Fancy Dinner Menu Ideas

In this era of fast foods and wraps, any sit-down dinner with linen and china might be considered a "fancy" meal. Your elegant dinners can also reintroduce your guests to a meal-time that's relaxed, cheerful, colorful and delicious. Use your best table linens, finest china, silver and crystal. Choose menus in courses that reflect both your creative flair and a sense of fun. Select seasonings that lightly enhance, not overpower, the flavor of the food you're serving.

Lobster Tails Poached in Butter

This elegant seafood dinner opens with appetizers of goat cheese medallions and hot ripe olives roasted with garlic. Serve a second course of creamy cucumber soup with slivers of sweet onion in a base made from chicken stock and flour. For a colorful and sweet salad, present fresh Japanese persimmons and sliced green peppers on fresh lettuce leaves. Follow your salad with individual servings of stracotto al Barolo, slices of rare beef braised in red wine sauce with Italian tomatoes, onions, celery and fresh thyme. Refresh your palates with a mint sorbet before serving the entrée of individual lobster tails poached in butter. For dessert, offer a luscious crème caramel served in buttered ramekins along with demi-tasse or coffee.

Standing Beef Rib Roast

This cold-weather entrée often appears at a festive holiday dinner. Treat your dinner guests to a cold appetizer of sweet, spicy baby pickles wrapped in strips of smoked salmon. For the meal's soup, ladle out a hot, thick bowl of minestrone. Then offer a small Crab Louie salad, layered parfait-style and served in individual stemmed glasses. Treat your guests to a plate of tiny Adriatic squid, Calamari fritti, fried in olive oil to a golden brown and served with lemon wedges. Pause for a refreshing orange sorbet. Serve the standing beef rib roast encrusted with garlic and fresh rosemary, and surrounded by beet rosettes and new potatoes stuffed with a soft cheese. Top the evening off with a dessert of Baked Alaska, a traditional flaming ice cream baked on a sponge cake base and covered in meringue. Serve coffee and liqueurs with dessert.

Cornish Game Hens

When autumn is in the air, Cornish game hens belong on an elegant dinner menu. As dinner gets under way, offer your guests an assortment of mushroom and smoked salmon canapés served with onion cream sauce and Dijon mustard. Your soup course is a creamy butternut bisque served in a pumpkin shell and topped with a dollop of sour cream. Forgo a traditional salad in favor of a serving of baked oranges surrounded by spiced pineapple and splashed with sherry. Follow your salad course with bundles of sliced veal scaloppini covered in an anchovy, tomato and cheese sauce. Let a lemon sorbet smooth the transition to your main event, individual Cornish game hens served with apple and sweet potato dressing. Close out the dinner event with a dessert of mocha glace, a fluffy confection of vanilla ice cream whipped with instant coffee, drizzled with crème de cacao and served in champagne flutes. Offer your guests coffee or espresso to accompany their desserts.