Your Quick Guide to Table Setting Etiquette
Dinner party season is right around the corner. Whether you're hosting a dinner party or you're invited to a holiday dinner, a wedding, or even a formal business dinner, knowing the basics about place settings can prevent a few awkward moments. So, if you're anything like me, a small refresher is probably in order.
The Casual Place Setting
For a casual meal, say a weeknight dinner or a casual brunch with friends, you really only need the essentials. Start with your plate. Your dinner fork goes on the left, and your knife goes on the right with the blade facing towards the plate. If you need a spoon, that goes to the right of the knife.
If you're serving soup, the soup bowl would typically be brought out with that course. And the same goes for a salad: if you're serving a salad before dinner, you'd add a salad fork to the left of the dinner fork, and a salad plate would be brought out for that course.
Your napkin can go in a few different places. For a casual setting, I like it either underneath the fork or directly on the plate. Your water glass goes above the knife.
And that's really all you need.
The trick to remember it: think FORKS.
F is for fork
O is for the plate
K is for knife
S is for spoon
The Formal Place Setting
Once you start adding courses, the place setting gets a little more elaborate. For a formal meal, hosting a dinner party or a holiday dinner, start with your charger, then your dinner plate.
Your main utensils are the same as the casual setting: on the left, you'll have your forks, with the salad fork on the outside if salad is being served. Likewise, on the right, your dinner knife, and if you're serving soup, the soup spoon goes on the outside of the knife.
Your bread plate goes above the forks on the left, and your bread knife goes across the bread plate with the blade facing toward the plate. The water glass goes above the knife, and the wine glass sits just to the right of that.
Extra Credit: Decoding a Guest Table
You've mastered hosting. Now consider this extra credit for the day you're the one sitting down at someone else's table.
If you sit down at a table and it looks like every piece of silverware in the silverware drawer is in front of you, don't panic. By now you know the system.
Looking at this setting, you can pretty confidently guess that you're having soup, then salad, and bread with dinner. But what are the extra fork and spoon doing up here?
Those are for dessert. They sit up top, above the fray, because they're the finale. And when the time comes, you simply move them down into position.
And now you know everything you need to confidently enjoy your next dinner party, hosting or otherwise.
