Bistro Menu Guide: Classic Dishes, the Daily Chalkboard and How to Price a Formule

A bistro menu is a short, traditional menu of French home-style dishes, usually 12 to 30 fixed items across starters, mains, desserts and cheese, plus a daily chalkboard of specials and a lunch set price called a formule. For an operator, the format works because a small kitchen can cook it well, the board absorbs market produce, and the wine list does a lot of the margin work.

This guide is written for owners and chefs opening a bistro or turning a cafe into a bistro-style restaurant, not for cooking French food at home. It breaks down a real Paris bistro menu item by item, shows how to price a formule and wine by the glass, and ends with a structure you can adapt.

What is a bistro menu?

A bistro menu is the menu of a modest, informal French-style restaurant: a short list of classic dishes, a chalkboard of daily specials, and wine served by the glass, carafe and bottle. It favors braises, roasts, steak and simple desserts over elaborate plating, and it changes with the seasons rather than with trends.

The French dictionary Larousse defines a bistrot as “café, débit de boissons ; restaurant modeste” and notes that the word’s origin is obscure. The popular story that it comes from Russian soldiers shouting “bystro” (quickly) does not hold up; we cover that myth and the bistro vs brasserie distinction in our guide to types of restaurants.

What matters for the menu is the positioning that “modest” implies. Guests expect familiar food, honest portions and a price that feels fair for the neighborhood. As the examples below show, that price can be anything from €1 to $60 a dish. The label sets expectations about style, not about price.

What goes on a bistro menu?

A bistro menu is built from four sections: entrées (starters), plats (mains), desserts and a small cheese course, plus a chalkboard for the dishes of the day. The fixed sections hold the classics guests come back for; the board carries what the market and the kitchen offer that week.

The table below shows real dishes and prices from three restaurants that call themselves bistros, all checked on their own websites on October 3, 2026. Prices are listed in the original currency and not converted.

Section	Chez Janou, Paris (€)	Biltmore Bistro, Asheville NC ($)	Quality Bistro, New York ($)
Starter	Frites de panisse 10, moules gratinées 12, ravioles du Dauphiné 14	French onion soup 15	French onion soup 24
Signature main	Entrecôte bistrot (300 g) 30	Beef bourguignon 54	Strip steak frites 58
Poultry or fish	Magret de canard 28, filet de bar 24	Roasted half chicken 40, trout almondine 38	Dover sole meunière 75
Dessert	Crème brûlée 10, mousse au chocolat 12	15–16	Mousse au chocolat 13
Side	n/a	n/a	Bistro frites 18

Sources: Chez Janou food menu PDF; Biltmore Bistro menu; Quality Bistro menus. Biltmore Bistro sits inside a resort estate and Quality Bistro is a Midtown Manhattan steak-and-bistro hybrid, so treat them as the upper end of what “bistro” can mean in the US.

The classics recur for a reason. Onion soup, steak frites, duck, braised beef, fish meunière, crème brûlée and chocolate mousse are dishes guests recognize, that hold well during service, and that reuse a short list of ingredients: butter, shallots, stock, wine, potatoes and eggs.

How long should a bistro menu be?

A bistro menu should be short enough for one small kitchen to cook every dish well: roughly 12 to 30 fixed items, with daily variety pushed to the chalkboard. Chez Janou, a busy Provençal bistro in the Marais, runs 28 fixed dishes plus cheese and a board, which is close to the upper limit for the format.

Here is how its printed menu breaks down (our calculation from the restaurant’s own PDF, retrieved October 3, 2026):

Section	Items	Price range (€)	Average price (€)
Entrées	11	10–14	12.73
Plats	10	20–30	25.00
Desserts	7	10–12	10.29
Fromages	2 choices	8	8.00
Chalkboard	Starters, mains and a dessert of the day	Not printed	n/a

At those averages, a three-course meal ordered à la carte comes to about €48 before wine. The menu states “Prix nets en euros - TVA à 10 %”, so the printed price is what the guest pays.

Two lessons carry over to any bistro. First, the price spread inside each section is narrow (€20 to €30 for every main), which keeps choices easy and checks predictable. Second, the variety guests perceive comes from the board, not from a longer printed list. If you are opening with a new team, start nearer 15 fixed items and grow only when the kitchen is comfortable. Our menu engineering statistics cover what the research does and does not say about menu length and choice.

