Cheese Course: Before or After Dessert?

Posted by potroast, August 9, 2009 at 12:36 PM

I catered an 8 person dinner last night in the most fab setting, an underground wine cellar at a private home. The client loves his French wines and we served a 5 course meal for him and his guests. He wanted a cheese course but he wasn't sure if it should go before or after dessert. I thought pre-dessert, since that is the French tradition. But I wasn't sure his guests would appreciate the immediacy of getting cheese after the entree. I ended up having the cheese set in the middle of the table with small clean plates for each guest to use, and dessert was brought out not to late after some guests had begun to dig in to the cheese. I ended up clearing dessert and leaving the cheese there for them, which they nibbled on for the following hour. So even though I served it before dessert, it ended up being the last thing on the table.

It seemed to work, but I wondered if this was the best sequence of events. Anyone think of a better way to approach the timing and serving of the cheese course?

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