Table Setting: A Progression

To continue from last week:

I asked my mother, who used to teach Meal Management courses on campus, what the biggest, hairiest, most intimidating table setting might be. I’m looking for something I can use to scare the hero of a book I’m thinking about writing. She said something along the lines of Russian or European style would likely do the trick.

Frankly, I don’t find European all that intimidating. They baby you along with wait staff that hands you what you need when you need it, and all you have to do with the array of silverware around your plate is work your way from the outside in using a bit of common sense. Still, she managed to point out some finer points.

As I mentioned last week, where things go might be determined by the style of service you chose, but the specific pieces used are determined by the menu. I’m going to walk you through a meal with the following menu:

First course: Soup. Note underliner plate under bowl and bowl plate. It stays there until the main course.
Second: Fish course – since I’m not using a special fork to get into crab or lobster parts, it needs to be a fin fish like salmon.
Third course: Sorbet to cleans palate.
Fourth: Main course.
Fifth: Salad
Sixth: Dessert and coffee. Coffee is often served separately in the living room.

In a real meal, the plates you are about to see would already have food on them as they arrived. On the left of each set is the way the setting will look at the beginning of the course, when the food arrives. On the right is how the guest should leave things right before the servants remove the used items in preparation for the next course.

Soup

I like this course the best for intimidating my hero. Can’t you see a country bumpkin confronted by this array stop to wonder what he’s supposed to do? Good think it comes first, at a time when he will likely be most vulnerable.

Fish

Now imagine he grabbed the bread plate to the right instead of to the left. This would cause a domino effect all the way down the table to either side so the person on the right would have no plate and the one to the left would have an extra. He gets over that just in time for fish. Yes, I can see this working.

Sorbet

I could have him wondering about now if the meal is over. He’s already had soup and fish, and this thing can sometimes come across as a bit like desert. BTW, isn’t that a pretty sorbet cup? If someone told him it’s to “cleanse the pallet” can’t you see him swishing it around in his mouth?

Main Course:

At least by now things should start looking familiar and he should have picked up the rhythm of things, including the way you leave your silverware angled across the plate when you’re done.

Salad:

Just for fun, let’s pretend the servants have it in for him and didn’t give him a fork. Here’ he was so sure he knew what he was doing, but can he be sure the lack of utensil isn’t his fault?

I think this could work. What do you think? Would you find a dinner like this intimidating?