À la carte À la carte In restaurants, à la carte is the practice of ordering individual dishes from a menu in a restaurant, as opposed to "table d'hôte", where a set menu is offered. It is an early 19th century loan from French meaning "according to the menu". The individual dishes to be ordered may include side dishes, or the side dishes may be offered separately, in which case, they are also considered "à la carte". The earliest examples of "à la carte" are from 1816 for the adjectival use ("à la carte meal", for example) and from 1821 for the adverbial
A la carte pay television an offering in a limited trial, called TV Essentials. IDC analyst Gary Ireland called such skinny bundles "simply a placeholder for a la carte" and predicted that consummer demand for the pricing scheme would eventually triumph. At the end of 2015, 20.4% of U.S. households had either dropped cable service or never subscribed in the first place. The case for a la carte has centered on cost savings for subscribers. In 2006, Kevin Martin, then chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and one of the best known advocates for the pricing scheme, presented a report to Congress arguing that,