10 Rules For Dining Out With Friends

There is nothing quite as social as dining out with others. Lovely restaurants with ambiance, delicious foods, and wine all come together to make for a most enjoyable and pleasant way to catch up with family, entertain friends, or even conduct business over a "working lunch." Breaking bread with others can take the edge out of meetings, while at the same time allow for the perfect forum for getting business accomplished successfully.

Click here for the 10 Rules for Dining Out with Friends Slideshow.

No matter your age or the company that you are dining with, table manners play an important part in making a favorable impression. In these high-tech times and with the explosion of virtual socializing, it seems that an unfortunate by-product is the demise of social graces and manners, most strikingly when it comes to dining out, making etiquette rules susceptible to getting lost in the shuffle of technology.

Nowadays, rather than meet a friend for dinner, one can just as easily replace the tabletop with a laptop, haphazardly ditching manners, and for all intents and purposes, wining and dining in feet pajamas. Impromptu Skype sessions sitting at your own respective kitchen tables, armed with dueling computer mice and plastic forks do the trick for some.

But do they really?

The fact is that while some rituals and rules have become obsolete, eating out never will. So manners enthusiasts, no worries. There is, in fact, some good news.

Visiting a restaurant still gives us a literally delicious excuse to put our best manners forward (or fork forward, as it were), take off the sweat pants, and put on the Ritz. While much of the golden-standard etiquette guidelines (pinkies up girls!) have been disgarded, there are still some lingering and die-hard rules in full force. For the record, these rules apply across the board no matter your age, life stage, or appetite size!

Click here for the 10 Rules for Dining Out with Friends Slideshow.