Silverware for the fish course

[I_call_the_duck]

When dining at a French restaurant the other night, my place setting included a fork, fish knife, and a very unusual-looking piece at my place. (I ordered fish and my husband, who did not order fish, also got that thing.) It looked like a small cake server with a little knick on one side near the tip. The knife and fork I know how to use, but what was that other thing? I’ve seen this utensil before, and have always been a little embarrassed to ask how it is used. This time, I asked our waiter how to use it, and he said you can use it a number of ways without giving me a direct answer. He was very nice about it, but I don’t think he knew either. The closest I could find on the web to was something called a fish server.

So etiquette lovers, what is that funny thing, and how exactly do you use it properly?

[*Deborah*]

It sounds like a fish knife...but I've had something like that put out with my main course, ostensibly to aid in sauce retrieval.

I am unable to google it, since I don't actually know what it's called.

[Mark Sommelier]

When dining at a French restaurant the other night, my place setting included a fork, fish knife, and a very unusual-looking piece at my place.  (I ordered fish and my husband, who did not order fish, also got that thing.)  It looked like a small cake server with a little knick on one side near the tip.  The knife and fork I know how to use, but what was that other thing?  I’ve seen this utensil before, and have always been a little embarrassed to ask how it is used.  This time, I asked our waiter how to use it, and he said you can use it a number of ways without giving me a direct answer.  He was very nice about it, but I don’t think he knew either.  The closest I could find on the web to was something called a fish server. 

So etiquette lovers, what is that funny thing, and how exactly do you use it properly? 

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It's called a sauce spoon. In a formal French restaurant a clean one should be on the table throughout the meal.

[jackal10]

Its a sauce spoon for eating the sauce with.

http://www.calendarlive.com/dining/cl-jour...-headlines-food

Pretentious. Noveau riche. NOCD. Non-U Not OK (as opposed to a sauce ladle for serving sauce or gravy, which is very proper).

Even worse if the hall mark is displayed. Worse still if the hall mark is on the rear of the bowl, and the cutlery laid upside down to show the hallmarks (and hence that they are solid silver, designer or just expensive)

Edited September 23, 2005 by jackal10 (log)

[I_call_the_duck]

Egad, Jackal that's it!!

Thanks, all. I wound up using it for sauce, but since my knife worked fine, it proved to be excessive. It also seemed too flat for sauce. My bread worked better.

Edited September 23, 2005 by I_call_the_duck (log)

[*Deborah*]

Its a sauce spoon for eating the sauce with.

http://www.calendarlive.com/dining/cl-jour...-headlines-food

Pretentious. Noveau riche. NOCD. Non-U Not OK (as opposed to a sauce ladle for serving sauce or gravy, which is very proper).

Even worse if the hall mark is displayed. Worse still if the hall mark is on the rear of the bowl, and the cutlery laid upside down to show the hallmarks (and hence that they are solid silver, designer or just expensive)

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Heh, I have heard of this whole hallmark display issue, but have never witnessed it.

I_call_the_duck, that is a fabulous page you linked. Who knew there were so many specialized pieces of cutlery!

[I_call_the_duck]

Pretentious. Noveau riche. NOCD. Non-U Not OK (as opposed to a sauce ladle for serving sauce or gravy, which is very proper).

Even worse if the hall mark is displayed. Worse still if the hall mark is on the rear of the bowl, and the cutlery laid upside down to show the hallmarks (and hence that they are solid silver, designer or just expensive)

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Heh, I have heard of this whole hallmark display issue, but have never witnessed it.

Of course, this place did the hallmark trick, though I didn't know until today why the cutlery was laid upside down. The funny thing though, I sometimes inspect the hallmark when it's just a nice piece of stainless!

[Daniel Rogov]

Indeed this is a sauce spoon and the notch is no mystery at all. Try taking sauce with a regular spoon and you will invariably find a drop or two making its way to the tablecloth before it does to your fish. Use this and the laws of physics somehow come into play and stop the loose drop from making its way to unwanted places.

Is the use of such spoons pretentious? Indeed if the hallmark is turned up or if one is trying to show how haute-cuisine conscious they have become but not at all when served as a usual part of the place setting in many fine French, Austrian, Spanish, German and Swiss restaurants.

As to hallmarks - several of these spoons, in pewter, with the hallmark of Paul Revere were recently auctionned by Christies, the set of 6 going for a most reasonable US$1750. I will admit that I once found one such Paul Revere spoon at a small antique shop near Watkins Glen in New York State. Paid all of US$6.00 for it. Sometimes the gods smile on us......

[Corinna Dunne]

Is the use of such spoons pretentious?  Indeed if the hallmark is turned up or if one is trying to show how haute-cuisine conscious they have become but not at all when served as a usual part of the place setting in many fine French, Austrian, Spanish, German and Swiss restaurants. 