The ardoise: how should a bistro run its daily chalkboard?

The ardoise is the slate or chalkboard where a bistro writes its dishes of the day. It lets the kitchen buy what the market has, use up prep before it spoils and test new dishes without reprinting the menu. Chez Janou’s printed menu says it plainly: “Entrées et plats du jour sur l’ardoise”, with a dessert of the day on the board too.

A board works best with a few rules:

1. Keep it to three to six dishes. A starter, two or three mains and a dessert is enough. Long boards slow down ordering and confuse service.
2. Build it from what you already stock. A fish of the day that uses the same beurre blanc and potatoes as the printed menu adds variety without new prep.
3. Price it inside the printed range. If printed mains run €20 to €30, keep the board there, or explain why a dish sits outside it (a whole fish for two, a rare cut).
4. Retire dishes when they run out. Wipe the board the moment a dish is gone, so servers do not have to apologize table by table.
5. Promote winners. A board dish that sells out week after week is a candidate for the printed menu.

The board is also where many bistros list their lunch formule, which is the next section.

What is a formule, and how do you price it?

A formule is a set offer at one price, usually entrée plus plat or plat plus dessert at lunch, with a small choice in each course. It is a commercial practice on French menus, not a legally defined term, so you can shape it however suits your kitchen. It trades a slightly lower average price per dish for faster service and a higher share of guests ordering two or three courses.

To price one, start from the food cost of the dishes in it and divide by your target food-cost percentage. The National Restaurant Association reports that in 2024 the median full-service restaurant spent 32.0% of sales on food and non-alcoholic beverages, so 30% to 32% is a sensible target for a bistro.

Worked example (our calculation, illustrative ingredient costs):

Course	Example dish	Food cost
Entrée	Soup of the day	$2.10
Plat	Braised chicken thigh, potatoes, greens	$6.40
Dessert	Crème caramel	$1.80
Three courses		$10.30
Price at 30% food cost	$10.30 ÷ 0.30	≈ $34
Two courses (entrée + plat)	$8.50 ÷ 0.30	≈ $28

Keep the choice tight: two options per course is common and lets the kitchen prep exactly the right quantities. Run the formule only at lunch on weekdays if dinner is your full-price service. Our comparison of à la carte vs prix fixe menus covers when a set price helps and when it cannibalizes the main menu, and our guide on how to price a restaurant menu walks through the full costing method.

How should a bistro price wine by the glass, carafe and bottle?

A bistro should price wine so that every format pays its way: the glass earns slightly more per bottle than selling the whole bottle, and the carafe sits in between. A standard 75 cl bottle pours five 15 cl glasses, so the glass price times five is the number to compare with the bottle price.

Chez Janou’s drinks list, retrieved from its own wine and drinks PDF on October 3, 2026, sells wine in three formats: verre 15 cl, pichet 50 cl and bouteille 75 cl. Our calculation for two of its wines:

Wine	Glass 15 cl	Pichet 50 cl	Bottle 75 cl	5 glasses vs bottle	Price per liter: glass / pichet / bottle
Vin maison, Côtes de Provence AOP	€5.50	€16	€24	€27.50 = 114.6%	€36.67 / €32.00 / €32.00
Belambrée, Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence AOP	€6	€18	€26	€30 = 115.4%	€40.00 / €36.00 / €34.67

The pattern is the useful part: glasses carry a premium of about 15% over the bottle, which covers the wine that oxidizes in an opened bottle and the extra service. The pichet is priced at or close to the bottle rate per liter, which encourages a table of two to share half a liter instead of one glass each.

To set your own glass price, use: pour cost % = bottle cost ÷ (pours per bottle × glass price). If a bottle costs you $9 and you want a 22% pour cost on five pours, the glass price is $9 ÷ (5 × 0.22), or about $8.20. Our bar and drink terminology guide explains pour cost, corkage and the other terms behind a wine list.

Does “bistro” set the price? No, and here is the range

The word “bistro” signals a style, not a price point. Real bistro-style menus run from a Paris institution promising a full meal under €20 to a New York room charging $58 for steak frites. Your price should come from your costs, rent and neighborhood, not from the label.

