Captain Picard’s Secret Menu Needs To Become Real

Before we dive into Captain Picard’s radical secret menu, let’s review what happens in “We’ll Always Have Paris.” This is the slightly disjointed episode where the A plot concerns Dr. Manheim and his mad science experiments into other dimensions that got him previously kicked out of the Federation Science Institute. The B plot, meanwhile, is about Picard’s old romance with Manheim’s wife Jenice, with the title referencing a Paris cafe that Picard stood the woman up in over 22 years ago.

Picard never got over their breakup, and simply hearing her name makes him so emotional that Troi instantly notices. He processes these feelings by recreating the aforementioned restaurant (the Café des Artistes) on the holodeck. In the show’s typical fashion, he tells the ship’s computer to recreate the cafe from a specific day and time and to make it a warm spring day.

Audiences were most likely meant to admire the meticulously-designed set, but this time, I couldn’t stop obsessing over the dining options. The waiter’s menu is made to look futuristic, and the details are impossible to read with the naked eye, but the full menu contents were later printed in Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Continuing Mission and reveal the hilarious courses on offer.

Some of the foods on Captain Picard’s potential menu include “Croissants D’ilithium”, “Klingon Targ a la mode”, “Tribbles dans les blankettes”, and “L’Antimatter Flambé.”

All of Captain Picard’s choices mentioned on the menu above are meant to be cute in-jokes for Star Trek fans to appreciate. Croissants D’ilithium is meant to make us think of the fuel for the ship’s warp core, and L’Antimatter Flambé evokes the mental image of the warp core exploding.

Klingon Targ a la mode is a reference to Klingons’ favorite pets (think dogs, but meaner), and Tribbles dans les blankettes summons the mental image of eating Tribbles like pigs in a blanket (notably, Starfleet officer Edward Larkin once ate Tribbles and thought they could be used as a food source if needed).

Captain Picard’s secret menu in this episode is filled with in-jokes from the art department, and if you speak any French, the full descriptions of the food will drive you crazy with their inaccuracies.

However, I’m not too worried about the bad French…ever since learning about these cheeky dishes, I’ve been obsessed with the idea that Paramount needs to make them real. That’s easier than you might think because the full menu describes how each dish is served (for example, those Dilithium Croissants come with cream cheese and fresh tomatoes).

Before you yell at me, I get that nothing keeps me from making these dishes for myself and my friends. However, I’m struck by the fact that Paramount gave Captain Picard a menu full of tasty themed dishes (a bit like Star Trek’s version of Disney World food) and never bothered to serve any of them on official events like the cruises.

Forget ordering official Star Trek wine…I’d much rather order the weird dishes that Jenice Manheim had to use as comfort food after Picard stood her up.

That will probably never happen, and I’ll be stuck whipping up Captain Picard’s menu on my own. However, I do have one cold comfort: just as Picard and Jenice will always have Paris, I’ll always have this beautiful menu of funny theme foods. And the fact that it’s French is so bad that it reads like Gambit’s dialogue in a ‘90s X-Men comic just makes the memory that much funnier.