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In a formal restaurant, the sauces tend to be very good, so I am very thankful for a sauce spoon. In the absence of one, I have used bread to mop up some wonderful sauces, but I feel a bit self conscious about this, particularly if there is an upscale hush about the place. After being "caught in the act" in a 3* restaurant not too long ago, I was reassuringly informed by the waiter that chef was very pleased to see my plates coming back wiped completely clean!

[chefboy24]

i've worked in several american/french manhattan restaurants front of the house, and i'm a cia graduate.

its been explained to me this way:

if the entree is a flat plate, and there is sauce on the plate, there should be a flat sauce spoon.

if the entree is a bowl, and it is fish, and there is a nage or a broth or a lot of liquid, the spoon should be the more conventional shape (not bouillon/soup, but more like dessert spoon shape).

all fish entrees must get either the sauce spoon or an entree spoon.

the knotch on the spoon is there either:

a) so the sauce spoon can hold the perfect amount of sauce and the rest will drip off

b) as an adage to oldschool fish scaling tools.

[Daniel Rogov]

In a formal restaurant, the sauces tend to be very good, so I am very thankful for a sauce spoon.  In the absence of one, I have used bread to mop up some wonderful sauces, but I feel a bit self conscious about this, particularly if there is an upscale hush about the place.

The sauce spoon is not so much for "finishing off" the sauce but for spooning it over the dish. When it comes to how to finish off a fine sauce a former professor of mine (Jean Piaget) once held forth on this subject. His advice:

"...In a working man's restaurant, simply break off a piece of bread, take it in your fingers and mop of the sauce to enjoy it. In a restaurant catering to the hoi polloi break off a piece of bread, drop it gently to your plate, impale it on your fork and with that mop up the sauce. In a restaurant with pretentions, cut a slice of the bread delicately with a knife, impale it on a fork and use that to get at the sauce. In a great restaurant break off a piece of bread, take it in your fingers and mop up the sauce to enjoy it".

I could not agree more!!!

[Chris Amirault]

Daniel, you never cease to amaze me! Courses with Piaget? I bow down to you, sir!

To the spoon matters at hand:

The sauce spoon is not so much for "finishing off" the sauce but for spooning it over the dish. 

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So, are we all to understand that using a sauce spoon to consume sauce, as a few members have suggested, is a serious faux pas?

[Daniel Rogov]

So, are we all to understand that using a sauce spoon to consume sauce, as a few members have suggested, is a serious faux pas?

Chris, Hi....

Not at all a faux pas. The problem is that no matter the design of the spoon you'll simply never get all of the sauce. Thus, if its good enough, go for the bread! A little bit of moral hedonism is good for all of us!

[andiesenji]

We are lucky nowadays that we do not have to use the myriad table utensils of Victorian times.

I have my great grandmother's silver and it has at least fifteen pieces in each place setting, including fish slice or fish knife and a fish fork as well as marrow spoon, individual butter spreader, oyster fork and a couple of others that I think were used for squab or other little birds.

It was never actually used at any dinner when I was a child but my great grandmother insisted on teaching me how a place setting was supposed to be arranged. Some of the forks were placed with the tines pointing down and the fish fork was on the right side instead of on the left with the rest of the forks.

It always seemed very odd to me. I guess today we would say the Victorians were very, very anal! My dad always said it was because silversmiths knew the Victorians were also mad for showing off their wealth with great ostentation and how better than to lay out a ton of silver on a dinner table so they kept coming up with extra pieces to sell to the gullible.

Pity the poor servants who had to take care of it.

Edited September 24, 2005 by andiesenji (log)

[Shalmanese]

I suppose discreetly bringing the plate up and licking all the sauce off is out of the question? Oh well, this is why I like eating at home better.

[Adam Balic]

We are lucky nowadays that we do not have to use the myriad table utensils of Victorian times.

I have my great grandmother's silver and it has at least fifteen pieces in each place setting, including fish slice or fish knife and a fish fork as well as marrow spoon, individual butter spreader, oyster fork and a couple of others that I think were used for squab or other little birds. 

It was never actually used at any dinner when I was a child but my great grandmother insisted on teaching me how a place setting was supposed to be arranged.  Some of the forks were placed with the tines pointing down and the fish fork was on the right side instead of on the left with the rest of the forks. 

It always seemed very odd to me.  I guess today we would say the Victorians were very, very anal!  My dad always said it was because silversmiths knew the Victorians were also mad for showing off their wealth with great ostentation and how better than to lay out a ton of silver on a dinner table so they kept coming up with extra pieces to sell to the gullible. 

Pity the poor servants who had to take care of it.

