The long table is set the same way each August, which is to say it is barely set at all. Linen, washed soft. Glasses that do not match. Bread, and whatever the morning brought back. The point is not the arrangement. The point is that people stay.
A good table is mostly a matter of timing. The food should arrive a little before it is wanted and leave a little after it is finished, so that no one notices either. The light does the rest. By the time the candles are lit, the conversation has usually turned to the only subjects worth a long evening, and no one is in a hurry to name them.
What is served matters less than it is thought to. We keep to a few things, done properly, and repeat them without apology. The table remembers its own order. One learns it by sitting at it.