Basic Dining Etiquette - Using a Finger Bowl

Nancy Mitchell: Hello, I am Nancy Mitchell with the Etiquette Advocate and we are talking about dining etiquette. I would like to tell you now about how to use a finger bowl. A finger bowl is traditionally served after the main course and before the dessert. The thought is that you may have had a course that involved picking something up with your hands, there maybe grease on your hands. In some way, you want to clean your hands very quickly and get ready for dessert. Its also a ritual if you will its something thats been around for many, many, many generations. So, it may seem that its very archaic, but its part of a traditional dinner service.

What will happen is a waiter will bring you a plate, on top of the plate is a doily. On top of the doily is a small bowl that is maybe half filled with water and inside there maybe a lemon slice or there maybe a flower floating. Those are for decoration, you dont have to remove the lemon, you dont remove the flower, those stay in the water. You dip one hand at a time and we are talking very, very quickly, very unobtrusively you are switching the fingertips of your hand in the water. You are moving your hand down to your lap where your napkin is placed you are drying the tips of your finger. What you cant see below the level of the table is I am drying my fingertips on the napkin thats lying on my lap.

I have done one hand I do the other hand, so its one hand at a time. I am drying my fingertips now, once thats finished. I pick up both the doily and the bowl with the water and I place them to the left and above my plate where my bread plate was before it was cleared away. This then becomes my dessert plate. I need to clear the doily away, so that whatever is coming next for dessert will sit on the plate and not on the doily. At that point, I will notice that I still have silverware here above my place setting its for dessert. My job as the diner is I pick up the spoon and the fork and place them to the left and the right of my plate setting. Just as before, forks on the left, spoons on the right. Those become my utensils for dessert. The doily and the bowl of water remain here, up to the left of your place setting until the waiter comes to take that away. Next, we will be talking about dessert and coffee.