Dining Table Customs in Mexico

If your food doesn’t arrive to the table in the tortillas, you can use them as they were used in 1883. Just don’t try spitting on the floor. It’s definitely fallen out of fashion, and in restaurants, is most likely illegal and violates health codes.
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Fannie Brigham Ward, in a letter from the City of Mexico to the St. Paul Pioneer-Press, thus relates some experiences in dining in that suburb of the United States: “During eight months’ residence in Mexico, I have not seen a bit of butter, potato, chop or steak, egg cooked by itself, tea, sauce, cake, pie or pudding, or those common vegetables which we consider so indispensable. Napkins are rarely used, each person wiping his or her face and hands on that portion of the tablecloth which happens to be nearest, and afterward, patronizing one of the before mentioned corner wash-stands. 

Eating with the fork is not at all according to etiquette, but the knife or spoon must be used, or – more properly– a tortilla. Mexicans manage the latter with as much dexterity as a Chinese does his chop-sticks, curving it between the fingers till it forms a something like a spoon, and scooping up the food with it– eating spoon and all. The very old people and the lower classes use tortillas altogether instead of knives, forks or spoons, the latter “new fangled notions” being of comparatively recent introduction. It requires considerable practice to successfully manage the tortilla scoop, as I have learned from sad experience. 

After the banquet is ended, and at intervals during its progress, if one feels so inclined, the mouth is filled with water from the goblet, rinsed with more or less emphasis between the teeth, and then the water is squirted upon the floor. In this process they all become expert, from the lady of the house to the smallest child. When fresher water is required, that in the glasses is carelessly tossed up on the dirt floor, where it can do no harm. – The Napa Register, 1883

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