119 Fun Facts About Restaurant

What is the maximum number of Michelin stars a restaurant can hold?

Three stars is the most Michelin awards; the rating is decided as a team by anonymous inspectors, full-time staff who have each eaten at the restaurant.

Burger King's signature sandwich, added to the menu in 1957, is called what?

The Whopper was created in 1957 by Burger King co-founder James McLamore, who had seen a rival restaurant draw crowds with a bigger burger at a time when McDonald's sold only small ones.

Every Chick-fil-A restaurant is closed on which day of the week?

Sunday closing dates from founder Truett Cathy's first diner, the Dwarf Grill, opened in Hapeville, Georgia in 1946; the devout Southern Baptist wanted staff to have a day for rest and worship.

What is the name of Wendy's signature soft-serve frozen dessert?

The Frosty has been served since the first Wendy's opened in Columbus, Ohio in 1969; the original flavour is a chocolate-vanilla blend chosen so it would not overpower a burger.

Wendy's founder Dave Thomas named the chain after whom?

His daughter Melinda Lou Thomas was eight when the first Wendy's opened in Columbus, Ohio in 1969; her nickname grew out of 'Wenda', a childhood mangling of Melinda.

Starbucks, which sold beans rather than drinks when it began in 1971, keeps its oldest store at which Seattle landmark?

Pike Place Market houses the 'original' Starbucks, though the 1971 shop first stood nearby on Western Avenue and moved in the mid-1970s; Howard Schultz bought the firm in 1987 and built the espresso-bar chain.

Which parent company owns Taco Bell and KFC, and owned Pizza Hut until 2026?

Yum! Brands began as PepsiCo's restaurant arm: the drinks giant bought Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC between 1977 and 1986 and spun them off in 1997; Yum! sold Pizza Hut in 2026.

The Four Seasons restaurant opened in 1959 inside which newly built Park Avenue skyscraper?

The Seagram Building housed the Four Seasons from 1959 to 2016; Mark Rothko painted a mural series for it, then pulled out of the commission and kept the canvases, some of which now hang in the Tate.

Louis' Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut claims to have invented which dish in 1900?

The hamburger, as Louis' Lunch tells it, was born in 1900 when owner Louis Lassen slipped a ground-beef patty between two slices of toast for a customer in a hurry.

Ray Kroc was selling what when he visited the McDonald brothers' San Bernardino restaurant in 1954?

Milkshake mixers were Kroc's line: he sold the Prince Castle Multimixer, which whipped several shakes at once, and the brothers' order for eight of them drew him west; he opened his own outlet in Des Plaines, Illinois in 1955.

Which chain overtook McDonald's at the end of 2010 to become the world's largest by number of restaurants?

Subway began in 1965 when 17-year-old Fred DeLuca, needing money for college, borrowed $1,000 from family friend Peter Buck to open Pete's Super Submarines in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Delmonico's, often called America's first fine-dining restaurant, opened in 1827 in which city?

New York's Delmonico's reopened on a grand scale in 1837 after the city's Great Fire, and patrons were told that the columns by its door had been shipped from the ruins of Pompeii.

Pizza Hut was started in 1958 by two brothers studying at a university in which US state?

Kansas is home to Wichita, where brothers Dan and Frank Carney, students at Wichita State University, opened the first Pizza Hut in 1958 with $600 borrowed from their mother.

The first Hard Rock Cafe opened in 1971 in which city?

London's Old Park Lane hosted the first Hard Rock Cafe, opened by Americans Isaac Tigrett and Peter Morton; the memorabilia tradition began in 1979 when Eric Clapton hung a red Fender above his favourite seat.

Outback Steakhouse, the Australian-themed chain, was founded in 1988 in which US city?

Tampa, Florida saw the first Outback Steakhouse open in March 1988; its Bloomin' Onion starter became such a signature that the parent company later renamed itself Bloomin' Brands.

Which Chicago restaurant did chef Grant Achatz open in 2005 as a showcase for molecular gastronomy?

Alinea opened in 2005 under Grant Achatz, who was diagnosed two years later with advanced cancer of the mouth and lost his sense of taste for a time during the treatment that saved him.

Caesar Cardini's Prohibition-era restaurant, where the Caesar salad was first made, stood in which city?

