(88516) - Zhanna Abdugalimova, December 01, 2007
Each of us has many important meetings in life, and a lot depends on the results. What to do if you decide to hold such a dinner party in your house or apartment. After all, if the guests are important and the decision of certain issues depends on them, then I want everything to be at the “height”, strictly in accordance with the canons of etiquette. And while the next dish is being prepared in the oven, we spread an elegant tablecloth on the table and proceed to the placement of cutlery so that it is not worse, and even better than in the most expensive restaurant. It is possible to arrange beautifully the instruments on the table just for a loved one, thus making a surprise and emphasizing the importance of this moment in your life.
Cutlery on the table should be located in accordance with the scheme.
1 - a plate for bread, 2 - napkin 3 - small fork for snacks, 4 - fork for fish dishes, 5 - a large dining fork for meat dishes, 6 - snack plate, 7 - fake plate, 8 - a large dining knife for meat dishes, 9 - fish knife, 10 - tablespoon for soup, 11 - small knife for snacks, 12 - dessert spoon, 13 - dessert fork, 14 - a glass for strong alcoholic drinks served to snack, 15 - a glass for dry white wine served to fish dishes, 16 - a glass for dry red wine served to meat dishes, 17 - a glass of champagne served to the dessert 18 - a glass of mineral water
According to the number of guests, fake plates are placed on the table, and snack bars are placed on them. Napkins, folded triangle, cap, or otherwise, put on plates.
Knives put the tip to the plate.
Forks put the convex side down.
Cutlery used in accordance with their location - starting with the extreme and ending with those that are next to the plate.
The knife and fork are held so that the fingers do not touch the blade or teeth. If you stop using the device from time to time, put it only on the edge of the dish, but not on the tablecloth. If you have used only a fork, then the knife should rest on the right edge of the plate, where it least interferes.
If there is a pause in the meal (but the feast is not finished yet), the device is placed on the plate crosswise - the knife is pointed at the left, the fork is raised upwards with a convex part - so that the knife handle is five o'clock, and the handle of the fork - at seven o'clock. The place of crossing should fall on the teeth of the fork and a third of the knife. You can put the fork and knife handle on the table, and the other end on the plate. At the end of the meal, both devices are placed on the plate parallel to each other, their handles "show for five hours."
Glasses are served near the plate, closer to the middle of the table, parallel to its length or arc, starting to the left of the largest one in size. Either the glasses are set in two rows so that the large glasses do not cover themselves smaller in size.
Plates with sliced even slices of bread are placed in different parts of the table so that all guests can easily reach it. Bread taken from common plates is placed on bread plates that are located to the left of the dummy plates.
Castors and other devices for spices are arranged at the rate of one device for three or four people.
Various cold snacks on dishes and plates are evenly placed on the table so that guests can easily get them.
Indeed, it may occur, since in modern restaurants and cafes a table is far from always served beforehand in anticipation of guests. If all the devices are prepared, and you sit down at a table where everything is already laid out, then the plug will definitely be lying teeth up.
But if you came to a cafe or just waited for your turn at a table, it often happens that the waiter took up a place just before you took it. Of course, he did not have the time table, ideally correctly spreading the forks and spoons in the right.
It is supposed to hold the plug easily, using the index finger and thumb, slightly pressing it against the half-bent middle.
In this case, instruments are often brought wrapped in a napkin. This is a sign that the plug is perfectly clean and you can be sure that your meal is hygienic. If the plug is wrapped in a napkin, then it can be put both up teeth and down. Usually they are not visible at all, one can only guess from the outline of the convolution, where are the teeth there. It turns out that putting the fork with the teeth down on the table is permissible only in one case: if it is served wrapped in a napkin.
Use fork
The fork is usually used as the main device for most dishes, with the exception of soups, and the spoon and knife serve as auxiliary. But sometimes the plug acts as an auxiliary device. For example, if you need to cut a piece of meat, then take a fork in your left hand (in your right, if you are left-handed, and further, all recommendations for left-handers should be the other way around), and the knife in your right hand. Then cut the piece, without spreading your elbows to the sides.
Further, should also be done according to American or European styles. The American way implies that you will still be right-handed. Put the knife on the edge, and then hold the fork in your right hand, hold it to your mouth with the teeth up. With the European method, you can either continue to squeeze the knife in your right hand, or not, but you have to use your left hand. The fork, at the same time, keeps the teeth down.
In the simplest case, the fork is placed on the left side of the plate, and the spoon and knife are placed on the right.
If you have broken away from the food for conversation, then you can’t put the fork on the table, according to. And here it is just important, up or down teeth you will hold it. There are two styles: American and Continental, or. In the American style, the fork is held with the teeth up, and in the case of European norms - the teeth down.
