LetsCookFrench - Art of dining. Receive your guests the French way!

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In the 16th century, Henri the 3rd was the first French king to use forks and spoons for dining. Since then, most people adopted them, even though it can be done with various levels of sophistication.

Our aim here is not to provide you with a complete how-to-receive-the-ambassador manual, but just a few hints on how to organize a pleasant 'classical' French dinner.

Knives and forks must be displayed in their order of use: the last to be used are closer to the plate. Thus, if your meal features a soup, a fish and a meat dish (quite a big meal!), you have to display on the right side of the plate, from right to left, a spoon for the soup, a fish knife, then a meat knife.

For knives and forks for cheese or dessert, there are two ways: either putting them between the plate and the glasses, or waiting for cheese and/or dessert to be served to bring them (it's the most traditional way).

When your hands don't hold them, the polite way is to put both hands on the table (it comes from the fact that a few centuries ago, a hidden hand could hold a weapon).

Spoons: all spoons must be displayed bottoms up. Often silver spoons (forks and knives too) have small decorations on their sides (which used to be the armorial bearings of the family, when only noblemen could afford silver). Thus your guests can see how refined your spoons are... or to discover that you forgot to remove barcodes from your stainless spoons!

Knives : their cutting edge must be toward the plate. If not so, your table neighbour might think you're being agressive...

Forks: they're displayed with their teeth down, which will prevent guests from hurting themselves, should they want to rest their hand on the table.

Water glass is the biggest (unless you have beer glasses) and generally on the right. Wine glasses are displayed from left to right, from biggest to smallest.
For a posh dinner, display a glass for red wine and one for white wine.
For a very posh dinner, display a glass for every wine to be served. In this case, we hope you have a dishwasher.

Serving is made by the hostess (unless you have servants, but then, all this is not a problem for you anymore), starting with the ladies (from the oldest to the youngest), then men (in the same order).
There are some exceptions to the rule: if you invite a pope, a cardinal or a king, but they are rather rare occasions so please forgive us for not describing them here.

Assiette garnie

Serving wine is the hosts' job. Serve it in the same order as for the dishes. On the other hand, for water, guests may help themselves. If you see this habit as encouraging alcoholism, you can serve water as well, nobody will resent you for that.

Another job for the host: carving poultry. Anyway, if the host is not very gifted with poultry (which can be pinpointed quite quickly if he takes out a hacksaw or if you see a cooked chicken flying away from the kitchen), let the hostess do it.

First, avoid starting eating before everybody's been served (or for the really greedy ones, finishing your plate and helping yourself to some more before anybody has started). You have to wait until the hostess has started eating.

Normally, you change plates with each dish. In ancient times, you could only use plates from the same set (imagine its size... and its price!), this progressively disappeared (which did not please porcelain and earthenware makers).

Since the 19th century, in restaurants, service is made in the "Russian way", which means bringing each guest a garnished plate. You can do this at home, but keep in mind that in a restaurant, everyone chooses his, or her, dish, while at home there is a risk that one may not like, or be allergic to, something. So the best thing to do is to bring the whole dish and let people help themselves.

Never serve cheese twice.
Don't turn over the bread and don't spill salt on the table.
Both are said to bring misfortune (also prevent your black cat from breaking 13 mirrors on the table... but it's a bit uncommon).

There are three ways to eat bread: cutting it with a knife (tartines, toasts...), crunching (buttered rye bread coming with smoked salmon, toasts for foie gras or aperitif settees), or cutting it in small pieces before eating (all other types of bread).

Last, never bring your knife to your mouth: first it's not polite, second, you may hurt yourself!

Text written by Christophe Duhamel