Tijuana was where Italian-born Caesar Cardini fed Americans who crossed the border to drink legally; by his family's account, a Fourth of July rush in 1924 emptied the kitchen and he improvised the salad tableside.

Which Copenhagen restaurant, opened by René Redzepi in 2003, led New Nordic cuisine?

Noma joins the Danish words nordisk and mad, 'Nordic food'; opened in 2003 in a waterfront warehouse, it built its menus on foraged local ingredients and was five times ranked the world's best restaurant.

Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives grew out of a 2006 special on which channel?

Food Network aired the one-off special in 2006, months after Fieri won a six-episode cooking show as the prize in its contest The Next Food Network Star; the weekly series followed in April 2007.

Which chain, founded in Wichita in 1921 and famous for 'sliders', is considered America's first fast-food chain?

White Castle was founded in 1921 by cook Walter Anderson and insurance man Billy Ingram; its small square burgers, steam-grilled over onions, and gleaming white buildings were meant to convince customers that ground beef was clean.

Burger King's Australian outlets trade under what different name because of a trademark dispute?

Hungry Jack's was chosen by franchisee Jack Cowin in 1971 because an Adelaide takeaway already held the Burger King trademark; the name came from a Pillsbury pancake-mix brand, Pillsbury then owning Burger King.

Before founding Taco Bell in 1962, Glen Bell ran what kind of eatery in San Bernardino?

A hot dog stand called Bell's Drive-In, opened in 1948, was Glen Bell's first business; he studied the hard-shell tacos at the Mitla Cafe across the street and began selling his own in 1951.

Which US agency informally gauges storm damage by whether Waffle House is open?

FEMA chief Craig Fugate popularised the 'Waffle House Index' in 2011: the chain so rarely shuts that a limited menu signals trouble, and of a closed one he said, 'That's really bad.'

Rainforest Cafe opened its first location in 1994 inside what?

The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota housed the first Rainforest Cafe in 1994; founder Steven Schussler staged regular thunderstorms among its animatronic animals, and Landry's bought the chain in 2000.

Which Coney Island hot dog chain began in 1916 by undercutting a rival's ten-cent frankfurters by half?

Nathan's Famous began when Nathan Handwerker, who had sliced rolls at Feltman's restaurant, quit and sold his own frankfurters nearby for a nickel, half his old employer's price.

Which chef, working with César Ritz at the Savoy, created the kitchen 'brigade' system?

Auguste Escoffier, the 'king of chefs and chef of kings', drew on his army service to organise cooks into stations under a chef de partie, and his 1903 Le Guide Culinaire codified French cuisine.

Nando's, the flame-grilled peri-peri chicken chain, was founded in 1987 in which city?

Johannesburg was where Fernando Duarte and Robbie Brozin tried the peri-peri chicken at Chickenland, a Portuguese-Mozambican takeaway in Rosettenville, and bought the place in 1987; the name is short for Fernando.

Zagat, the diner-survey restaurant guide founded in 1979, was bought in 2011 by which company?

Google bought Zagat in September 2011 and sold it to The Infatuation in 2018; Tim and Nina Zagat had started in 1979 by asking their friends to score New York restaurants and pooling the results.

Which restaurant menu innovation did Howard Johnson's build its 1930s brand on?

28 flavours of ice cream was Howard Johnson's trademark boast; his recipe doubled the usual butterfat, a richness that built the business from the single soda fountain he took over in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1925.

Which rocking-chair-porched chain was founded in 1969 by a Shell Oil representative beside a Tennessee interstate?

Cracker Barrel's first store opened in September 1969 by an Interstate 40 exit in Lebanon, Tennessee, where Dan Evins modelled it on the country stores of his childhood and sold Shell petrol alongside.

In 1943 San Francisco restaurants gave customers cartons for taking leftovers home, officially to feed whom?

Their pets were the official beneficiaries: with wartime shortages, owners were urged to feed animals table scraps, so restaurants offered 'Pet Pakit' cartons, the ancestor of the doggy bag.

Since 1997, which Michelin award flags good-value restaurants?

The Bib Gourmand, awarded since 1997, is named for Bibendum, the Michelin Man, who took his own name from an 1898 poster in which he raises a glass under the Latin toast 'Nunc est bibendum', now is the time to drink.

