The way most of this type of furniture is finished is by bleaching the natural color out of the wood,sealing,glazing and then top coating with lacquer. Lacquer is a nice finish but it will not stand up to the wear and tear of a table used as described and it had problems with some of the normal cleaning products used today. My advise would be to strip the top and finish with whatever color you prefer and topcoat with a phenolic resin varnish.Waterlox original varnish and Rockhard varnish are twobrands. If I didn't explain well enough,please let me know.
Regards
Jerry |