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 on average, consumers would save 13% on their monthly cable subscription rates if they were able to subscribe only to channels that they actually watched. In May 2013, U.S. Senator John McCain introduced legislation that would have encouraged, through regulatory incentives, programmers and distributors to offer a la carte services. He cited an FCC survey finding that the cost of expanded basic cable has effectively risen from about US$25 a month in 1995 to over $54, greatly exceeding inflation. As predicted at the time by observers and McCain himself, the legislation did not pass. Opposition to a la carte programming