Offering Food Take note, when you are the host of a party, of the way you offer additional servings to your guests. It is best to phrase each offer of food as if the dish has just been brought out for the first time. The reason for this, as Judith Martin points out more than once, is that American etiquette is not about efficiency. The general rule for removing food from your mouth is that it should go out the same way it went in. Therefore, olive pits can be delicately dropped onto an open palm before putting them onto your plate, and a piece of bone discovered in a bite of chicken should be returned to the plate by way of the fork.
Fish is an exception to the rule.
It is fine to remove the tiny bones with your fingers, since they would be difficult to drop from your mouth onto the fork.