Christmas meal in kitchen or dining table?

[PinkAmaryliss]

What I mean is - do you heap every dish onto the dining table, or on the kitchen counters where people’s plates are then loaded and taken to the dining table?
I’ve always put everything onto the dining table but it looks so messy after everyone has served themselves. So now I’m imagining a beautifully decorated dining table that stays that way, and everything laid out in the kitchen instead?

As a child we always did a serve yourself table in the kitchen with gravy and sauces etc on the dining table, (or a side table). Granny was served but the rest of us queued round and filled our plates as we wished.

Nowadays it's just the four of us and there's only one table and no dining room so it's served with veg on the table and meat to the side.

I’ve bought a buffet server for this year, to go on the table.

Plan is that meat will be grabbed in kitchen, but then spuds, veg etc will be kept nice & warm in the server for people to keep helping themselves. I’m a ridiculously slow eater but like my veg hot, so I’ve done this for me really!

Could always add some tinsel to the lids to make it more decorative 😀

Either all on the sideboard or some dishes on the sideboard and some at the table. Things people may want seconds of stay at the table.

We don’t have a sideboard next to the dining table - it has to be everything on the dining table or everything in the kitchen, really.

There will be seven adults and a lot of different dishes…I’m leaning towards, as in your childhood, a hot buffet in the kitchen! I do also have a ‘hot mat’ thing to keep dishes warm.

Dining table, always - I don't think it does look messy, and it's so much nicer not having to get up to get seconds.

Dining table. It doesn't look messy.

Dishes on the dining table - always! It means that people don't overfill their plates to start with, so there is less waste (there is rarely ANY waste) and we can all continue to eat and chat while having second (or third or fourth) helpings without anyone needing to leap up to get more. Anything left in the dishes is untouched and can be used in a reheated (or cold) dish the next day.

We don't have a lot of mess left either... I'm not sure why anyone would? Or maybe I'm just not understanding what you mean by 'mess '. There are certainly more dirty dishes, but practically nothing to be scraped off plates and put in the bin.

There are usually four of us so always have serving dishes on the table

Thanks all! The preferred thing seems to be everything on the dining table! I think by ‘mess’ I just meant like bowls half-full of peas…but that’s not really ‘mess’, wrong word!

Peas do not belong on a Christmas lunch 😂

Quite apart from the debate over whether or not peas belong on Christmas dinner (I say not... although I love peas), any dishes with food remaining in them get removed with the dirty plates after the main course, and then pudding gets brought in, so there are no messy dishes on the table with pudding.

When the clearing up is done at the end of the meal then any (untouched) leftover food gets transferred to containers and put in the fridge.

This is why people have sideboards! We only have one table in our open plan space. As there are only three of us it fits on the table. But say there are six of us, the peninsula part of the kitchen is just out of reach from my seat, so foods could be put there.
I do carve the turkey on to a plate, then remove the turkey and people can then help themselves from it.
I don’t understand those beautiful tables does that only have room for the individual didn’t plate and maybe salt and pepper. People must be served a full ready made plate. We like to have it on the table so if you need extra cranberry sauce? Here it is. More gravy? There you go. Another roastie? Don’t eat them all!

Dishes (beautiful Christmas serving dishes) on the table.

Tbh, this is how we always serve food anyway.