Set menu

In restaurant terminology a table d'hôte (French pronunciation: ​[tablə.dot]; lit. "table of the host") menu is a menu where multi-course meals with only a few choices are charged at a fixed total price. Such a menu may be called prix fixe ("fixed price"). The terms set meal and set menu are also used. The cutlery on the table may also already be set for all of the courses.

Table d'hôte contrasts with à la carte, where customers may order any of the separately priced menu items available.

Table d'hôte is a French loan phrase that literally means "the host's table". The term is used to denote a table set aside for residents of a guesthouse (), who presumably sit at the same table as their host.

The meaning shifted to include any meal featuring a set menu at a fixed price. In the original sense, its use in English is documented as early as 1617, while the later extended use, now more common, dates from the early nineteenth century. This meaning is not used in France.

Many restaurants in the United States convert their menus to prix fixe only for special occasions. Generally, this practice is limited to holidays where entire families dine together, such as Easter and Thanksgiving, or on couple-centric holidays like Valentine's Day and Sweetest Day.

In France, table d'hôte refers to the shared dining (sometimes breakfast and lunch) offered in a vacation named chambre d'hôte (similar to "bed and breakfast"). Every guest of a chambre d'hôte can join this meal, cooked by the hosting family. It is not a restaurant, there is only one service, the price is fixed and usually included in the vacation. Everyone sits around a large table and makes small-talk about the house, the country, and so on.

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