Until you have finished the dish, it is not customary to place the fork on a table or on a plate. But if you still want to postpone the fork for some reason and finish it later, you can’t put a dirty appliance on the tablecloth. It is placed on the edge of the plate, diagonally. The direction of the teeth in this case is not important. If you want the waiter to replace your plate and devices, then put them on the edge of the plate in parallel, so that if you imagine the plate as a dial, the cuttings would be in the area of the number 4.
The success of a festive lunch or dinner depends largely on the ability to beautifully and properly arrange the table, to create maximum comfort for all those present. And the boring word “table setting” can mean a creative and pleasant process, and the goal of it is to keep guests away, but to make life beautiful in the best sense of the word, and to turn family holiday dinners into a special treat.
The general rule for arranging dishes is very simple - plates and instruments should be placed in the order in which the dishes will be served. For example, a plate for snacks is placed on a hot plate. A plate for bread also needs to be put on the left.
The forks and knives are located the farther from the plate, the faster they are needed. Those. the fork for the salad will be the most extreme, and for the hot one - the last one near the plate. Dessert appliances are placed on top of the plate. Knives should be placed to the right with the blade towards the plate, spoons - with a bulge down, and forks - to the left of the plate with teeth up, so as not to spoil the tablecloth. Soup spoons can be put on the right, right of the last knife. If butter is served with bread, then a small butter knife is placed on the bread plate, which should be located to the left of the fork. Classical rules suggest no more than three devices on the table at the same time, so if your gala dinner consists of ten changes of dishes, you should not try to arrange all the necessary forks and knives on the table at once. All plates should stand a short distance from the edge of the table, forming a straight line parallel to the edge.
Wine and water should be set on the table uncorked. Juices, fruit drinks, vodka and various tinctures are best served in decanters. Glasses are placed to the right of the plates, again in the sequence in which you are going to serve drinks. Champagne is put in a bucket with ice and covered with a napkin or it is stored in the refrigerator and uncorked just before use. Spill the champagne gradually, topping up as the foam drops. Filling glasses with drinks should be no more than three-quarters of their capacity.
Do not forget to place on the table salt, seasonings and sauces. Bread is placed on a table on several plates, so that all guests are comfortable to get it. All dishes and salads should have separate spoons lying convex side up, so that guests, reaching for the dish, do not accidentally drop food on the tablecloth. Cold snacks are arranged, alternating fish, meat and vegetable dishes.
Soup should be served in a tureen, and hot dishes should be served in special dishes or baranchiks (a dish with a lid).
Next to the place of the hostess, you can provide a small table on which you will have clean plates, spare appliances, napkins, extra bread and other necessary things on hand.
A beautifully laid table suggests an immaculately clean and ironed tablecloth and matched to the tone of the napkin. The latter can be turned into special decorations by folding them in a triangle, cap, or in some original way. It is necessary to put on a napkin for each set of plates.
The festive table is perfectly decorated with flowers - live or dry compositions, for example, two or three small neat bouquets in different parts of the table. Another option is to place a large bouquet in the middle of the table, or on a very small bouquet next to each plate. In any case, the flowers should not take up too much space, and it is better to make bouquets low so that they do not interfere with taking snacks and do not interfere with the guests to communicate with each other.
Finally, the last rule, difficult to do for a hospitable Russian person in a typical small-sized apartment, is that the festive table should not “break” from an oversupply of dishes and dishes. An elegantly laid table offers free-standing snacks and salad bowls and a sufficient amount of personal space for each of the guests.
If you want to prepare the table a little in advance to have time to clean up, or your guests like to be late, cover snacks and salads with regular cling film - this will allow them to keep a fresh look before the guests arrive.
Spoons:
tablespoon for soup served on a plate;
A dessert spoon (slightly smaller than a tablespoon in size) for such dishes as porridge, soup in a cup, dessert, fruit;
A teaspoon for liquid dishes served in a cup, as well as for grapefruit, eggs and fruit cocktails;
A coffee spoon (half the size of a teaspoon) for coffee served in a small cup;
Spoon with a long handle for chilled tea and drinks served in tall glasses.
Plugs:
Large fork for folding dishes from a large tray. The shape resembles a large dining fork, but increased in size;
Large dining fork for meat dishes; small fork for snacks and dessert dishes;
Fish fork for fish dishes; fork for oysters, for dishes from oysters, crabs, cold fish cocktails. Its dimensions are small: length 15 cm. Width at the base 1.5 cm;
Fruit fork for fruit. Served at the end of dinner with a cup for rinsing fingers.
