Stepdaughter Insulted Dinner Party Host’s Dish Because It’s Not Authentic, But Stepmom Doesn’t See Anything Wrong With That

We all want our kids to grow up well-liked and well-mannered, but what happens when the adults in their lives can’t tell the difference between honesty and rudeness?

OP has a soon-to-be stepdaughter who is settling into a new school and new friends.

I (32f) have been dating a widower with a daughter, Nara (12f), for a year.

We currently moved to a new city because of my boyfriend’s job promotion (I freelance) and are in the middle of settling down. Nara and I get along very well.

Nara plays tennis. Since the move, she’s been in the school team and competed a bit. The parents of her teammates often organize some kind of get together and her father and I tried our best to have her attend most of them.

I would say Nara got along well with all her teammates and I thought the parents were friendly.

Last week the team captain’s parents hosted a potluck party at their place.

When they were invited one night to dinner where the host cooked a dish indigenous to her stepdaughter’s heritage, things got sticky.

Nara and I brought over some brownies. There really was a lot of all kinds of food.

The team captain’s father did most of the greeting telling us his wife was preparing something special for us all. Once everyone was at the party, the wife came out of the kitchen with a special dish, a recipe of a specific country.

Now, Nara looks white but her late mother actually came from that very country. The wife host began to serve everyone and share her recipe and ingredients and how it was “not that difficult to make once you substitute the local ingredients” and feel free to ask her for tips.

At this point Nara spoke up, saying that the authentic recipes included such and such and how their particular scent and taste added to the whole experience of eating the dish.

She said if so many substitutes were used, they may as well call the dish a different name.

The wife host looked a little unsettled and told Nara that she and her husband traveled a lot in their youth and she had the dish many times and knew what it was supposed to taste like and the substituted ingredients work just fine.

Nara then said her mom was from the dish’s country of origin and she understood that some ingredients were hard to come by but substituting so much turned the dish into something else altogether.

OP doesn’t think her stepdaughter did anything wrong, but her husband disagrees.

During all this I mostly kept silent. Nara was not being rude, just matter of fact, and as this was a matter of her heritage I thought she could speak up.

The host wife spluttered a bit before saying everyone should just go ahead and enjoy her dish, no matter the name.

Everyone tried though nobody asked for seconds (I personally thought it was a little bland) and there was a lot of leftovers.

Nara’s team captain later called her, thanking her for putting her “annoying stepmom in her place.”

When my boyfriend came back from his business trip and learned of this, however, he thought I should have reprimanded Nara for being rude to the host.

He also had a talk with Nara and she seemed to be sulking a bit though she was not grounded or anything.

AITA?

Can Reddit solve this one?

The top comment had some very strong feelings on the subject.

They say OP definitely should have checked her.

This person even had a suggestion on how they should have handled it.

But this commenter admits that this isn’t as clear-cut as some are making it.

Either way, they doubt the kiddo will be invited back.

I think this advice is sound.

OP will have to think twice about whether or not she wants to be the responsible party in the future.

If you thought that was an interesting read, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.