

Yeah I don't get it. It's a pleasure to me, to serve yummy stuff that makes guests happy. I love it. It makes the time with them more memorable and enjoyable.

People get less friendly as you get further north. No surprise there.

If you unexpectedly drop-in and they have nothing prepared, Polish people will make you fancy open-faced sandwiches on the fly. Most likely served with tea.

R23 what took you so long to post?

As Irish the tea - and food - pushing discussion is funny. So true. We were trained to not accept offers of food and drink - even though we learned the routine that it would be served anyway. It was kind of a game - that went along with the whole way of indirect communication and not saying what you mean (except if it’s a sarcastic joke).

[quote]Italians would be very hospitable only in the South.

You know nothing about Italy.

Nobody is getting any of my lutefisk!!!

r45 I'll take an assorted platter of Scandinavian dick instead.

I am in the South West of England. You will always be offered tea or coffee and usually with biscuits. I lived many years in Ireland where you would also always offer tea and biscuits or perhaps a bun or traybake. There really isn’t too much difference between the two.

The map looks about right to me, certainly the broad southern swathe. I would guess the large pale blue spread across Eastern Europe may have some more dimension than is expressed but I haven't been in so many homes to experience it first hand -- Poland, as an example that an earlier poster suggested, seems like it might be a candidate for a more generous ranking.

In Spain I've been pulled from the street into a house where a parade of food begins almost immediately to find its way to the table, and just as the food keeps coming so too the suggestions for other things you might like, a fried egg, a fried egg over a plate of patatas bravas? A duck egg, then, a gift from a friend earlier that day? A catalogue of things fresh and frozen that can be readied and on the table in minutes, and plates of jamon ibérico and ibérico de bellota and serrano and chorizo and carne mechada, bocadillos de pringá, and aged cheese, and cheese cubes marinated in olive oil and three kinds of goat cheese since you liked goat cheese the last time, and salmorejo or maybe you prefer gazpacho?, and puchero too?, calamares? And on it goes without stop.

Stop by a friend's parents' home at 4.3OAM and your hosts will be up and dressed and frying eggs and arranging the parade of plates of food for their child and his 7 drunken friends in tow, and they will be absolutely delighted for the surprise and the chance to meet you. They will never stop the parade of food and they will promise that they will have more food next time (and they will.) Even a fleeting stop by at a friend's place will bring out the food and drink and offers if anything in the house or that can be had.

Give me a culture that treats its guests like honored people any day! So many cultures are "feeders". Yes, it can be annoying when they keep force feeding you even when you are about to burst, but what a lovely, loving and kind gesture it is to offer your guests something when they visit.

Brunettes have more fun.

Mediterranean hospitality is a real thing. Hosts consider it a crime for you to leave their homes un-wined and unfed.

Agreed R51, it's called hospitality. Even the simple gesture of offering a drink or snack. That anecdote @ R44 about the Swedish guy is a howler!

You know your family is from the dark blue area when your grandmother tells you you’ve put on weight and whilst laying out platters of food in front of you, and tears spring to her eyes has you decline a further “little something before you go home, I know your mother can’t cook”.

[quote]Hosts consider it a crime for you to leave their homes un-wined and unfed.

That’s great — I really like to un-wined after a hard day.

Swedes are not primarily Viking descendants, they’re mostly German.

Maybe those cold blooded pagan-cum-Protestant Nords don’t have the Good Samaritan ethos of the wine-drinking, sunnier climes of the hard-partying, large-familied Catholic-and-Orthodox Mediterranean countries. It’s harder to be convivial over raw herring and ale than it is over wine and cheese and apricots.

[quote] You don't expect food if you just drop by. If you're invited for dinner, then yes.

Depends on your culture. I think my mom would have offered food / coffee to someone who dropped by.

I grew up with some neighbors who were Oklahoma transplants. (The parents were from Oklahoma.) The kids (my age) really took on the parents' ways. As an adult, I ended up (forgot why) at one of the kids' (also an adult) houses. We were sitting around a table (a few of us) and there was even a small child in the group. I was thinking: is she going to offer us something to drink or eat? I think I had to ask her for a glass of water. She was talking about something she had in the fridge that "wasn't opened yet." Hence, she wouldn't open it.

It could be due to just not having that much money. I remember them drinking powdered milk & not having much food.

[quote]Stop by a friend's parents' home at 4.3OAM and your hosts will be up and dressed and frying eggs and arranging the parade of plates of food for their child and his 7 drunken friends in tow, and they will be absolutely delighted for the surprise and the chance to meet you. They will never stop the parade of food and they will promise that they will have more food next time (and they will.) Even a fleeting stop by at a friend's place will bring out the food and drink and offers if anything in the house or that can be had.

This is so sweet.

[quote] Swedes are not primarily Viking descendants, they’re mostly German.

How did THAT happen?

R57 in many other cultures, the very poor are even MORE obliged to share. I honestly do think it’s cultural.

Others are frugal to the point of bizarreness. Some people genuinely don’t have the milk and tea to spare, but not offering someone a drink of water after significant amount of time is downright odd.

[quote] Can we get some context here? Was the question about unexpected drop-ins, or non-dinner invitations?

Context doesn’t matter - visitors unexpected or otherwise should always be offered refreshment - “Tea? Coffee? Water?”.

[quote] You don't expect food if you just drop by. If you're invited for dinner, then yes.

Expectations are another matter. But a refreshment - nothing more than tea or cold water on a hot day - always ought to be OFFERED. Even the regularly mean Brits can be relied on to offer up a round of Yorkshire Gold and a digestive.

R58 This is in fact very similar to the story of how Cesar Salad was first created in Mexico. The son came home with drunk friends late in the night and the father, Cesar, had limited ingredients available in the kitchen to whip something to eat up for them and combined them to make Cesar Salad.

As a rule the Brits aren't mean. If you turn up at their house and you don't get offered a cup of tea and a slice of cake or a biscuit, it means they want you to fuck off, but are too polite to say anything.

[quote]I’m confused by the placement of Iceland over Spain.

Iceland is clearly on holiday, dear. It somehow beat the airport chaos.

The stereotypes about hospitability even vary within countries. Like Scotland, for instance. The standard joke is that in Glasgow you will be asked " Have you had your tea?" whereas in Edinburgh the question is "You'll have had your tea?"

The old joke about Scotland is that they ask the guest would he like some refreshment. When he says yes the host opens the window.

Guests are invited. People who drop by unexpectedly can fuck off.