I want my dinner on a plate.

I still have my grandmother's cow jug-her head has come off a couple of times but has been successfully glued back on. (The cow jug that is, not my grandmother) Perversely I have a milk jug that looks like a milk carton!

Slate particles in your food is not good

As a student I always had a summer job to keep me in funds for the rest of the year. One year I worked in a canning factory in Spalding. My landlady always made me Sunday dinner of roast beef, vegetables and gravy served in a huge Yorkshire pudding. It was absolutely delicious.

In Prague we ate goulash in pastry bowls. Also delicious, but had to lie down in a darkened room to recover. I felt like one of those pythons that have swallowed a pig!

I've had steak on a slate plate and never again. A knife cutting against slate felt and sounded awful. And trying to eat a steak pie from a pudding basin was a challenge too.

So now I ask for a proper plate.

(My DS got a nice little sideline job for a while re-sanding wooden platters when they lost their surface.)

Thanks for the link Isabella

The best French onion soup I ever had was in a hollowed out sourdough loaf in San Francisco. I ate the loaf as well.

I agree that the deep soup plates are awful - so difficult to cut your food on them. Ditto fish pie, macaroni cheese, etc., left in its cooking dish. I usually try and decant them onto the plate.

I also don't like the way some places pile different items of food on top of one another.

Yes that's annoying Eloethan. Both the needing to decant onto a plate and the silly piled up food. I'm sure it's meant to be artistic but you still have to dissemble it to eat it.

I quite the chips served in a miniature basket and the fish on pretend newspaper and DGS was tickled pink to be served his 'Southern Fried Chicken' and chips in a bucket when we were overseas.

However, I do struggle with dinner in those large soup plates and salad in a bowl.

Don't those slate serving platters blunt the knives? I know you're not supposed to use ceramic boards for cutting on because it blunts the knives.

My mother had one of those 'Jersey creamers'.

I quite like!

(missed the whole point there because I missed a word out)

Wondered what you meant Jalima, I didn't even notice the 'like' was missing! I just read it as being there and had to re-read slowly!

Why do restaurants use those whopping great slabs of wood? The must be much more difficult to deal with for the staff, as well as being a bit ridiculous.

Because they are all trying to outdo each other in the pretentiousness stakes gettingonabit, bit like the emperor's new clothes.

Exactly Christine and they are probably blissfully unaware that we customers grumble like mad,,,,perhaps we should all email them and let them know how we really feel.

I agree! Particularly eating off wooden boards.

As a vege I am not happy to eat off something someone has possibly been using for a bloody steak. It's not so much about me being a vege, as that there is probably grease and blood flavours left in the wood. Not having eaten meat for years it is not a pleasant taste.

I have a small chopping board which I keep just for chopping up onions and garlic and chillis. It is deeply impregnated with onion smells. You really would not want to cut things like cake on it.

As for chicken in a basket how greasy must those baskets have got and how cool we were eating like that with our fingers.

I dislike square plates, it is harder to keep the knives and forks resting on the sides of the plate without falling into the food.

The local pub where I go to knitting group just serve the most superb chips straight onto the plate. Why put them in a wire basket?

Oh I do like a good chip Nelliemoser but sadly a lot of so called "homemade" turn out to be frozen.

I can't abide the practice of drinking beer/cider etc. from the bottle. I always ask for a glass. I shudder to think of all those grubby hands handling the neck of the bottle.

Much as I hate normal fast food outlets complete with cardboard, we were in a fast food outlet in the City of London and if I'd been hungry I would have forgiven them the cardboard box considering what was the delicious sounding food in it

Wooden boards are the pits. I've got to the point of choosing food that I think will be on a plate. Or going somewhere where I know it will be, like a pasta restaurant.

Not only that Sussex I read that depending where the bottles are stored other germs can get into the necks of the bottles - including - horror of horrors - rats pee!!!

The worst I had was a roast dinner served on a tea plate - I think they had run out of horrible wooden boards - needless to say most of the food ended up on the table. They got a bad TripAdvisor review and I've not been back.

Here in the Black Country years ago when we had steelworks and foundries, the men used to reheat their 'snap' (lunch) in the furnace on a shovel. There's a pub nearby which, as a novelty and when requested, still serves food on a shovel. The shovel is pristine, mind you. Probably unlike the old days when I dread to think on the state of the shovel....

My views are reflected in John Finnemore's song - he's no singer but he absolutely nails it - warmly recommended!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX4KuEAYIYY

Soup in a basket was even worse.........

Not sure about chicken in a basket, I used to love soup in a basket!