Venue	Lowest starter	Steak or signature main	Dessert
Bouillon Chartier, Paris	from €1	mains from €7	from €2
Chez Janou, Paris	€10	€30 (entrecôte 300 g)	€10–12
Biltmore Bistro, Asheville NC	$15 (onion soup)	$67 (petite filet mignon)	$15–16
Quality Bistro, New York	$24 (onion soup)	$58 (strip steak frites)	$13

Bouillon Chartier is technically a bouillon, a Paris format of cheap, fast, traditional restaurants, and its own site states: “A proper meal in Paris for less than €20, in good times or in bad – that’s the Bouillon Chartier commitment.” It is the low anchor for French classics, not a typical bistro. The same French onion soup costs $15 at Biltmore and $24 at Quality Bistro, which shows how much location and positioning, not the dish, drive the price.

What does “fait maison” mean, and should a bistro use it?

“Fait maison” (homemade) is a regulated menu claim in France: under Decree No. 2014-797 of July 11, 2014, dishes labeled “fait maison” must be “élaborés sur place à partir de produits bruts”, made on site from raw ingredients. The decree lists the few prepared products, such as bread, cheese and pasta, that a homemade dish may still contain.

France also has a state title for restaurants that cook from fresh produce. According to the Ministry of Economy’s page on the Maître Restaurateur title, “le titre de maître-restaurateur est le seul titre d’État de la restauration commerciale”, and the 2026 reform extended its validity from four to five years. It applies to any restaurant that qualifies, not specifically to bistros, and there is no official national “bistro” label.

Outside France there is usually no equivalent rule, but the lesson applies: only call a dish homemade, house-made or “fait maison” if it really is made on site. Bistro guests are buying authenticity, and a claim they can check is a claim you need to keep.

A bistro menu structure you can adapt

A workable bistro menu for a small kitchen has about 15 to 20 fixed items plus a board. Use the structure below as a starting point and swap dishes for your region and suppliers.

Section	Count	Example dishes
Entrées	4	French onion soup, country terrine with cornichons, warm goat cheese salad, céleri rémoulade
Plats	6	Steak frites, moules marinières, coq au vin, beef bourguignon, catch of the day with beurre blanc, a vegetarian main
Fromages	1	Two or three cheeses with bread and a fruit condiment
Desserts	3	Crème brûlée, chocolate mousse, tarte tatin
Ardoise	3–5	Market starter, one or two mains, dessert of the day
Lunch formule	2 × 2 choices	Entrée + plat or plat + dessert, weekdays only
Wine	6–10 references	Each by the glass, carafe and bottle where possible

Write the menu in short, plain lines: the dish name, two or three key ingredients and the price. Bistro guests read the menu to decide, not to be entertained, so leave long stories for the board or the server. If you already run brunch, many of the same dishes and suppliers carry over; our brunch menu guide includes a sample bistro brunch.

How do you run a bistro menu online?

The easiest way to run a bistro menu online is a QR menu that mirrors the printed card and the board: fixed sections that rarely change, a “Today” category you update every morning, and a lunch formule that appears only at lunchtime. Guests see what is actually available, and nobody rewrites a chalkboard and a website twice.

Duckhub covers that setup:

• A digital ardoise. Keep a “Dishes of the day” category and hide or show dishes each morning. When a board dish runs out, hide it and it disappears from every guest’s phone at once.
• Scheduled formule. Each category has an availability schedule, so a “Lunch formule” category can show only Monday to Friday from 12:00 to 15:00.
• Bilingual menus. Every plan supports several menu languages, so a French and English card is one setting, not two printed menus.
• Free to start, $10 to take orders. The Egg plan is free forever and covers a QR menu with 70 products, 10 categories and 30 QR tables, enough for the structure above. The Duckling plan ($10 a month) adds QR ordering to the table and online orders for pickup, with 0% commission. Duckhub does not process payments, so guests pay your staff as usual.
• Your own AI writes the copy. Connect your own ChatGPT or Claude to Duckhub to draft dish descriptions or translate the board each morning; it works on every plan.

Keep the printed menu short, let the board do the talking, price the formule and the wine from real costs, and a bistro menu will stay both honest and profitable.