That’s why passing a cheese board at the dinner table is an invitation to over-indulgence.

So take a tip from top restaurants that offer a cheese plate:

Serve small bites of several cheeses, plus fruit and nut condiments.

Cut half-ounce servings of four different cheeses—a hefty tablespoon of each—with an assortment of healthful fruits and nuts (check out our chart of cheese condiments).

You don’t need to serve a basket of bread, either: Eat the cheese with a fork and knife. You can add a slice of walnut bread, raisin bread or baguette; or, as shown in in the photo, a piece of panforte, along with a walnut half and dried fruit (shown, a date and a dried apricot).

Browse through our Cheese Glossary to get some ideas of what you’d like to serve. Half the fun is deciding on a theme for your cheese plate (fresh cheeses, goat’s milk or sheep’s milk cheeses, blue cheeses, country-of-origin cheeses [all French or Italian cheeses, for example], and so forth.)

Then, there’s the “wild card sampler”: Look at the cheeses in the store and pick a broad variety of what appeals to you (a fresh cheese, a smoked cheese, a stinky cheese and an aged cheese, for example).

A conventional round plate is fine. But we have a set of rectangular plates like those in the photo.

They add drama to just about any course, and are perfect for samplings (we like to use them for dessert samplers: a small piece of key lime pie, a small slice of brownie and a meringue or macaron, for example).

If it’s not in the budget to treat yourself to a set or two, put these plates on your birthday or holiday “gift registry.”