Which Boston restaurant, open since 1826, is the oldest continuously operating in the US?

Union Oyster House has served since 1826 in a building of about 1716; before that, the exiled future French king Louis Philippe lodged upstairs and earned his keep by teaching French.

Oysters Rockefeller was invented at which New Orleans restaurant, family-run since 1840?

Antoine's, founded in 1840 by Antoine Alciatore, is where his son Jules created Oysters Rockefeller, naming it for John D. Rockefeller because the sauce was so rich; the recipe is still kept secret.

Which McDonald's sandwich did Cincinnati franchisee Lou Groen create in 1962?

The Filet-O-Fish was devised in 1962 by Lou Groen, whose Cincinnati franchise served a largely Catholic neighbourhood that gave up meat on Fridays; it outsold Ray Kroc's meatless rival, a pineapple 'Hula Burger', to win its menu place.

In 2001 Pizza Hut pulled off a publicity stunt by having a pizza delivered to what destination?

The International Space Station received a six-inch salami pizza from Pizza Hut in 2001, vacuum-sealed and sized for the station's small oven; cosmonaut Yuri Usachov ate it in orbit.

Tom Monaghan's brother traded his half of the future Domino's Pizza to Tom in exchange for what?

A Volkswagen Beetle, the used car the brothers delivered pizzas in, was what Jim Monaghan took for his half of DomiNick's in 1961; Tom renamed the business Domino's in 1965.

Which chain, founded in 1965 in Manhattan, is often credited as one of America's first singles bars?

TGI Fridays began when Alan Stillman bought a First Avenue bar with $10,000, half borrowed from his mother, hoping to meet the airline stewardesses in his neighbourhood; the name is short for 'Thank God It's Friday'.

Why did Hooters' six founders incorporate their Clearwater, Florida chain on 1 April 1983?

They expected it to fail, so the six founders, none with restaurant experience, incorporated on April Fools' Day and built a mock graveyard by the door for the businesses that had already died on the site.

Katz's Delicatessen on the Lower East Side charges a penalty fee if a customer loses what?

Their entry ticket, handed to every customer at the door, is marked up at each counter and becomes the bill, so a lost one leaves no record of what is owed; When Harry Met Sally staged its famous scene at the deli.

Nachos take their name from what?

Their inventor's nickname is the likely origin: Ignacio 'Nacho' Anaya, a maître d' in Piedras Negras, is said to have topped fried tortilla pieces with cheese and jalapeños for US Army wives when no cook could be found.

Thomas Keller's Yountville, California restaurant is named after what former business in its building?

A steam laundry took over the stone building in the 1920s; it had been built as a saloon, which lost its trade when a 1906 law banned alcohol near the town's veterans' home, and Keller bought the restaurant in 1994.

Le Procope, opened in 1686 by a Sicilian cook, is often described as the oldest of Paris's what?

Cafés were new to Paris when Sicilian Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli opened Le Procope; the Comédie-Française moved in across the street three years later, and its crowd made the place a haunt of Voltaire and Diderot.

In-N-Out's 1948 drive-through was the first in California to let drivers order via what?

A two-way speaker box, which Harry Snyder built in his garage, let drivers order without the carhops other California stands relied on; he and his wife Esther opened in Baldwin Park in 1948.

Sobrino de Botín, listed by Guinness as the world's oldest restaurant, serves its roast suckling pig in which city?

Madrid's Sobrino de Botín, beside the Plaza Mayor, claims an unbroken run since 1725; the 1987 Guinness edition that named it the oldest also said a teenage Goya once washed its dishes.

The Big Mac was created in 1967 by franchisee Jim Delligatti in which state?

Pennsylvania franchisee Jim Delligatti launched the Big Mac in Uniontown in 1967 for 45 cents; it went nationwide in 1968, and The Economist later built its Big Mac Index on the sandwich's near-universal availability.

Colonel Sanders was commissioned as an honorary Kentucky Colonel in 1935 by whom?

The state governor, Ruby Laffoon, made Sanders a Kentucky Colonel in 1935; after Governor Lawrence Wetherby renewed the honour in 1950, Sanders began dressing the part, growing the goatee and calling himself 'Colonel'.

