Either at an expensive restaurant, at an expensive club or a dinner at the Richies'.
Very common in princess training or rags to riches.
Played for comedy or drama. For instance, if someone is dispensing
Sacred Hospitality, it will likely include a
Fancy Dinner.
Expect one of the following:
- Tables longer than 50 feet or circular tables.
- Sometimes only two eating at opposite ends, amplifying distant relationships or played for comedy.
- If the tables are round, you're at a club, so expect a speech.
- Protagonist gets confused which knife to take, how to raise a glass, etc.
- Protagonist gets served escargots, lobster and does not know how to eat it.
- Protagonist is in France and orders sheep brains.
- Protagonist gets served a wet plate.. no wait, that's the soup!
- A snooty waiter
- Protagonist getting mad at said waiter.
- Children or protagonists hiding under the table
- A butler with a big silver plate.
- Butler serving a pig with an apple in its mouth.
- Trouble in the kitchen, in G-rated movies.
- A cook who searched for months for that special ingredient, being told that it was the last of an endangered species
- Food poisoning
- Dramatic pause.
Examples
- King Ralph
- Lucky Luke
- Batman
- Candy Candy
- Titanic
- Occasionally seen in Ranma ½ best example would be the martial arts dining arc.
- In Slayers there was an episode about eating a very fancy dinner of dragon.
- Bilbo's birthday party in Lord of the Rings
- In Dune, just before the attack by the Harkonnens, the Atreides give this at their palace.
- A common variation is the "heroic feast" in which a given chieftain gives a feast to a large number of Badass people. The food is usually Badass style food such as mead and roast oxen. This might be a subtrope.
- Kung Fu Panda Holiday Special has this as the primary plot with Po struggling to host such a dinner, and agonizing that his father won't be a part of it.
- Gun X Sword has a fancy dinner played for comedy in episode 15. Wendy doesn't know which silverware to use, and Van . . . displays his terrible table manners to the fullest.
- In the anime of Kaze no Stigma, Ayano and Kazuma go to fancy restaurants multiple times. The most memorable one results in a serious battle . . . but a least the wine is saved.
- Northanger Abbey: both the adaptations and the book. In the 2007 adaptation, the "protagonist gets confused with knives" variety is used. (Well, spoons.)
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: This Trope is one of the banes of Applejack's existence. Despite her time with Aunt and Uncle Orange, she never figured out which fork to use, and the fancy meals don't hit the spot like down-home farm chow.
- Several times (at might be expected) in Downton Abbey. We get to see them from the perspective both of the hosts (the Crawley family) and the servants. An interesting variation was the austere one held under World War I rationing.
- Also interesting in that both diners and the servants have gotten confused by the correct protocol: Matthew Crawley, a middle-class solicitor, holds his knives wrong and gets confused about utensils when he first arrives at Downton. On the other hand, Alfred, trained as a restaurant waiter, screws up the silver service (a kind of table service characteristic of British aristocratic homes, rather different from the way things are done at restaurants) the first time he serves as a footman. The former earned Matthew the supercilious scorn of Mary and the Countess Dowager, while the latter got Alfred an earful from Carson; both, however, become accustomed to the traditional ways over time.
