Formality – Formal Substitutes for ‘A Lot of’ and ‘Lots of’

Use "much" to describe a relative amount of a noun that can't be easily counted or quantified. If you can't put a number before the noun, use "much."

Also, if you replace the object with a pronoun, it should be singular (it). Consider "collective nouns" that are singular but describe an unquantifiable volume.

"Much" is often combined with a modifier like "too," "not," or "very."

There is not much snow on the ski slopes this year. It's a small amount.

There's much work ahead before the end of the project. It's a big one!

There's too much sand on the beach to count it all. It's everywhere!

"Many" describes a quantifiable, countable noun. If you can put a number before the noun you should probably use "many." Here if you replace the object with a pronoun, it will be plural (them, they).

Many ski-lift operators will be looking for jobs. Who will employ 30 of them?

This project has many complex parts to consider. They are all critical - all 1000 parts.

There are too many grains of sand on the beach to count them all. At least a million of them are in my left shoe.

Using "a lot of" or "lots of" is sort of personal preference. In most cases the 2 are interchangeable.

There is a lot of ice on the road, so drive carefully! Also, there's lots of snow!

We still have a lot of work to do - lots of separate tasks to complete.

I found a lot of sand in my right shoe, and lots more in places I didn't know existed.

A lot of people make the mistake of writing "alot," so don't do that!

In most cases either one works fine, but you should be careful about replacing "a lot" or "lots" with "many" or "much." Note that in the examples below "many" works in place of "lots/a lot", but "much" doesn't work at all.

At first there was just one monkey, but then the banana truck exploded and there were lots of monkeys running all over the place!

A lot of the monkeys ran off to the beach afterward. Lots of bananas still litter the road though.

The town will need to hire a lot of people to clean them up. Lots of people need jobs now anyway.

OED defines the relevant usage as...

starter 3a. phrase
as or for a starter, for starters - to begin with, for a start.
colloquial (orig. U.S.)

That sense was first recorded in 1873, but I'd say it's still a colloquial/informal usage today - as is this specialised "sub-sense" first recorded 1966...

3b A dish eaten as the first course of a meal, before the main course (also in plural). colloquial

Regardless of the "first use" dates above, I suspect many native speakers today (particularly, BrE) are like me, in that they would see OP's usage as a "metaphoric" reference to entrée/first course of a meal.