À la carte
From MedBib.com - Medicine & Nature
For other uses, see À la carte (disambiguation).
À la carte (pronounced /ælæˈkɑrt/)[1] is a French language loan phrase meaning "according to the menu", and used in restaurant terminology as:
- A reference to a menu of items priced and ordered separately, rather than selected from a list of preset multi-course meals at fixed prices, in contrast to a table d'hôte, at which a menu with limited or no choice is served at a fixed price.
- To designate an option to choose, at no extra charge, a side dish to accompany a main course item.
The phrase was adopted into English in 1826, predating by a decade the common use of the French language loanword "menu".[2][3]
See also
References
- ^ "À la carte". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 2nd ed. 1989.
- ^ Richard Bailey, Eating Words, Michigan Today, 13 May 2008.
- ^ Menu, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition, Houghton Mifflin
 |
This restaurant-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
All material adapted used from Wikipedia is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
Seeking health information online: does Wikipedia matter?