How to Put Together a Perfect Passover Table

If I’m being completely honest, I...did not enjoy Passover for the first 22 years of my life. It took growing up and moving out to fully realize why I should look forward to eight voluntary gluten-free days that kick off each year with a four-hour chanting-filled ceremony.

Now, though? I take the whole day of first Seder off, get to my parents’ house ASAP, and legitimately enjoy blending sauces, pouring soups and setting every last bit of their dinnerware out across the table so that all of my aunts, uncles and cousins are fully equipped for the longest and most delicious meal of the year.

This year, as it has been in so many ways, is different—I’m not headed home. I’m assembling Seder for just me and my husband, and we’re not setting foot outside our tiny NYC apartment. But this Seder will also be the same in that it’ll be a day to look for (and create!) beauty where there otherwise is none.

After all, Passover is a celebration dedicated to enjoying yourself—on the condition you realize you’re able to sit in that enjoyment now because of how our ancestors suffered long ago. I got older, I burst out of bubbles, I experienced things as a young Jewish woman that helped me better understand how deeply that suffering is ingrained. So, yeah, I want to gather with the people I love the most—people who share that perspective—over an absurd amount of symbolic food and wine and spend literal hours crushing through all of it. That’s good-for-the-soul stuff right there.

The meal itself is long, but it’s formulaic. Should you forget any part of it, all you need to do is look at your place setting to know where you are in it and what comes next. We start with what’s on the Seder plate—the shank bone represents sacrifice, the egg’s shape reminds us of the circle of life, the bitter herbs keep the bitterness of our time in Egypt top of mind, the parsley is for springtime (Passover always falls right around the start of the season!), and the charoset mixture is a reminder of sweet things to come. Everyone needs a bite of all of it—passed plates circulate while the Seder plate stays put and rotates with each serving. Until this year, I’d never thought to put the center of the Seder on an equally pretty lazy Susan and let it do the work for me. Now? I will never be Susan-less for Seder.

We move on to matzo ball soup, each matzo ball prominently displayed in its bowl. Gefilte fish comes next, and it, too, gets its own plate...mostly because you don’t want that horseradish touching anything else. I loved cycling through Bennett Oval dinnerware for these first courses. The bowls, salad plates and dinner plates allowed space enough for each food to have a moment while stacking neatly to accommodate several courses. By this point, you’re meant to have finished your second of four glasses of wine, by the way! (I alternated between Tour red wine glasses and stemless wine glasses to add different heights to the table and have enough options for cycling through, um, several glasses of wine.)

Next come the mains, and they are sauce-heavy, sweet-and-sour stars of Seder. My mom drops slices of crusted brisket onto everyone’s plate, spooning as much sauce as she can possibly gather on top. There’s always stuffed cabbage, its saccharine sauce a perfect pair with the brisket’s depth. A green ends up somewhere in the pile. By the time you’re fully stocked (and drinking from your next wine glass!), you should be able to pull your fork straight through all of it. It’s a perfect, perfect bite.

Dessert on Passover is tricky. At the end of a cooking and drinking marathon, you can attempt kosher-for-Passover cakes or a fruit salad (I’ve tried! I really have!), but you’ll ultimately want to make an easy and sure thing. Macaroons (which pack a bigger aesthetic punch when served under this cake dome) are little lumps of condensed milk and coconut that stick to your dessert plate, and your fingers, letting you know the night is almost over. The last glass of wine, a little bit of coffee—and so concludes the first night of Pesach.

If you’ve done it right, you’re exhausted. Rather, you’re exhausted and grateful. You’ve got a week’s worth of leftovers, enough family time to last you a year, and pictures of a tablescape so good you’ll take to Instagram immediately. After all, what is an earnest caption about learning and growing and getting to know who you really are via food and family without a portrait of an unperturbed gorgeous table?

...I told you I’ve learned and grown. :) Happy Passover, everyone.