Is CASE Statement ANSI Standard or is specific to databases

Hi,

Is the implementation of CASE statement in SQL ANSI Standard or each database has a standard of its own when using case statement

For example if a table column say recipe_class returns when doing a select

Main course
Vegetable
Starch
Salad
Hors d'oeuvres
Dessert
Soup

then How do I do case in all kinds of databases that will do this

case 'Main Course' then 'M'
case 'Vegetable' then 'V'
else  'EX'


thanks
-anshu