What did Denny's discover when it first closed for Christmas in 1988?

Many restaurants had no locks because Denny's had traded around the clock since they were built; when all but six closed for Christmas 1988, others had reportedly lost their keys.

Restaurants with menus and waiters thrived in Kaifeng and Hangzhou around 1100, under which Chinese dynasty?

Song dynasty Kaifeng and Hangzhou had restaurants where waiters sang customers' orders to the kitchen, more than six centuries before the modern restaurant emerged in Europe in the 1760s.

A restaurant in St Peter's Abbey in which Austrian city claims to have served since AD 803?

Salzburg's St. Peter Stiftskulinarium sits inside the Benedictine abbey founded by St Rupert in 696; its claim rests on a document of 803 by Charlemagne's scholar Alcuin, and it is famed for the Salzburger Nockerl dessert.

The first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise opened in 1952, far from Kentucky, in which state?

Utah restaurateur Pete Harman took the first franchise in 1952; a sign painter he hired coined the name Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Harman later introduced the cardboard bucket.

Which steakhouse chain was renamed after a 1976 fire forced its New Orleans original to move?

Ruth's Chris: Ruth Fertel mortgaged her home to buy Chris Steak House in 1965, and when the fire forced a move, the old name was not allowed to follow, so she put her own in front.

Which East Harlem Italian restaurant, open since 1896, is famous for reservations that are almost impossible to get?

Rao's put its sauces in supermarkets in 1992, and Campbell's bought the owner of that jarred line in 2024.

The world's first automat, with coin-operated food windows, opened in 1895 in which German city?

Berlin's Quisisana automat opened in 1895; Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart imported the same 'waiterless restaurant' machinery to open America's first in Philadelphia in 1902.

Which Catalan restaurant drew two million requests a season for 8,000 places?

El Bulli opened for only about six months a year so that chef Ferran Adrià could spend the rest inventing dishes in a Barcelona workshop; it closed as a restaurant on 30 July 2011.

Red's Giant Hamburg, an early drive-through, opened in 1947 in Springfield, Missouri on which highway?

Route 66 ran past Red's Giant Hamburg, believed to be the first drive-through restaurant; McDonald's says its own first window came in 1975, in Arizona, for soldiers barred from entering restaurants in their fatigues.

The title 'sommelier' goes back to an Old French word for a servant who did what on journeys?

Drove pack animals is the root sense: the word grew from a term for a pack or pack-saddle, and the servant who moved a court's supplies became the officer in charge of provisions, then of wine.

Publicist Herb McDonald is credited with introducing which Las Vegas staple in 1946?

The all-you-can-eat buffet began when McDonald laid out cold cuts on the bar of the El Rancho Vegas to make himself a late sandwich and hungry gamblers wanted some; casinos along the Strip soon copied it.

Walter Scott's horse-drawn lunch wagon, a forerunner of the diner, first fed night workers in 1872 in which Rhode Island city?

Providence, Rhode Island was where Walter Scott parked his wagon outside the Providence Journal offices, selling sandwiches, pies and coffee to night workers after the restaurants had closed.

The Texas chuckwagon, ancestor of the food truck, was created in 1866 by which rancher?

Charles Goodnight rebuilt a surplus Studebaker army wagon with a hinged 'chuck box' of shelves and drawers to feed cowboys on the 1866 drive that opened the Goodnight-Loving Trail.

What was the ancient Roman counter-service eatery, a forerunner of fast food, called?

Thermopolium, from Greek for 'a place where something hot is sold', was a street-front food counter; one unearthed at Pompeii and unveiled in 2020 still held traces of pork, fish, snails and beef in its jars.

Brillat-Savarin wrote that pioneering Paris restaurateur Antoine Beauvilliers had a prodigious memory for what?

Faces: Beauvilliers, often credited with Paris's first grand restaurant, welcomed back after twenty years people who had dined with him only once or twice, and steered rich tables through the menu himself.

Roughly how many copies of the first, free Michelin Guide were handed out in 1900?

35,000 copies went out when France had fewer than 3,000 cars: more than ten guides per car, a bet that free maps and lists of mechanics and petrol sellers would get people driving.

What prompted André Michelin to start charging for the guide in 1920?

