Menu
A menu may be à la carte – which presents a list of options from which customers choose, often with prices shown – or table d'hôte, in which case a pre-established sequence of courses is offered.
The variation in Chinese cuisine from different regions led caterers to create a list or menu for their patrons.
It ultimately derives from Latin "minutus", something made small; in French, it came to be applied to a detailed list or résumé of any kind.
The owners of the restaurant defended the practice, saying it was done as a courtesy, like the way men would stand up when a woman enters the room.
During the economic crisis in the 1970s, many restaurants found it costly to reprint the menu as inflation caused prices to increase.
This allows restaurants to modify the price of lobster, fresh fish and other foods subject to rapid changes in cost.
The main categories within a typical menu in the US are appetizers, "side orders and à la carte", entrées, desserts and beverages.
Menus often present a restaurant's policies about ID checks for alcohol, lost items, or gratuities for larger parties.
"Menu language, with its hyphens, quotation marks, and random outbursts of foreign words, serves less to describe food than to manage your expectations"; restaurants are often "plopping in foreign words (80 percent of them French) like "spring mushroom civet", "pain of rabbit", "orange-jaggery gastrique".
[7] Part of the function of menu prose is to impress customers with the notion that the dishes served at the restaurant require such skill, equipment, and exotic ingredients that the diners could not prepare similar foods at home.
[7] In some cases, ordinary foods are made to sound more exciting by replacing everyday terms with their French equivalents.
Although "avec compote de Pommes" translates directly as "with apple sauce", it sounds more exotic—and more worthy of an inflated price tag.
Restaurants consider their positioning in the marketplace (e.g. fine dining, fast food, informal) in deciding which style of menu to use.
The advantage of using a chalkboard is that the menu items and prices can be changed; the downside is that the chalk may be hard to read in lower light or glare, and the restaurant has to have a staff member who has attractive, clear handwriting.
A high-tech successor to the chalkboard menu is the "write-on wipe-off" illuminated sign, using LED technology.
Fast-food restaurants that have a drive-through or walk-up window will often put the entire menu on a board, lit-up sign, or poster outside so that patrons can select their meal choices.
With the invention of LCD and Plasma displays, some menus have moved from a static printed model to one which can change dynamically.
By using a flat LCD screen and a computer server, menus can be digitally displayed allowing moving images, animated effects and the ability to edit details and prices.
For fast food restaurants, a benefit is the ability to update prices and menu items as frequently as needed, across an entire chain.
Various software tools and hardware developments have been created for the specific purpose of managing a digital menu board system.
In recent years, however, more and more restaurants outside of large metropolitan areas have been able to feature their menus online as a result of this trend.
[citation needed] Another phenomenon is the so-called secret menu where some fast food restaurants are known for having unofficial and unadvertised selections that customers learn by word of mouth,[12] or by looking them up online.
This can also occur in high-end restaurants, which may be willing to prepare certain items which are not listed on the menu (e.g., dishes that have long been favorites of regular clientele).
