Most of us have been for a pre-dinner cocktail or sipped a little glass of something while we’re deciding what to order. That right there is an Aperitif. A little drink to stimulate your appetite, like sherry, a glass of sparkling, even a martini or a negroni falls under the Aperitif category.

If you don’t want to commit to splitting a bottle of wine, a great alternative is a carafe. A carafe is a jug that’s smaller than a decanter, larger than a glass, and will provide just enough wine for you and your companion to have two generous glasses of wine.

There once was a time when if you wanted to try a wine, you had to commit to the bottle, an expensive and risky move. Nowadays, we have a clever little tool called a Coravin. It works by piercing the cork with a needle while still in the bottle, forcing Argon gas into the bottle, and allowing a controlled amount of wine out.

Often referred to on menus alongside ‘soup’ or ‘sandwich’, du jour is French for ‘the day.’ As such, the soup du jour is the soup of the day – a daily special that your waiter will tell you all about as they run through the menu.

This is a dish with its roots in the Mediterranean and is usually seafood (commonly fish or mussels) served in a lemon and tomato-based marinade. The sauce is sometimes the curing liquid, and sometimes the post-cook addition.

Often, the term prix fixe is interchangeable with ‘set menu’ and simply implies that for a fixed price you will receive a complete meal, for example, a starter, main, and dessert. It’s the opposite of a la carte.

An ancient cone-shaped tool heated over coals, the flambadou has gained popularity again especially when it comes to cooking oysters. Once the flambadou is screaming hot, beef fat is thrown into it, quickly rendered, and then poured onto shucked oysters to create a salty, oily, rich and utterly decadent little starter. Tres bien.

Put away the Chapstick, this has nothing to do with kissing. On a menu, Frenched refers to meat that has been separated from the bone and fat, like a pretty rack of lamb.

Sauce gribiche is a rich creamy sauce served cold that is akin to a tartare. It is made by emulsifying hard-boiled egg yolks and mustard with oil. The sauce is finished with chopped pickled cucumbers, capers, parsley, chervil and tarragon.

Heirloom vegetables are special little things. They’re produce that is not normally grown commercially and are old varieties. Oxheart and Brandywine tomatoes are often lumped into the heirloom salad because heirloom species are often more flavourful and interesting than the uniform commercial varieties.