Seeing copies propping up a workbench at a dealer's is said to have convinced André Michelin that 'man only truly respects what he pays for', so the guide went on sale.

Michelin's top star rating promises cooking 'worth' what?

A special journey tops the scale, a step above cooking 'worth a detour': grades that read like route advice because the guide began as a handbook for people on the road. The first stars came in 1926.

Which city's debut Michelin Guide, for the 2008 edition, awarded more stars than any other city's?

Tokyo's first guide starred 150 restaurants at once, the most of any city, prompting questions over whether Michelin was being generous to win over Japanese readers.

Which British chef first earned Michelin's top rating, then handed back his stars in 1999?

Marco Pierre White reached the top rating at 33, then the youngest chef to do so, at his restaurant in London's Hyde Park Hotel; he handed the stars back on retiring in 1999, saying that winning them had not made him happy.

What award did the Michelin Guide begin giving to hotels in 2024?

Keys, given in tiers like the stars, follow one or more anonymous stays by Michelin's inspectors, who weigh a hotel's design, service, character, value and what it adds to its surroundings.

Commercial production of 'lunch wagons', forerunners of the diner, began in the 1880s in which Massachusetts city?

Worcester was where Thomas H. Buckley built lunch wagons such as the Owl and the White House Cafe, fitted with stoves, sinks and coloured windows, letting vendors feed downtown crowds without paying for a shopfront.

Glasgow's Shish Mahal claims its owner invented which curry-house favourite with a tin of tomato soup?

Chicken tikka masala, by this account, began when chef Ali Ahmed Aslam improvised a sauce to please a customer who found his chicken tikka too dry.

Yoshiaki Shiraishi came up with conveyor belt sushi after watching what move along a factory line?

Beer bottles gliding through an Asahi brewery gave him the idea. Short of staff at his small sushi bar, he opened the first conveyor restaurant in 1958.

Tavern on the Green, the Central Park restaurant, occupies an 1870 structure first put up to house what?

Grazing sheep lived there: it was the fold for the flock that cropped Sheep Meadow, and it opened as a restaurant only in 1934.

The TV drama The Bear follows chef Carmy Berzatto as he runs a Chicago shop famous for which sandwich?

Italian beef is the speciality of The Original Beef of Chicagoland, the family shop Carmy later turns into a fine-dining restaurant called The Bear.

Teressa Bellissimo is credited with first serving which bar snack at her family's Anchor Bar in 1964?

Buffalo wings, in the best-known telling, were a quick late-night snack she made when her son's friends turned up unannounced at the bar.

Le Beccherie, a restaurant in Treviso in northern Italy, is widely credited with creating which dessert?

Tiramisu was devised there by the owner's wife, Alba di Pillo, and pastry chef Roberto Linguanotto. The name means 'pick me up'.

Ithaa, a restaurant where guests dine 5 metres below the sea surface, is in which island nation?

Maldives is home to Ithaa, whose name means 'mother of pearl'. A transparent acrylic roof gives its 14 diners a 270-degree underwater view.

The exterior of Tom's Restaurant in Manhattan stood in for Monk's Café in which long-running sitcom?

Seinfeld showed the diner's whole neon sign in early episodes, then cropped out the word 'Tom's' so that only 'Restaurant' remained.

In Pixar's Ratatouille, Remy the rat secretly cooks in the kitchen of which Paris restaurant?

Gusteau's is named after Remy's late idol, a celebrated chef, and the rat gets into its kitchen by teaming up with the garbage boy, Linguini.

Fortune cookies, a staple of Chinese restaurants in the US, most likely began with immigrants from which country?

Japan is the likeliest source: a similar fortune biscuit, tsujiura senbei, was baked there in the Edo period, long before the cookie caught on in California.

The Cobb salad is named after the owner of which Hollywood restaurant, where it became the signature dish?

The Brown Derby legend says its owner, who had not eaten until near midnight, tossed kitchen leftovers together with bacon and French dressing.

Which Venice haunt of Ernest Hemingway, declared a national landmark in 2001, is the home of the Bellini and carpaccio?

Harry's Bar, by its own account, exists because young American Harry Pickering repaid a 10,000-lire loan from barman Giuseppe Cipriani with 50,000.

