Serveware

Party snacks want flat trays before deep bowls:

they arrive by the dozen and get picked from the edge, so a long rectangular platter, a tiered stand or a tray with a raised lip carries far more of it than a bowl. Tiered acrylic stands save room on a crowded birthday table, trays with a small well in the middle hold the sauce for the cheese sticks, and white Mikasa porcelain suits a sit-down meal. Deep bowls are for the potato salad, tinted pink with beet the Panamanian way. The plates people eat from are in dinnerware, and the glasses in drinkware and bar.

Chafing dishes for the hot end of the buffet:

a chafer keeps food warm over a pan of hot water, heated from below by fuel cans or, in electric models, by an element you plug in. Fuel works anywhere, even under a thatched shelter at the back of the yard with no socket nearby; electric holds a steadier heat indoors. Most frames take a standard full-size hotel pan, so a lost or dented food pan is easy to replace. Roll-top lids swing back on a hinge and stay open while guests serve themselves. For a single party, a folding wire rack with disposable foil pans does the same job and fits in a drawer afterwards.

Panama’s own carved wooden plate:

cut from one piece of wood with a turned-up rim, it was the everyday plate of rural Panamanian homes, used to clean rice, carry washing to the river and serve dinner. The painted kind came later: a light native hardwood decorated by hand with the figures of pre-Columbian Coclé pottery, a craft revived by the artist Diana Chiari. A painted one is for the wall or for dry food such as bread and fruit, not for soaking at the sink. Plain carved bowls and teak boards for cheese and cold cuts do the daily work, and a runner from kitchen and table linens under a heavy board saves the tabletop.

A stainless chafer against a painted wooden plate:

a full-size stainless chafer runs around $40 to $70 new, and since steel does not wear out, a used one with water pan, food pan and lid keeps much of that, while a bare frame barely sells. Chrome-plated versions start cheaper and lose their value the moment the plating flakes. A hand-painted wooden plate costs around $50 to $80 new from an artisan, depending on size and detail. Second-hand ones are priced on the painting rather than the wood: bright, unchipped colour holds its price, sun-faded colour does not, and older pieces by known painters go to collectors.

A used chafer is judged by its water pan:

hold it up to the light and look along the welded corners, because a brown line or a pinhole there means it leaks, and that is the one fault a chafer cannot hide. Rust spots inside come from water left standing between parties. Work the lid, count the fuel holders and stand the frame on the floor to see that it sits level. Turn ceramic platters over, since chips hide under the rim where they were stacked. Wood that has split along the grain, or gone grey and furry from the dishwasher, is past saving. On a painted wooden plate, look across the surface: hand painting leaves brush marks that a printed copy does not.

Chafers listed by the set, painted plates by the painter:

say how many units, fuel or electric, full or half-size pans, and which kind of lid. Photograph one with the lid open and the water pan lifted out. For platters and boards give the length and the material; for a painted plate, the wood, the size and who painted it, with the front and back photographed in daylight. Mention every chip and dent in the text. Someone driving in from Colón for a party that same weekend will lift every lid and count the pans before paying, so nest the pans, bag the fuel holders and keep the boxes if you still have them.