Bread Plate on Left, Spittoon on Right

We’ve all been there: You’re about to stuff your mouth-hole with the handful of Salisbury steak grabbed off your future mother-in-law’s plate when a glob of the meat falls onto your bare thigh (your cargo shorts are dangling from a chandelier across the restaurant). Before meeting the parents, you had taken every precaution, scrubbing off most of the magic-marker dongs you had drawn on your own face the night before, to cover for the fact that you’d had a lame, early Friday. All you wanted is for your girlfriend’s parents to think you’re cool, and now here comes the waiter, making a big show of picking up your glass eye from where it rolled off the table. It’s one of those perennial etiquette decisions: Which fork do I use to stab him? This Wednesday at 6:30 p.m., local etiquette expert Sonia Jacobson will host Eatiquette, a targeted lesson in manners set during a four-course dinner at Toro Toro, chef Richard Sandoval’s pan-Latin steak house at the InterContinental Miami (100 Chopin Plaza, Miami). There’ll be good eats and fashionable folks, yes, but you’ll also learn something. (Free tips: Always use the biggest fork possible; consider investing in a foldable travel trident.) Tickets cost $95 per person or $150 for couples. But face it — you’re going alone. (You should still get the couples ticket, because you know you’ll spill half that food all over yourself.) Gratuity is included, so there’s no need to figure out what 8 percent of $95 is, you hot mess. But just because you’re hopeless, not everyone else is; a portion of the proceeds will go to Dress for Success Miami, an organization that provides job support to low-income Miami residents.
Wed., April 24, 6:30 p.m., 2013