Wednesday, July 16, 2008 7:31 PM
How do I lay out a formal table setting?
If you’ve spent most of the summer eating barbecue with your bare hands off of paper plates like I have, it’s easy to get rusty on place setting basics. Dust off the crystal, silver and porcelain and serve dinner on your finest wares, even if it’s a pizza dinner for two.
1. Napkin (It can also be placed the middle of the plate or soup bowl.)
2. Fish fork (optional)
3. Salad fork
4. Dinner fork
5. Soup bowl (optional)
6. Dinner plate (or charger, if setting includes soup bowl)
7. Dinner knife
8. Fish knife (optional)
9. Soup spoon (optional)
10. Bread plate
11. Butter knife
12. Dessert fork and spoon
13. Water glass
14. Red wine glass
15. White wine glass
A traditional, formal dinner includes courses that may not be on your
menu, and you may not need certain utensils or china that appear in a
formal setting—like a fish fork or soup spoon. Also, this is the standard American setting; in Europe, the salad course is served after the main, so the salad and dinner forks would be switched.
The placement in an informal setting is essentially the same, but the setting does not include a fish fork, soup bowl, charger, fish knife, soup spoon, bread plate, butter knife, dessert fork/spoon or more than one type of wine glass. These items appear at the table when the course that requires the utensil, plate or glass is served.