Appetizers
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40 free Appetizers trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Appetizers have better stories than most main courses. Many of the snacks on a bar menu were invented by accident, named as a joke, or borrowed from another country and changed along the way, and the names themselves often hide a second meaning. This quiz covers the small plates people actually order: bar snacks and game day finger foods, dips and spreads from the Mediterranean and the Middle East, seafood starters, and the menu words that restaurants use to describe them. Each answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn where a dish came from as well as what it is. It works as a food round for a trivia night, and it pairs well with the snack table. If you are hosting, the appetizers that suit a trivia night are the ones guests can eat with one hand while the other holds a pencil: wings, sliders, potato skins, deviled eggs, stuffed mushrooms, and chips with a couple of dips.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which cheesy snack is named after Ignacio Anaya, a maître d' who improvised it for US military wives?
Nachos
Nachos take their name from Anaya's nickname, Nacho, a common short form of Ignacio. He made the first plate in 1943 at the Victory Club in Piedras Negras, a Mexican border town.
Q 02Which city's Anchor Bar is credited with inventing hot chicken wings served with celery and blue cheese?
Buffalo
Buffalo is where Teressa Bellissimo is said to have fried the first batch in 1964, as a quick late-night snack for her son's friends.
Q 03Which dish of thinly sliced raw beef, created at Harry's Bar in Venice, is named after a Renaissance painter?
Carpaccio
Carpaccio honors Vittore Carpaccio, whose paintings were known for their red and white tones. Giuseppe Cipriani first made it for a countess whose doctors had told her to eat raw meat.
Q 04The canapé, bread with a savory topping, takes its name from the French word for which piece of furniture?
Sofa
Sofa is the joke behind the name: the topping sits on the bread the way a person sits on a couch. A canapé is meant to be held in the fingers and often eaten in one bite.
Q 05Antoine's restaurant in New Orleans named its rich baked oyster dish after which American tycoon?
John D. Rockefeller
John D. Rockefeller was the wealthiest American when Jules Alciatore created the dish in 1889. Antoine's has kept the recipe for its green sauce a secret ever since.
Q 06Which restaurant chain had the deep-fried Bloomin' Onion on its menu when it first opened in Tampa?
Outback Steakhouse
Outback Steakhouse made the dish a charter menu item in 1988 and trademarked the name. A fried version was likely invented three years earlier at a New Orleans grill where one of the chain's founders worked.
Q 07Caesar salad, a classic starter, was first tossed by restaurateur Caesar Cardini in which Mexican border city?
Tijuana
Tijuana drew Americans dodging Prohibition, which is why Cardini, an Italian immigrant living in San Diego, ran a restaurant there. The salad is said to date from a Fourth of July rush in 1924.
Q 08In 1992, the dollar value of salsa sold in the United States passed that of which rival condiment?
Ketchup
Ketchup was outsold in dollars by a food whose name simply means sauce in Spanish. In English, salsa came to mean Mexican table sauces in particular, above all the chunky tomato-and-chili kind.
Q 09Which fried wonton filled with cream cheese was probably invented at the tiki restaurant Trader Vic's?
Crab rangoon
Crab rangoon borrows the old name of Yangon in Myanmar, yet cream cheese is found in neither Burmese nor Chinese cooking. It was on the Trader Vic's menu in Beverly Hills by 1955.
Q 10Which menu word means the main course in the United States but a dish served before it in France?
Entrée
Entrée began as the entrance to the table, the opening stage of a French banquet. Beyond North America it still generally means an appetizer or starter.
Q 11The dip hummus takes its name from the Arabic word for which legume, blended with tahini to make it?
Chickpeas
Chickpeas supply the whole name: the full Arabic phrase, hummus bi tahini, simply lists the two main ingredients. Lemon juice and garlic complete the standard recipe.
Q 12Which Spanish bar snacks, served alongside drinks, take their name from a word meaning lid or cover?
Tapas
Tapas comes from the verb tapar, to cover. One popular story has Andalusian tavern drinkers laying a slice of meat over the glass to keep fruit flies out of their sherry.
Q 13Japan's batter-fried tempura began with a technique learned from 16th-century missionaries of which country?
Portugal
Q 21Guacamole is traditionally mashed in a molcajete, a three-legged Mexican tool best described as what?
Stone mortar
Stone mortar is the plain description: a true molcajete is carved from a single block of bubbly volcanic basalt. Its pestle, the tejolote, is cut from the same rock.
Q 22Baba ghanoush, the Levantine dip scooped up with pita, is made by roasting and mashing which vegetable?
