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Tasting menu

Collection of several dishes in small portions served as a single meal

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors
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Source updated August 13, 2026
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A tasting menu is a collection of several dishes in small portions, served by a restaurant as a single meal. The French name for a tasting menu is menu dégustation. Some restaurants and chefs specialize in tasting menus, while in other cases, it is a special or a menu option. Tasting menus may be offered to provide a sample of a type of cuisine, a house specialty, or to take advantage of fresh seasonal ingredients.

Coming to the mainstream in the 1990s, tasting menus evolved into elaborate showcases highlighting the culinary artistry of the chef. The trend traces back centuries, but some trace the latest evolution to the mid-1990s and two highly lauded restaurants, Chef Ferran Adrià's El Bulli in Spain, and Chef Thomas Keller's French Laundry in Napa Valley, north of San Francisco in the U.S., that offered tasting menus of 40 courses or more. Tasting menus have since become increasingly popular, to the point where, in 2013, New York Times food critic Pete Wells noted, "Across the country, expensive tasting-menu-only restaurants are spreading like an epidemic."

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This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Tasting menu”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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Related topics

Degustation

Dégustation is the careful, appreciative tasting of various food, focusing on the gustatory system, the senses, and high culinary art. Dégustation is more likely to involve sampling small portions of all of a chef's signature dishes in one sitting.

Omakase

Omakase is a Japanese word meaning "I'll leave it up to you", derived from the Japanese "to entrust" (任せる, makaseru). It is most commonly used at Japanese restaurants as a form of gourmet dining in which the customer does not order from a menu and instead lets the chef decide which seasonal specialties to serve.

Pu pu platter

A pu pu platter is a tray of American Chinese or Hawaiian food consisting of an assortment of small meat and seafood appetizers. The Thrillist called the pu-pu platter "an amalgam of Americanized Chinese food, Hawaiian tradition and bar food." The pu pu platter was probably first introduced to restaurants on the United States mainland by Donn Beach in 1934, and has since become a standard at most Polynesian-themed restaurants, such as Don's and Trader Vic's.