Brennan's restaurant in New Orleans created which rum-sauced dessert in 1951, naming it after the owner's friend?

Bananas Foster honours Richard Foster, who chaired the city's Crime Commission. Ella Brennan and chef Paul Blangé adapted it from her mother's home recipe.

Which Oscar-winning actor co-founded the Nobu restaurant group after urging chef Nobu Matsuhisa to open in Tribeca?

Robert De Niro was turned down when he first asked in 1989, because Matsuhisa wanted to establish his Los Angeles restaurant first. He asked again years later, and the first Nobu opened in 1994.

Which chef's 2000 memoir Kitchen Confidential gave an unfiltered look at life in high-end restaurant kitchens?

Anthony Bourdain grew the book out of a magazine essay, and named George Orwell's account of 1920s Paris restaurant work as an influence on its tone.

Which chef gives struggling restaurants one week to turn around in the British series Kitchen Nightmares?

Gordon Ramsay plays troubleshooter for a week, then returns a few months later to see how the business has fared without him.

Which 1942 Edward Hopper painting shows four people seen through the window of a downtown diner?

Nighthawks was bought by the Art Institute of Chicago for $3,000 within months of being finished.

Which chef opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley in 1971, helping to launch California cuisine and farm-to-table dining?

Alice Waters named it after a character in Marcel Pagnol's Marseille trilogy, and later founded the Edible Schoolyard at a Berkeley middle school.

Which chef's Fat Duck restaurant in Bray is known for snail porridge and a dish that includes an audio element?

Heston Blumenthal opened it in a 16th-century cottage in 1995. The dish with the audio is called Sound of the Sea.

The word restaurant, which in French once named a meat broth, comes from a verb meaning what?

To restore is the sense of the French verb restaurer: the first Paris restaurants sold bouillon, a broth of meat and egg said to bring back health and vigour.

Deep-dish pizza was invented in 1943 at which Chicago restaurant founded by Ike Sewell and Richard Riccardo?

Pizzeria Uno's original pizza chef, Rudy Malnati, has also been credited with developing the recipe, and his sons later opened deep-dish restaurants of their own.

Paul Bocuse's family restaurant, which kept Michelin's top rating for 55 years, sits near which French city?

Lyon was his base, and the Bocuse d'Or, a biennial contest sometimes seen as the unofficial world championship for chefs, carries his name.

Massimo Bottura's Osteria Francescana, twice named the world's best restaurant, is in which northern Italian city?

Modena is its home, and the restaurant came top of the World's 50 Best Restaurants ranking in both 2016 and 2018.

Which Paris restaurant gives a numbered certificate to every diner who orders its signature pressed duck?

La Tour d'Argent owes the custom to Frédéric Delair, its owner in the 1890s. The restaurant claims to date from 1582, but offers no documents to prove it.

Which Manhattan restaurant, a pre- and post-theater hangout, is known for the Broadway caricatures on its walls?

Sardi's first paid for them in meals: to attract customers, its founder hired Russian refugee Alex Gard to draw the portraits in exchange for free food.

Which celebrity chef opened the first Spago, his flagship restaurant, on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood in 1982?

Wolfgang Puck built Spago into a worldwide name for California cuisine, and took it to the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in 1992.

Kirby's Pig Stand, which opened in Dallas in 1921, was the first American restaurant of which type?

Drive-in dining began there. The chain was popular for its pig sandwich and Texas toast, and closed its last official restaurant in 2006.

Which chef, known for creating culinary foam, ran the kitchen at El Bulli on Spain's Costa Brava?

Ferran Adrià began his career in 1980 as a dishwasher at a hotel, and shut El Bulli for good in July 2011.

Which dish of apples, celery and walnuts is credited to Oscar Tschirky, maître d'hôtel of a Manhattan hotel?

Waldorf salad was first made for a charity ball at the Waldorf-Astoria, and the original recipe had no walnuts: just apples, celery and mayonnaise.

What do restaurants call the fee charged for serving a bottle of wine that a guest has brought in?

Corkage, also known as a corking fee, lets diners bring their own wine. Australia and New Zealand coined the label BYO for places that offer it.

Which kind of drink, usually dry rather than sweet, is served before a meal to stimulate the appetite?