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It is interesting to see how good the condition of many of these pieces is and how intact the sets are (suggests that they may not have been used much in the day to day). I consider fish knives to be an abomination, but the antique dealers in Edinburgh love then, they are the No.1 item for Italian customers (for use with the Antipasto it seems). Marrow knives are now much in demand too.

[prasantrin]

I suppose discreetly bringing the plate up and licking all the sauce off is out of the question? Oh well, this is why I like eating at home better.

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Heathen! Don't you know? You're supposed to use your finger to wipe up all the sauce. Wipe...lick....wipe....lick. That's the order. Sometimes you can suck instead of lick, especially if the sauce gets under your fingernails.

[jackal10]

I always understood it was vulgar to have the cutlery for more than three courses on the table at once. If you have more than three courses the silveware is brought in with the course, or the table turned for desert.

Miss Manners (Judith Martin) says it better than I can

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0393058743...%3D#reader-page

Edited September 26, 2005 by jackal10 (log)

[lamb]

I suppose discreetly bringing the plate up and licking all the sauce off is out of the question? Oh well, this is why I like eating at home better.

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Heathen! Don't you know? You're supposed to use your finger to wipe up all the sauce. Wipe...lick....wipe....lick. That's the order. Sometimes you can suck instead of lick, especially if the sauce gets under your fingernails.

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Yikes!! I have a friend that does that. We dine out with a group of 6-8 regularly, and we (usually the females) cringe when we see our friend (also a female) doing this. She also has inch long acrylic nails that she will suck on to get all that's under them out. It's pretty disgusting.

There are some times when we conveniently forget to tell this twosome (sorry, the the husband has to suffer for her) that we are going out.

[prasantrin]

Yikes!!  I have a friend that does that.  We dine out with a group of 6-8 regularly, and we (usually the females) cringe when we see our friend (also a female) doing this.  She also has inch long acrylic nails that she will suck on to get all that's under them out.  It's pretty disgusting. 

There are some times when we conveniently forget to tell this twosome (sorry, the the husband has to suffer for her) that we are going out.

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It's horrible, isn't it? It's even worse than when people lick their knives. The absolute worst is when they make loud smacking noises when sucking on their fingers.

I have to admit, though, sometimes when I'm at home, alone, and eating a particularly flavourful bag of potato chips, I'll use my fingers to get every last crumb of flavouring. But no smacking sounds!

[I_call_the_duck]

In a formal restaurant, the sauces tend to be very good, so I am very thankful for a sauce spoon.  In the absence of one, I have used bread to mop up some wonderful sauces, but I feel a bit self conscious about this, particularly if there is an upscale hush about the place. After being "caught in the act" in a 3* restaurant not too long ago, I was reassuringly informed by the waiter that chef was very pleased to see my plates coming back wiped completely clean!

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I have no shame when it comes to cleaning my plate, and find a piece of bread to work fine. In fact, I feel embarrassed if I leave sauce. (My father took a clean plate as a sign that he was a good cook.) Waiters have made comments such as, “I guess you didn’t like it, huh?” or “I see you’re a member of the clean plate club.” We usually head them off at the pass by saying either, “can we please have the rest to go?”, “I wanted to see where the plate was made,” or “there used to be a pattern on this plate.”

I suppose discreetly bringing the plate up and licking all the sauce off is out of the question? Oh well, this is why I like eating at home better.

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I used to do this while growing up, and it used to mortify my mother. But that’s where we got the expression, “I want to know where the plate was made!”

The last time we ate out, our waiter even offered to turn his head so we can lick the goblet for our last drops of tiramisu.

Yikes!!  I have a friend that does that.  We dine out with a group of 6-8 regularly, and we (usually the females) cringe when we see our friend (also a female) doing this.  She also has inch long acrylic nails that she will suck on to get all that's under them out.  It's pretty disgusting. 

There are some times when we conveniently forget to tell this twosome (sorry, the the husband has to suffer for her) that we are going out.

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Now that's gross. I don't blame you for "forgetting" to invite them.

[Corinna Dunne]

In a great restaurant break off a piece of bread, take it in your fingers and mop up the sauce to enjoy it".

I could not agree more!!!

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Great! Wonderful news! Liberated at last!

[jackal10]

I can see high-end restaurants serving specific breads (or brioche etc) with each course especially to harmonise with and mop up the sauce...

[rooftop1000]

Last time I went to a certain Pub that happens to have an amazing New Zealand mussels in garlic sauce appetizer I ordered my main course sandwich as a platter so I could eat All the complimentary bread dunked in the mussels. I told the waitress their mussels were wonderful and I hope she told the cook. Next time I may ask if they can just give me double order of mussels over linguini or something as an entree

Tracey

[M.X.Hassett]

I can see high-end restaurants serving specific breads (or brioche etc) with each course especially to harmonise with and mop up the sauce...

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This is being done at a number of rest' Seegers in Atl is one that I can think of.