Menu
list of food and drinks available at a restaurant
In a restaurant, a menu is a list of food and beverage items available for customers to order. Menus may be presented à la carte, in which individual dishes are listed separately and priced individually, or as table d'hôte, where a fixed sequence of courses is offered for a set price.
Menus can be displayed in several formats. They are commonly printed on paper and provided to diners at the table, but may also appear on display boards inside the establishment, outside the restaurant to attract passersby, or on digital screens. Since the late 1990s, many restaurants have also made their menus available online.
Menus are also used at formal events outside restaurants, such as weddings, banquets, and ceremonial dinners. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, printed menus were frequently produced for private dinner parties and social gatherings in homes, which was one of the earliest uses of printed menus in Europe.
History
Menus, as lists of prepared foods, have been discovered dating back to the Song dynasty in China. In the larger cities of the time, merchants found a way to cater to busy customers who had little time or energy to prepare an evening meal. The variation in Chinese cuisine from different regions led caterers to create a list or menu for their patrons.
The public source identifies “Menu” as list of food and drinks available at a restaurant. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Menu, list and food.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q658274. The Library of Congress control number is sh85083733. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Menu” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.