Apéritif comes from the Latin verb aperire, 'to open'. Its counterpart served after the meal is the digestif.

Which French term describes a restaurant menu of multi-course meals with only a few choices at a fixed price?

Table d'hôte literally means 'the host's table'. Such a menu may also be called prix fixe, French for 'fixed price'.

Which formal waiting style has staff transfer food from a platter to each guest's plate, always from the left?

Silver service is the British name for it: meals arrive on platters rather than plated in the kitchen, and the waiter works with a serving fork and spoon.

Serving dishes one after another, rather than laying them all out at once, is a style named after which country?

Russia gave its name to service à la russe, which slowly displaced the older French custom of loading the table with tureens and platters that often went cold.

In guéridon service, where do restaurant staff carve, finish or flambé a dish for the diner?

On a tableside cart, itself called a guéridon, which works as a portable workstation for carving meat, tossing salads and creating desserts.

Sabrage, a ceremony often linked in legend to Napoleon, means opening a bottle of what with a sword?

Champagne can be opened with the dull side of a sabre, though today it is most often done with a special unsharpened sword made for the job.

A wine waiter pours an old red wine slowly into a decanter chiefly to leave what behind in the bottle?

Sediment stays in the original bottle while the clear wine passes into the decanter, which is why decanters suit wines that are laden with deposits.

The maître d'hôtel, who manages the public part of a formal restaurant, has a French title meaning what?

Master of the house is the literal meaning. The same person may be called the head waiter, host or waiter captain, or simply the maître d'.

What is the name of the small cup in which restaurants traditionally serve espresso?

Demitasse is French for 'half cup': the cups are small because espresso is strong and concentrated. A cup of the same size, the finjan, is traditional for Turkish and Arabic coffee.

Which pizza-and-arcade chain was founded in 1977 by Nolan Bushnell, a co-founder of video game maker Atari?

Chuck E. Cheese was the first family restaurant to combine food with arcade games and animated shows. Bushnell wanted arcades to reach beyond pool halls.

Arby's takes its name from the sound of the letters R and B, which stand for what?

Raffel brothers Forrest and Leroy founded the chain in Ohio in 1964, settling on the name only because their first choice, Big Tex, was already in use.

Popeyes founder Al Copeland said he named the chain after a detective in which Gene Hackman film?

The French Connection features detective 'Popeye' Doyle, not the cartoon sailor, although the chain later licensed the sailor for its marketing for 35 years.

Which breakfast chain announced in 2018 that it would flip the last letter of its name to promote its burgers?

IHOP briefly became IHOb to counter the idea that it was still mainly a breakfast place. Its full name is International House of Pancakes.

At which chain do staff flip the Blizzard upside down to show how thick the frozen treat is?

Dairy Queen policy is that one Blizzard per order gets flipped by the employee. The name itself refers to the treat being so thoroughly cold and thick.

Which Canadian coffee-and-doughnut chain was co-founded in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1964 by an ice hockey player?

Tim Hortons outlived its founder: investor Ron Joyce took over operations after Horton died in 1974, and it grew into Canada's largest quick-service chain.

Olive Garden began in 1982 as a restaurant unit of which packaged-food company, later spun off as Darden?

General Mills spun off its restaurant holdings in 1995 as a stand-alone company named after Bill Darden, the man who had founded Red Lobster.

Texas Roadhouse, despite its name, opened its first steakhouse in 1993 in a shopping centre in which state?

Indiana is where it began, in the town of Clarksville, just across the Ohio River from Louisville, the Kentucky city where the chain has its headquarters.

Jollibee, a chain established in 1978 by Tony Tan Caktiong, is the top fast-food restaurant of which country?

Philippines-born Jollibee is best known for its Chickenjoy fried chicken and for Jolly Spaghetti, a sweet Filipino take on the pasta dish.

The seafood chain Long John Silver's, founded in Kentucky in 1969, takes its name from a character in which novel?

Treasure Island, the R. L. Stevenson adventure, supplied the name when the first restaurant opened in Lexington in August 1969.

The French dip sandwich, served with its cooking juices, was created at one of two rival restaurants in which US city?

Los Angeles has two rival claimants, Cole's Pacific Electric Buffet and Philippe the Original, and Philippe's even carries the claim in its logo.