Indigo jones

Table setting can be tricky. It always amazes me that people who reached adulthood don’t know which side to put the fork on. This is probably because they have experienced incorrectly set tables for most of their lives. Even restaurants don’t always follow protocol.

Have you ever been seated at a round table and not known which bread plate is yours? Most people don’t, and wait awkwardly for someone to use a plate and follow suit. Often, it is the wrong plate, but at least everyone has one.

A long time ago I stumbled across this little trick and it solved that problem instantly.

With your palms separated and facing one another,make a circle with your thumb and index finger. The hand on the left will look like the lower case letter “b” which stands for bread plate, and the right hand will form the letter “d” for drink. It’s a great way to remember that your bread plate is on the left and your glass is on the right side of your plate.

Now for the rest of it:

The fork goes on the left, and the knife goes on the right side of the plate. The spoon goes next to the knife.  If there are multiple forks and spoons, they are placed from the outside in, in the order you will use them. Therefore, the salad fork is on the left of the dinner fork, and the soup spoon would be on the outside of teaspoon, at the far right.

If you have dessert cutlery set at the beginning of the meal, it is generally placed above the plate.

The napkin is traditionally placed under, or next to the fork, but it is often placed on top of the plate decoratively.

Bon Appetit!

photo: Glasshouse Images

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Tags: bread plate, cutlery, how to set a table, kitchen tips Tuesday, Table setting, table settings, trick to remember which side the bread plate and glass are on

This entry was posted on February 24, 2015 at 6:54 am and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.