Eating With Friends In Italy!

When you go for lunch or for dinner in a friend’s home in Italy, there aren’t any rules to follow, but I can give you some advice. If it’s the first time that you enter someone’s house, you don’t need to take off your shoes, the host will tell you to make yourself at home. Normally friends give each other a kiss on both cheeks, but if you are at a party and there are some people that you don’t know, you should shake hands.

Italian people love food, especially homemade food so you should prepare something to bring to your host’s house like biscuits, muffins, and also typical food. On Sunday it is traditional to meet with family usually at your grandma’s house. If you’re a guest in this case you should bring some pastries.

Normally when we have lunch for the first one/two minute/s you should eat in silence, and then you should congratulate the cook. You can talk about everything, but normally at a certain moment they tend to create two groups, women and men. Woman usually talk about shopping, boyfriends, their routines and some problems in the house or at work. Man talk about their job, football matches and politics.

It’s bad get up before lunch or dinner is finished, normally Italian people rest and sit down for hours talking about life, travels and other things that they would like to do so you should sit down and participate in the conversation. At the end of the lunch or dinner, someone has to wash the dishes, normally the host, but to be polite you should help him or her to clear the table.