Is it soup or salad bowls/plares? Serving bowls? What? And would you buy more just to always have enough?
In my case, I always seem short of teaspoons and matching medium serving bowls.
THIS.
Teaspoons, coffee spoons, dessert spoons, whatever type of little spoons.
I also run out of my small bowls (3-4 types) because I use them for everything from snacks to prep / mise to storing a little bit of something.
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I have always bought, or attempted to buy, extra teaspoons. I actually like the size of 5 o’clock coffee spoons better; they’re a little shorter. Add in salad forks; they go missing too. European stainless flatware has the smaller teaspoons more often than not, as does vintage sterling. I have scads of espresso spoons. I’m going to run out of tableware about the same time as the sea runs out of salt. Waaay too much collected over the years. Medium size bowls? Perhaps the kitties will lend me their water bowls.
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I’ve had little success doing this. My everyday (Ricci Ascot) isnt cheap, and I’ve never seen it offered open stock. I’m not buying extra place settings just for the spoons. Replacements.com’s prices for single pieces are too rich for my blood.
As we move from the world of our parents’ creation, replete with twelve of everything in silver, china, and crystal, plus serving ware galore to the more minimal world we have chosen, moving towards the world our children are fashioning, having enough becomes much less of an issue, and mixing and matching is increasingly common. Since we have silver and china from forebears, if we used up all of the stainless salad forks, we just use some silver for dessert. When we have a large group, small forks and salad/dessert plates are used up first. Finding large serving spoons can also require using a bit of silver. Curiously, customs at table have not been passed on to everyone. Often as I am clearing for the next course, I find diners who used the wrong fork or spoon, usually the same ones with a white wine glass full of water and a water goblet full of red wine. If people knew and followed the conventions, everything would have worked out fine. No one seems to have any idea that the dessert fork and spoon are for dessert. They go unused.
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I instruct my dinner guests on the proper use of dishes and cutlery … with a bat!!! (a whip might break the crystal). And sometimes I put out fish knives and forks just so someone will ask. Dessert forks and spoons are set, but usually the spoon goes unused. I have a metric sterling-ton of vintage serving spoons, all second hand. Very useful.
I learned this stuff in home-ec (oh wait… they don’t teach that anymore), not from a household with servants. 
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Replacements is expensive for that kind of thing. My current 2 alternating everyday stainless patterns are Fortessa and Degrenne; both are available as open stock (Degrenne has to be ordered from France, but it’s not difficult or overly expensive - comes in sets of 6).
Silver Superstore sells individual pieces of Ricci patterns (I bought sugar spoons to use as round soup spoons for my old Ricci Bramasole). They also sell some things like pastry forks in sets of 6.
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I have an 8 piece silverware set that I was gifted over the years by my maternal uncle. While I wasn’t able to appreciate it at the time (hey - my sis got gold coins, and I would get 2 mocha spoons for xmas WUT!), I certainly do now.
I am eternally pissed about 3 of 8 dining forks having disappeared into limbo over the years, but everything else is still there. Ordering them again would be forbiddingly $$$.
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Several years ago we realized that we each used stainless spreaders very frequently during any given day. We bought them whenever we came across them and now have “enough “. There are usually 8 to 10 in each dishwasher load.
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I love my little stash of Duralex bowls for mise, for ice cream, for berries, for extra pan sauce. I think they are about 4" and a bit under 2". The smaller ones are perfect for olive oil in which to dip bread or lemon butter or mayonnaise in which to dip artichokes. Cheap, durable, and nice looking.
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Losing part of a set you love is awful. What is the pattern?
I love patterns like that.
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Thread and beaded thread, Continenal and heavy all work for me.
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I broke one of my bread plates from my good set of dishes that I use for company. I did find a similar set of bread plates at Goodwill. Not an exact match, but close enough for me.
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About the only thing of which we tend to run short between runs of the dishwasher is teaspoons. Somebody (ok, it’s usually me) occasionally feeds one to the garbage disposal, so we have several spoons with chewed up bowls that are suitable for, well, nothing much at all. I frequently handwash the spoons rather than put them in the DW so we don’t run out.
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One of my silver cake forks landed in the disposal, albeit only briefly, and not on the tine end. But it’s def mangled now. SADZ 
I’ve taken mangled silverware to a local jeweler, who repaired the chewed up bits quite well.
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Interesting! I might do that. Thx for the tip 
