10-Day Smart Tips Countdown: Don't Eat Breakfast before your Appetizer Arrives

Day three of the 10-tip countdown is given to one of my favorites in the book, from Landmarc and Ditch Plains chef-owner Marc Murphy. It's so simple, yet so easy to forget, as we've become conditioned to swan diving into the bread basket once we've handed our menus back to the waiter.

Here it is: Skip the bread and butter before dinner. 

Murphy remembers being at a three-star Michelin restaurant in Paris and having a waiter ask if he wanted the sauce that came with the dish he ordered. Of course! he said.

The waiter told him that he always asked Americans this, because they often ask if there is butter in the sauce, and then ask the kitchen to hold it. But Have your breakfast for breakfast!then, he observed, they all "make the tartine," slathering butter on bread and eating what many French people eat for breakfast.

The moral: Keep the sauce on the plate where it belongs (there isn't that much butter in it anyway), and if you must have a tartine, enjoy it the next morning with your coffee or tea.

Tomorrow: Eating with Kids -- and not letting them ruin your best intentions.