DEAR MISS MANNERS: When salad is eaten after the main course, should the salad fork go outside or inside the table fork? I have often seen the salad served after a main course, before dessert, but I have never seen the fork moved. Assuming the salad is presented after the main (meat) course, what is the proper setting?
GENTLE READER: Maybe your hosts are just used to seeing tables set that way because restaurants can produce salad before the main course (to placate clients while their main courses are being cooked). The reverse sequence is proper for a private event, where dinner is already in the works.
But maybe your hosts are just trying to drive you crazy. People love to ridicule etiquette for the supposedly Heraclean problem of choosing which fork to use, when the answer couldn't be more simple: Start at the outside and work your way in. So the salad fork goes inside when it is to be used after the meat course.
Miss Manners cannot decide which would be more delicate -- to use the salad fork for the salad, despite its misplacement, or to use the dinner fork for salad and the salad fork for the main course to avoid pointing out that your host doesn't know how to set the table.