Knives:
Large dining knife for meat dishes;
Small knife for snacks and other dishes, except meat and fish;
Fruit knife (with the same handle as the fruit fork) for fruit;
Fish knife for separating fish bones in fish dishes;
Knife for butter only for butter spreading; dessert knife for cheese, dessert and flour dishes.
It should be borne in mind that all devices are not used at the same time. Therefore, when setting the table, it is customary to place no more than three forks and three knives at the same time. The remaining knives, forks and other additional serving items are served, if necessary, to the corresponding dishes.
Place at the table usually looks like this:
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The cutlery objects lie next to each other at a distance of 1 cm, and at the same distance from the edge of the table, the forks bend down, the knives point to the plate.
On the left, somewhat to the side of the front plate, there is a saucer for bread and on it a butter knife. Fruit knives are brought in when fruit is served.
Right obliquely from the plate, there are glasses for drinks (from left to right): a glass (glass) for water, for champagne, a glass for white wine, a somewhat smaller glass for red wine and even smaller for a dessert wine. This arrangement of glasses due to the fact that the drinks are poured on the right side. At the highest wine glass usually put a card with the name and surname of the guest to whom this place is intended. Sometimes a row of glasses closes brandy glass. It is placed if guests are served coffee at a table after breakfast (lunch) and they do not go into the living room. If cognac is served in a special large glass with a wide bottom, then it is poured a little. At receptions in our embassies, special small glasses for vodka are also put on the table.
For dessert and fruit behind glasses, sometimes they put a spoon, knife or fork, all with a handle to the right and with a convex side to the table.
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Based on cookbook.rin.ru and wwwomen.ru
Different positions of the knife and fork can tell about your attitude to food much more than you do. Many do not know the details, and this can lead to an awkward situation in a restaurant. The teacher of etiquette, the director will tell how to place cutlery on dishes correctly. Schools of good manners Olga Mertz.
Expectation
The fork and the knife, which are criss-crossed, when the fork is vertically tine up and the blade of the knife is directed to the left, express the visitor’s impatience if the wait for the dish is delayed.
Pause
If you want to take a break in food, cutlery will help you to inform the waiter about this desire. The classic arrangement of the devices at the time of the pause is when the fork and the knife lie on the edges of the plate: the knife is on the right and the fork is on the left. In this case, the fork and knife may be located in the form of an open letter "L". At the same time, the fork is pointed upwards with teeth, just like a knife blade - this is a fundamentally important moment. If you have tried snacks, which required only a fork, during a pause, you can put it on the edge of the plate to the right.
Completion of the meal
The completion of the meal is often ambiguous. If you want to show the waiter that you’ve already finished, you can do it in several ways. The first of them is to put the devices on the plate next to it vertically and parallel to each other. It is important to ensure that both the teeth of the fork and the blade of the knife “look” upward. Another option, similar to the previous one, is when the devices are placed parallel and vertically, but they lie closer to the edges of the dish. The knife is on the right side, and the fork is on the left. That is, the distance between them is much greater than in the first version. This method is most often used when the meal is finished, but at the same time there is food on the plate.
And the most common option - the fork and the knife are parallel to each other, but at an angle - as they say, “they look at ten to five,” if you imagine a plate in the form of a clock face. The teeth of the fork and the blade of the knife in this case should be in the upper part of the plate.
Like - don't like
In addition to the main signs of the pause and the end of the meal, there are also “signals” that express the attitude to the dishes served. With the help of cutlery, you can let the staff know whether you liked the food or not.
For example, parallel to the horizontal fork and knife, "looking" to the right, they say that the visitor is delighted with how the dish was prepared.
If the fork and knife “look” up to “ten to five”, while the fork is under the knife, and the knife between the teeth penetrates the fork, this means that you are satisfied with both the food and the service.
But if the cutlery are handles up, and the blade and the teeth down, this is an indication that you did not like the food.
The customer can express his dissatisfaction by placing the devices horizontally parallel to each other, with their handles on the left. This position of the devices says a categorical "no", even to the desire to call the manager or to express the negative to the chef.
The reverse letter “L”, when the fork intersects with the teeth with the knife at the bottom of the plate, and the handles diverge upwards, says that you are dissatisfied with neither the food nor the service.
These are the most basic points that should be paid attention to the waiters, because in this way the visitor makes him understand his attitude to food, and in which part of the meal he is.
Every day there are more and more restaurants in Tashkent, and offers to spend an unforgettable evening are more and more attractive. We offer to immerse yourself in restaurant etiquette and learn some simple rules of competent consumers of restaurant service. Putting on the plate somehow cutlery, you give various signs to the waiter, which can catch and take note of the competent staff.
