SC - Serving question

[Siegfried Heydrich]

    I see from some of the menus posted to the list that people serve 3, 4,
or 5 dishes in a given course. How do you co-ordinate that with your
servers? Does all of it come out at once, or do they bring them out one at a
time? And if they do, how do you keep the servers alive? Run the poor kids
into the ground . . .
    We have a serious lack of serving vessels here, and so I try to do
family service whenever possible - bring out a dish in the container in
which it was cooked, set it down, and let the guests divvy it up. Makes
portion control a whole lot easier, not to mention life for the servers. I
tend to use no more than a dozen servers for a feast serving 250. Is that
normal for everyone else?
    I think we could all use an exchange of ideas on how to get it out of
the kitchen and on to the table. Not just the mechanics, but some of the
pomposities and ceremonials as well. I know I could use ideas!

    Sieggy