Eggplant
Eggplant is traditionally charred whole over an open flame before it is peeled, which gives the dip its smoky taste. Tahini, olive oil and lemon juice are then mixed into the soft pulp.
Q 23Which Greek dip of strained yogurt, garlic and cucumber takes its name from the Turkish word cacık?
Tzatziki
Portugal still has a close cousin of the dish: peixinhos da horta, or garden fishes, which are green beans dipped in batter and fried. Japanese cooks picked up the technique in Nagasaki.
Q 14In Britain, pigs in blankets are small sausages wrapped in which meat and served with the Christmas turkey?
Bacon
Bacon is the blanket in Britain and Ireland, where the dish is also known as kilted sausages. The American snack of nearly the same name wraps its sausage in bread or pastry dough instead.
Q 15Which melted-cheese dish did the Swiss Cheese Union promote as a national dish in the 1930s?
Fondue
Fondue was pushed by the union simply to get people eating more cheese. After wartime rationing ended, it kept the campaign going by sending fondue sets to army regiments.
Q 16Which French word for a shop selling prepared pork is now used for boards of cured meats and cheeses?
Charcuterie
Charcuterie joins the French words chair, flesh, and cuit, cooked. The craft covers hams, sausages, terrines and pâtés, most of them made from pork.
Q 17Which South American country counts ceviche, raw fish marinated in citrus juice, as its national dish?
Peru
Peru has had its ceviche tradition recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Before limes reached the Andes, coastal cooks used the juice of a native passionfruit called tumbo.
Q 18True caviar, traditionally from the Caspian and Black Seas, is the salt-cured roe of which fish?
Sturgeon
Sturgeon roe comes in three classic kinds: beluga, ossetra and sevruga. The eggs of other fish, such as salmon or lumpfish, are also sold under the caviar name.
Q 19Which US state made tortilla chips and salsa its official state snack by a legislative resolution in 2003?
Texas
Texas lawmakers ranked chips and salsa with the square dance, the guitar and the rodeo as state traditions. Their resolution also boasts that the state led the nation in growing jalapeño peppers.
Q 20The French term hors d'oeuvre, used for small bites served ahead of a meal, literally translates as what?
Outside the work
Outside the work meant apart from the ordinary set of courses in a meal. In the 17th century, such small dishes began to be set outside the main, symmetrical arrangement of plates on the table.
Tzatziki belongs to a family of yogurt dishes that Turkic migrations carried from Central Asia into Anatolia and the Balkans. Dill or mint and a little olive oil usually finish it.
Q 24Arancini, the fried rice balls whose name means little oranges, are a staple food of which Italian island?
Sicily
Sicily's eastern cities, such as Catania and Messina, shape theirs into cones inspired by Mount Etna. The snack is said to date from the 10th century, when Arabs ruled the island.
Q 25Which restaurant chain, begun as a Manhattan singles bar, is one of several claiming to have first served potato skins?
TGI Fridays
TGI Fridays shares the claim with rivals such as the Prime Rib Restaurant, and the dish is documented from 1974. Founder Alan Stillman bought his local bar partly with $5,000 borrowed from his mother.
Q 26French onion dip, once called California dip, mixes sour cream with which brand's dry onion soup mix?
Lipton
Lipton promoted the recipe on Arthur Godfrey's television show in 1955, a year after an unknown Los Angeles cook came up with it. Potato chips are its usual partner.
Q 27Which salad dressing did plumber Steve Henson first mix in Alaska to feed his work crews in the early 1950s?
Ranch
Ranch takes its name from Hidden Valley Ranch, the California guest ranch Henson bought after leaving Alaska. Visitors liked the house dressing so much that they took jars of it home.
Q 28Which French term names the bite-sized dish a chef sends out free ahead of a meal, which diners cannot order?
Amuse-bouche
Amuse-bouche literally means mouth amuser. Because the kitchen alone chooses it, the tiny course doubles as a preview of the cook's style.
Q 29Edamame, the salted green pods served at Japanese restaurants, are the immature form of which crop?
Soybeans
Soybeans picked young have been called edamame since at least 1275, when the Japanese monk Nichiren thanked a parishioner in writing for a gift of them. The pods are boiled or steamed.
Q 30Which city's Golden Gate casino began selling a fifty-cent shrimp cocktail in 1959 that became a local cliché?
Las Vegas
Las Vegas visitors paid the same 50 cents until 1991, when the price rose to 99 cents because the casino was losing $300,000 a year on the dish. It came in a sundae glass.