Talk:Silver service

Etiquette in different countries
I think whether serving/collecting occurs at the left or right might differ between countries. This should be reflected in article. --Username132 (talk) 19:38, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

The logic between serving/collecting at different sides is as follows:
 * When serving, one holds the platter of food on the left arm and serves using utensils in the right hand. The food needs to be at table level to be served, so if one served from the right, the right arm would have to be extended over the platter in order to put food on the guest's plate - this is very awkward (speaking from experience, having done it by accident once!)
 * When collecting, the plates are held on the left arm and collected with the right, but this time the stack of plates should be kept far from the table. Reaching around someone with the right arm is slightly less awkward from their right hand side than from their left.

It's certainly possible that it's done differently in different countries - for etiquette reasons, perhaps - but the side ordering is not as arbitrary as it might initially seem. Cammy 00:11, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Service direction
I found it interesting that the guest on the host's right is served first (makes sense, this would be the guest of honor) and then service continues clockwise, making the host the next person served. 4.249.198.186 (talk) 19:49, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Contradiction with French Service article
In the present article is a note about Butler service being a variation on Silver Service

> In butler service, the diner helps himself from a serving plate held by the waiter (butler). Traditionally, this type of service was used on Sunday evenings, when the waiting staff had the evening off and the butler helped out at dinner.[citation needed]

That all makes sense and I can see that reduce the serving staff to one would change the style of serving. However, this paragraph goes on to say:

> In France, this kind of service is known as service à la francaise ("French service").[4]

This does not agree with the main article on [Service_à_la_française] which states; that food is already at the table when the dinners are seated, and that dinners help themselves. Some of the reference material points out that the Butler is bringing the food to the table (possibly in a sequence as with Silver and [Service_à_la_russe]) in an order to keep it at the appropriate temperature.

Now it could well be that Butler Service is a variation of either Siver or French; where all the courses arrive in sequence or at once. The section describing this could be improved to reflect that if this is the case.

--TafThorne (talk) 10:21, 23 November 2018 (UTC)