Etiquette for Using Menu Cards

“The menu card may be held in a stand, or it may lie on the table…”  – Above: Individual menu card from a 1990’s, nine-course etiquette dinner, at The RSVP Institute of Etiquette in California. 

On Setting the Table:

Menu Cards

The menu card may be held in a stand, or it may lie on the table: one in front of the hostess, one in front of the host, and one or two placed at regular intervals down each side of the table. This is not a rule, however, and at informal meals there is often only one menu in front of the host.– From Vogue’s Book of Etiquette, 1948

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Place Card and Menu Card Etiquette

A gentleman feels free to pick up the menu card and examine it, but he always puts it back on the table where he found it, so that it serves its others at the table.

When a gentleman arrives at a dinner party. he may discover that place cards have been set out on the table. He understands that his host or hostess will have given some thought to the arrangement of the guests. He also understands that his host or hostess will have consciously decided not to seat him next to his spouse or his date for the evening, as it is assumed that there will be other times when the gentleman can enjoy that person's company.

A gentleman feels free to check out the seating arrangement, even before the entire party is called to the table. If he discovers that he has been seated next to a person whose company he does not enjoy (perhaps even a guest with whom he has had a recent argument), he may ask his host or hostess if his place card may be moved. (He does not take it upon himself to rearrange the carefully planned table.) The host or hostess may agree to make the switch, or it may turn out that the change of place may require a reseating of the entire table– a complexity the host or hostess has no time to deal with at the last minute. If that turns out to be the case, a gentleman simply bucks up and makes the best of the evening, knowing that the dinner will be over within an hour or two.

Once he is seated at his table, a gentleman may find a menu card, outlining the courses for the dinner or luncheon, in front of his plate or between him and his closest dining companion. A gentleman feels free to pick up the menu card and examine it, but he always puts it back on the table where he found it, so that it serves its others at the table. — From “A Gentleman at the Table,” John Bridges and Bryan Curtis, 2004 

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

19th C. Escritoire Etiquette

“Dinner cards and menus seem to have attained the height of artistic perfection.”– A 19th Century menu card –“There are fashions in stationary, as in everything else these days, and the fashions change with the popularity of clock work. That the changes are religiously observed by the swagger woman, goes without saying.” – A “swagger woman” was one who carried herself in an arrogant, haughty, or self-important manner.

Newest Fads in My Lady's Stationery – Including the Most Popular Tints!

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If All the Modes Are Strictly Followed, it Takes a Pretty Penny to Pay the Stationer’s Bill 

NEW YORK —There are fashions in stationary, as in everything else these days, and the fashions change with the popularity of clock work. That the changes are religiously observed by the swagger woman, goes without saying. Cream, white heavy linen paper, fitted in square envelopes, octavo size is “de rigeur” for all formal correspondence; however, many tints of paper are also chosen. Robins’ egg blue and silver gray are very popular, while lavender, cafe au lait and pinks have their votaries. A smaller size than the octavo, in similar color and quality, serves for note paper. 

All formal invitations for weddings and receptions, dinner and menu cards, should be engraved upon fine white paper of exquisite satiny texture. The ornamentation, marking and decoration of the stationery serves several very distinct set forms. The address, simply engraved across the top of the sheet, the monogram in the centre, not the top, or the crest or coat of arms above, or in combination with the address, being set above it with the facsimile used occasionally, describes the prevailing modes used in marking paper. The variety, style and coloring of these different dies, form a luncrative branch of the stationer’s art and at once attests the skill and refinement which he should put into his work. Silver and gold, light green, dark olive and bronze carry the day in markings, however.

The etiquette and provision of stationery is generally turned over for attention to the ladies of the household, while the masculine mind is absorbed in matters of graver import. Dinner cards and menus seem to have attained the height of artistic perfection. For ladies of flowery taste there are cupids, bits of pink and white dimpled loveliness, poised above the card amidst fruits and flowers. The name is written below in silver or gilt; then there are butterflies, asparkle in gold and flecked in gorgeous color. These bid fair to flutter into the festivities of the winter, for all the modish importations in gowns, millinery confections and bric-a-brac reveal the gayly developed moth. – Los Angeles Herald, 1896

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Menu Card Etiquette

The 1883 patent for this combination napkin ring and menu card holder was sold on the premise and promise that guests would be able to read it without picking it up before each new course.

“Menus, printed, occasionally engraved, in script, or written in script-like handwriting in black ink, are always in French...”

Dinner 

Beluga Caviar 

Saumon Fume de Nova Scotia 

Pate de Foie Gras Naturel 

Consomme Printanier 

Celeri • Radis •  Olives 

Terrapin a la Union Club 

Filet de Boeuf larde roti 

Pommes Parisienne 

Asperges Hollandaise 

Salade du Jar din Petit Roquefort 

Gateau St. Honore • Petits Fours 

Moka Chocolats • Fruits Noix

Harvey's Bristol Dry Kentucky Bourbon 

Liebfraumilch Auslese 1945 

Old Pugh 1882 

Chateau Marquis de Terme 1923 

Old Jordan 1891 Cognac • Dom Perignon 1928 

April 26, 1949 

Menus, printed, occasionally engraved, in script, or written in script-like handwriting in black ink, are always in French, as we see them at large, formal, public functions in the best hotels. 

Sometimes a menu, with or without a heraldic device, is in its holder at each place, but one is always in front of the host and hostess and others are placed down the table with one for each three guests.

The commonest use of the coat of arms is on an ex libris, or bookplate, as a marking for silver, or on fine china, on wedding invitations and announcements, on place cards and menu cards for formal entertaining, and, of course, the device may be painted and framed for wall decoration. 

The full coat of arms shield with crest and motto or what is known as a “gentleman's heraldic bearings” is never properly used on personal belongings by a woman. Women in medieval days did not normally go forth in battle and therefore did not carry shields. 

It is proper form in England, to which we must look for precedent as we have nothing resembling heraldic authority in our own governmental setup, for a woman to use a crest on her stationery, on personal linens, etc., but never a coat of arms on a shield. The lozenge, however, is approved, and if a British woman is titled she uses the coronet of her rank above it. 

But a woman of an armigerous family, especially is she is unmarried or a widow, may use just the crest or the coat of arms itself but only if blazoned on a lozenge.  

A woman whose father has a coat of arms, but whose husband has not, shows better taste, actually, in saying good-by to it and its feminine modifications once it has been used on her wedding invitations and announcements and, if she wishes, on silver her family has given her. 

A painted coat may be displayed on bedroom or library walls, not too conspicuously, but the device may not be adopted either by her husband or children. No woman ever uses a heraldic motto, for these were invariably aggressively masculine and unsuited to feminine social use. — Amy Vanderbilt, 1952

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia