A restaurant menu is a translation problem before it's a meal. The restaurant menu language on a Manhattan card is shaped by French classical service, decades of American diner shorthand, and the plain economics of running a kitchen. Once you know a handful of terms, the menu stops being decorative and starts telling you what you're actually paying for.
Some of that language is old and imported. Some of it is newer and purely practical, like a price that changes with the fish market. None of it is designed to confuse you on purpose, though it can feel that way at a white-tablecloth room on a Friday night. Here's what the words are actually doing.
This guide focuses on what shows up on the customer-facing side of the menu, not the kitchen's own internal shorthand, though the two worlds do overlap. If you've ever wondered why a French word means one thing in Paris and another in Manhattan, or why a fish costs a different amount every time you order it, this is for you.
Why does "entrée" mean something different in New York than in France?
This is the single most confusing word on any Manhattan menu, and the confusion has a real history behind it. According to Kamikoto, entrée translates literally to "entrance," and in the old French classical order of service it referred to a dish that came after the soup and hors d'oeuvres but before the roast — not the first thing served, and not the biggest.
The United States followed that French sequencing through most of the 19th century. Then, as Kamikoto explains, American menus shifted toward fewer courses around the start of the 20th century, and the word entrée drifted to mean the main course itself — the dish the whole meal is built around. France kept the older meaning. So today, order an "entrée" in Manhattan and you get your main plate. Order one in a French restaurant abroad and you get a small course before it.
The confusion extends to two related words. An hors d'oeuvre, per Kamikoto, is a bite-sized item passed to guests before they're seated — think a stuffed mushroom or a smoked salmon canapé — while an appetizer is a slightly larger, seated-course dish like a Caprese salad or a cheese platter. In casual American usage the two get blurred constantly, but the distinction is really about timing and portion, not ingredients.
What does "market price" actually mean, and why won't the menu just print a number?
"Market price," often shortened to MP next to a piece of fish or a seasonal shellfish, means the kitchen is pricing that dish against a cost that moves daily or weekly, usually a wholesale seafood price the restaurant doesn't control. It's less a marketing device than an accounting one. A whole fish, a specific cut, a rare seasonal ingredient — these all have costs that shift with supply, and a restaurant printing a fixed number risks either losing money on a bad week or looking greedy on a good one.
This connects to a broader idea in the industry: food cost percentage, the relationship between what a dish costs to make and what it sells for. Solink's restaurant abbreviations list defines food cost percentage (FCP) as the cost of food sold relative to the revenue it generates — the ratio every kitchen is quietly managing behind every price on the page. Market price items are usually the dishes where that ratio is hardest to hold steady, which is exactly why they float instead of sitting fixed in print.
Daily specials work on a related logic. Solink's list also defines daily specials (DS) as unique menu items offered for a limited time — often built around what came in fresh that morning, or what the kitchen needs to move before it turns. A special isn't always about showing off; sometimes it's about a walk-in cooler and a delivery schedule.
What do "à la carte," "prix fixe," and "tasting menu" actually promise you?
These three terms describe entirely different pricing structures, and mixing them up is the fastest way to misjudge a check before it arrives.
- À la carte means every dish is priced and ordered individually — you build your own meal, and the final total is whatever you chose, item by item. Kamikoto notes this is the traditional opposite of a set menu, and it remains the default structure at most Manhattan restaurants outside of tasting-menu-driven dining rooms.
- Prix fixe, sometimes called a set menu, bundles a defined number of courses into one fixed price. Kamikoto's guide notes that a set menu historically meant three courses but today can include any number, and it's often the better value against ordering the same dishes individually.
- Tasting menu, also called a degustation, is a longer, chef-directed version of the same idea — more courses, smaller portions, one price, and usually very little room to substitute.
None of these terms tell you anything about quality. They tell you about structure: whether you're choosing dish by dish or handing that decision to the kitchen for a set price.
What does it mean when a menu lists a dish as "chef's whim" or doesn't name it at all?
"Chef's whim," "chef's choice," or a blank line where a dish description should be usually signals that the kitchen is building that course around whatever came in that day — a market fish, a farm delivery, an ingredient that won't be around next week. It's the printed-menu version of a special, formalized into a permanent line item rather than a chalkboard add-on.
This ties back to the same food-cost logic as market price. A kitchen that commits to a fixed dish months in advance is locked into whatever that ingredient costs on a bad week. A chef's-whim slot keeps the kitchen flexible and, ideally, keeps the plate closer to what's actually fresh. The tradeoff for the diner is less certainty — you're trusting the kitchen's judgment for that course, not choosing a described dish.
This is also where the industry term "86" occasionally surfaces on the customer side, even if diners never hear the word itself. According to Menufy, to "86" an item means the kitchen is out of it — an ingredient, a special, sometimes a whole dish — and it gets pulled from what staff will offer, even before it's formally removed from a printed menu. If a server tells you the fish is unavailable tonight, that dish has just been 86'd.
What this means for how you order
None of this shorthand exists to trick a diner. Most of it is either inherited language — like the French classical order that gave New York its "entrée" — or plain cost accounting, like market price and food cost percentage, translated into menu copy. Reading a menu closely is less about decoding a trick and more about understanding the kitchen's constraints: what's seasonal, what's volatile in price, and what the restaurant is willing to commit to in print months in advance versus decide the morning of service. Readers following this should also see How the New York deli sandwich got its architecture: a short history in three counters.
The practical habit worth building: when a price floats, ask why. When a course is unnamed, ask what "chef's whim" means at that specific restaurant tonight. And when you see "entrée" on a menu that leans heavily French, check whether you're looking at a starter or a main before you order three courses you didn't plan on. New York's dining rooms carry more history in their menu language than most people notice — some of it going back to the French fine-dining tradition that shaped how Manhattan's grand restaurants were built in the first place, and some of it as recent as a fish delivery that came in an hour ago. We covered a connected angle in Le Pavillon's long shadow: how French fine dining taught Manhattan what a restaurant could be.
What remains true across every Manhattan restaurant, from a diner with a blue-plate special to a tasting-menu room: the words on the page are functional before they're stylish. Once you can read them, you're ordering with the same information the kitchen has.