Suppose in the process of a feast you need to "powder the nose" or "breathe fresh air", and you are removed from the waiter's visibility zone. The duties of the waiter include maintaining order, cleanliness, and so on. In this case, to show that the plate and devices "do not need to be taken away!" - use a categorical gesture.
"Do not blow it!"
The work of a professional waiter is invisible to guests. Being under professional care, you do not even have time to notice how fasting plates change, update appliances, lay out snacks, topped up drinks. Sometimes you just want to stop and pause.
As for the "pause", then there are several options:
"Pause"
1. Provided an abundance of goodies in your plate, you can only use the free space on the rim. Proceeding from this, we place the cutlery, with the blade touching the edge of the plate, with the handles touching the surface of the table. The knife on the right, the fork on the left.
"Pause"
2. In the case of free space, put the knife and fork on the plate, the letter "L". The edge of the knife looks to the left, and the teeth of the fork - to the right, while the instrument handles hang over the table. The distance between the teeth of the fork and the knife can be a sign that the dish was quite small in size, in other places the same dish is served with a larger outlet.
"Pause"
3. Classic normal pause. If you use only a snack bar or a table fork, then the fork will be on the right.
We make it clear that the meal is over and it is necessary to proceed to the next dish. To indicate this, there are several gestures:
Finished the meal
Devices can be arranged as on the clock, time - half past five. This option is convenient for collecting used dishes: the waiter does not cross the guest's personal space.
Finished the meal
Put the fork with the knife parallel to each other, handles down. The edge of the knife and the teeth of the fork should look up. The large distance between the teeth of the fork and the blade of the knife may indicate that the dish was large enough or quite rich and completely satisfied the taste tastes for tonight.
Finished the meal
The following neutral option in no way indicates the size
the food served, may indicate that everything was quite harmonious. It is also convenient for waiters when collecting dishes.
“Looking forward to the next dish!”
If you are in a hurry, there is an option to show the staff that today the service will be fast, serving meals and collecting dishes promptly. Fold the fork with the knife cross to the cross, with the edge of the knife to the left, the teeth of the fork should look up.
"The dish is just great!"
If you are unexpectedly pleased with the served dish, and you do not want to disregard the employees of the invisible front - fold the next not tricky combination. The waiter will accurately pay attention to the benevolent gesture and will surely bring pleasant news to the chef.
"Did not like"
It also happens that the dish does not correspond to the visual and taste ideas. There may be a lot of reasons, but the fact remains in your plate. Such symbolism will not be very pleasant for the staff, but there is a reason to inquire about the deep reasons for this assessment. The waiter can clarify the shortcomings and, having agreed with the manager, there is a chance to leave a pleasant impression about the establishment with a small decorated dessert from the establishment itself.
“Service did not like”
If you get a waiter with a bad mood, moreover - he spoiled it for you, there is an option that can make it clear that "the service did not like it!". Such a gesture can be used if, when served, they first brought steaks, when the steaks were half eaten, brought bread, and when the steaks were over, brought the sauce to the steaks. It rarely happens, right? Based on the fact that the serve and the attendants were the other way round, we put the instruments of the option “no need to carry off” and turn the plate 180 °. Devices can be immediately put up handles. After this attitude of the staff to the guests, the location of the devices on the left or on the right is not included. The very fact that the service is incorrect is shown by inverted appliances.
"Not enough friendly smile"
In the case of quite tolerable service, but lack of hospitality, in the process of eating food, you can make a demonstrative short-term pause addressed to the attendants with the gesture “Not enough friendly smile!”. So you remind the waiters of hospitality, courtesy, goodwill and smiling.
"Bring a mournful book"
The most “scary” gesture of the language of cutlery is “bring a complaint book!”. We take the combination “finished the meal” with the parallel arrangement of the devices and turn it 180 ° figuratively. Devices can be put directly onto the surface of the dish with the handles up. What device on the left, what on the right, in this situation does not matter.
"I liked everything very much!"
If you are satisfied with the dishes, service and plan to become a regular guest, use the combination “I liked everything very much!”. The only caveat of this situation is that it is undesirable to insert the knife into the middle teeth of the fork, since this will be interpreted as “The dish did not like it!”. To contact the knife blade with the teeth of the fork, you must use the extreme teeth.
“Everything is just wonderful!”
Finally, I would like to present a slightly flirtatious gesture, like a sitting girl in a leg-to-foot pose. Most importantly, this whimsical person was 100% satisfied. They raised the tone and mood, and this is all thanks to the coordinated work of the whole team of a hospitable establishment. As a sign of gratitude, this guest gesture may be addressed to his companion.
Knowing such simple combinations of devices, you can show your attitude to everything that happens, but also give signs to competent personnel. The latter, in turn, will be able to quickly rectify the situation, if it is still possible.
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