So these last few years my wife has decided that square dinner plates are the bomb.
Last night I wander in from doing whatever outside, wash my handies and go to our fancy eating table ready to demolish the evening repast.
Shock and fucking awe!
Not only square dinner plates; the peas are in a tiny square bowl, carrots laid out
on a square thingy, potatoes in a hexagonal something, sweet potato scrunched
into a whatever with many sides, and to top it all off the bread rolls are in a cane and steel contraption that defies desciption.
My squar(ish) dinner set is anything but a “newish household trend.” It’s a complete Franciscan Ware service for 12 that my parents bought at Bloomingdales back in the 30s. Authentic art deco. They are a dusty rose color with cream colored interiors. Beautiful to look at . . . but for some reason they become super-slippery when wet. My mother only used them on special occasions, but I don’t know how she managed to wash them without breaking them . . . without a dishwasher.
So, I’ve got them in one of the dining room cabinets, where they look gorgeous. But I never, ever use them.
I have a large collection of Fiestaware dishes, vintage and contemporary. I use much of the newer stuff on a daily basis. But I refuse to by any of the new square Fiesta stuff.
I like the square plates. The set I recently saw (and must have) have just enough depression to keep peas and such from being too difficult, but allows plenty of room on the borders if you want to get decorative with the food.
And somehow, it just agrees with my sense of symmetry and they fit very well in the cabinet without wasting that corner space.
I nearly bought a set of square plates the other day, because I fleetingly thought they might be cool for photographing food on for the website. I got over it though.
I don’t mind square plates. I can deal with square bowls. What I absolutely despise are square mugs. Either you hold the handle at a really funny angle, or you end up spilling all over yourself.
round the edges, since in addition to looking irredeemably naff, what if I’m not eating PASTA PASTA PASTA PASTA, cleverdick? What if I’m having GOLDEN GRAHAMS GOLDEN GRAHAMS GOLDEN GRAHAMS or TOAST TOAST TOAST? It’s a mockery!
Perhaps I’m overthinking this, but man I hate those plates.
Since 1988 I had been using the same set of pfaltzgraf (?) dishes. Homely chipped up white plates did not look so good in my new glass front cupboards. Off I went to find color and found colored square plates!
It’s been a year and man do those corners stick out like a sore thimb, I think I have chipped about half of those plates by now. All it takes is a little chink against the sink or stone counter and chips are flying. I still like the squares, and the colors and I just turn the chips towards the back of the cupboard.
I’m not a big fan of square plates, but I like the square bowls. I have a set of square white bowls, I guess you’d call them pasta bowls, but we use them for everything. I brought home two because they were on sale at Target, and we liked 'em so much I went back and bought a whole set.
They work great for a lot of what we eat. Chicken and veggies? They hold a piece of chicken and a bunch of broccoli really well. Pasta? I think that’s what they’re made for. Stir fry? Awesome.
They’re exactly the right size for everything, and the lip makes it so it’s easy to keep in any liquid bits - sauces, etc. The squareness makes them nice for meat, a piece of chicken and the sides don’t fit as nicely in round bowls.
Edit: Here’s a couple pics of what they look like:
I hate hate hate our new dishes and would prefer square, anything to the abomination they present. As a guy I’m all about stuff being functional. In not just one but three fundamental ways these ‘fired in Hell’ clay plates aren’t practical in the least.
One, they’re about 1/8 of an inch too big to fit in any cabinet. The freaking door won’t close. All your cabinets are nice and uniformy oriented… except one cracked open because the damn plates are too big.
Two, their base, the underside ring they come down to rest upon is small and located well inside the area above which you might need to cut your food. Therefore, when you press down with a fork or knife the plate flops over to that side.
Three, they’re not flat on top but slightly bowl shaped, concave. So all your juice from meats, veggies, fruit, whatever comes down to the middle and joins in a slurried mess. I want to load them as sporting clays and practice with my scattergun.
I have been tempted to buy square dinner plates because they would fit in the dishwasher so much better than our current huge round bowl-like dinner plates. Those dinner plates are such a pain in the ass to get in that washer that we almost never use them, and instead cram everything onto salad plates. However, like the OP, my husband thinks square dishes are trendy and pretentious – notwithstanding that his own grandmother cherished a lovely square set something like what **panache45 **describes, which we used at Thanksgiving meals at her house several times.
(But, then, my husband gets these weird, very fixed, irrational ideas about the style of things every so often… for years he refused to consider trying on pants with pleats because “they make me look like the ‘I’m a Pepper’ guy from the 70s.” Until I saw a vintage Dr Pepper ad, and saw – “I’m a Pepper” guy wore flat-front chinos! Prancing here, skipping there, twirling around the post for all to see, nary a pleat in sight! Hah! Husband now thinks pleated pants are kind of comfy and look just fine after all.)
I have square plates: Corelle Simple Lines. I bought them to replace my Pfaltgraf dishes. I’d spent a fortune over the years replacing plates and bowls that had gotten dinged on the granite countertop, and finally decided to throw in the towel and get Corelle, which are cheap and granite proof. And they aren’t ugly like my mother’s!
They are also lighter and thinner, so you can fit 3 times as many plates in the cupboard because they stack higher. Of course, the regular round ones would have done the same thing, but I liked the pattern on these, so there you have it.
So, flano1, just to make sure I’ve got this right… You “wander in from doing whatever outside” and a full dinner is laid out for you on the table - sounds like a fairly elaborate one, too - without your having lifted a finger.
And your reaction is to bitch about to shape of the plates.
Actually, he said “My face must have said it all,” implying that he didn’t bitch verbally. Which I can dig – my face falls sometimes, if I don’t catch it fast enough, when my spouse brings home Teh Ugly for our house, too. I still appreciate the effort; I just don’t want to have to either a) look at the damn thing for the next five or ten years or 2) be mean and let on that I think he’s got lousy taste sometimes.
All right, fair enough. Guess I laid the snark on a bit thick there…
The thing is… I still have a hard time imagining getting upset over this. No, I am not ivn1188.
