Menu facts for kids

Chalkboard menus are easy to update quickly.

1893 menu for a London club. Many dishes had French names due to French cooking styles.

A menu is a list of all the food and drinks a restaurant or cafe offers. It helps you choose what you want to eat! Menus have been used for a long time. They help customers know what is available and how much it costs.

Menus became popular in Europe in the 1700s. In China, menus were used even earlier, during the Song Dynasty. This was because Chinese cities had many different kinds of food. Restaurants needed a way to show all their dishes to customers.

Types of Restaurant Menus

In modern restaurants, a famous French chef named Auguste Escoffier helped create the way menus are set up today. He organized dishes into different courses.

There are usually two main types of menus you might see:

• Table d'hôte: This is a set menu. You get a few courses for one fixed price. It's like a special meal deal.
• À la carte: This menu offers a wider choice of items. Each dish has its own separate price. You pick and choose exactly what you want.

Chalkboard Menus

Some places, like smaller cafes or fish restaurants, use chalkboard menus. These are great because they can be changed very quickly. If a fish restaurant gets fresh fish that morning, they can write it on the board right away! This means you know the food is fresh.

Menu Engineering: Smart Menu Design

In the United States, there's a special way restaurants think about menus called "menu engineering." This is a part of marketing. It's about designing a menu to help customers choose certain dishes. Restaurants might put popular items in easy-to-see spots. They might also use colors or descriptions to make some dishes sound extra tasty. It's all about making the menu work best for the restaurant and the customer.

Images for kids

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  Historical menu card of the banquet for German Emperor Wilhelm II and Empress Auguste Viktoria on Sept. 7, 1898 in Hotel Kaiserhof, Porta Westfalica

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  A lighted display board-style menu outside a French Kebab restaurant.

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  An 1899 menu from Delmonico's restaurant in New York City.

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  City Hotel, New Orleans restaurant menu (December 8, 1857)

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  Menu cards - Presi Corp.

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  Animal fries from In-N-Out Burger's secret menu

See also

In Spanish: Menú (restaurante) para niños