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Tray & Toast

Serveware: Trays, Platters and Bowls

Everything that carries food from the kitchen to where people are standing. Chosen for what happens when it is full.

A serving tray of drinks and appetizers on a table

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Serveware is the least interesting category here to shop for and probably the most useful to own. Nobody gets excited about a white platter. Everybody improvises one at least once a year, usually while something is coming out of the oven.

Three categories, three different jobs

Trays carry. They move food and drinks from a kitchen to where people are standing, which means handles, a lip and enough thickness that the middle does not bow under six full glasses.

Platters present. They hold anything wet, oily or hot that would ruin a wooden board, and plain white makes food look considerably better than any pattern does, which is why restaurants use it.

Bowls contain. Salads, sides, dips, and the olives and nuts that have nowhere to go on a flat board. The sizes you actually use are smaller than the ones people buy.

The buying order

  1. One 17 by 12 inch tray. The default size: six glasses or a full snack spread, and it still fits a coffee table. Tray picks here.
  2. One large white platter. Oven-safe if possible, so you can roast and serve in the same dish.
  3. Two or three nested bowls. Medium sizes, not one enormous one.
  4. A second tray. Two trays let you circulate one while rebuilding the other, which is the whole trick to a party where food keeps appearing.

What separates a good tray from a cheap one

Four things, and none of them appear in a product listing. Flex, which you feel as a wobble when the tray is loaded. Handle comfort, which comes down to how rounded the cut-out edge is. Whether there is a lip, which is what stops a glass walking off when you turn. And whether it looks like something when empty, because it will be empty most of the time.

The handles comparison goes through cut-in versus metal properly, and party trays covers the specific case of carrying drinks through a crowd.

Board or platter?

A simple split: board for dry food, platter for wet. Cured meat, hard cheese, bread and crackers look better on wood. Marinated vegetables, olives in oil, dips and anything warm belong on ceramic, which contains liquid, goes in the dishwasher and is often oven safe. Most good spreads use both.

We go through it properly in board vs platter.

What to buy