SC - Serving question

[Elaine Koogler]

I agree that this is one of the most vexing questions around.  What we typically
do here in Atlantia is, for most feasts, call for one person from each table to
come to the serving area and pick up the dishes for each course.  This usually
works pretty well as folks at a table will tend to share this task, thus making
it so that different people serve different courses.

If the feast is a "fancier" one, say for a Coronation or Twelfth Night,  we use
servers, and the number is based on however many tables we have...usually two or
three tables per server.  These folks get fed in the kitchen as they complete
serving each course.

In any event, we also often do not have enough serving equipment to handle an
entire feast without reusing dishes.  Usually one or two of the kitchen staff
will circulate through the hall near the end of a course and retrieve as many
dishes as possible.  We make sure that we have a crew in the kitchen to wash
dishes between courses (and we feed them as well).  In this manner, we can
usually manage to serve feasts without too much difficulty!

Kiri

Siegfried Heydrich wrote:

>     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
>
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