Stuff you thought was so sophisticated the first time you ate it/did it?

[PolarBearOnARaft]

I’m having tomatoes on toast for breakfast and remember being offered that for breakfast in NZ on my first long haul trip 30 years ago when I was 18 and thinking ....bloody hell tomatoes on toast ...how sophisticated is that.

Can’t really think - but I remember when I first ate avocado and kiwi fruit (not together).

Also oyster (smithery bogeys) and caviar (bleugh).

Pizza Express pizza with the olive in the middle which no-one ever ate. At my 20th birthday someone dared me to eat this exotic olive and I did, and everyone admired this embrace of cosmopolitan foreign food!

Eggs Benedict!!

Also the first time I sat and drank coffee with a date-type person. (I was only about 15 and thought I was being very sophisticated.)

Viennetta 💁

Fresh or tinned tomatoes OP? My Italian friend can’t get over the fact that British people eat tinned tomatoes for breakfast. They are fucking lush though, and he is an idiot! I remember being offered a different glass in a restaurant when I switched from white to red. Blew me away.

Oh yes - whole tomatoes have a very certain taste don’t they? Although a dietician I know (Italian) always says to eat the chopped ones not the whole ones.

I swear I thought avocados didn’t exist outside of Surrey when I was a kid 😂 They were a yearly (very posh to me) treat when I went to visit my grandma.

Growing up, I felt sophisticated when my parents got a cake slice. We had always used a knife to cut cake up until that point.

The cake slice cake free with a Sarah lee chocolate gateaux, which I also thought was sophisticated.

‘You can’t Sarah le-ave them alone, no you cant’ That jingle will drive me mad now.

I remember my ex landlord, who had a very glam job, used to invite me for dinner with all these famous comedians and ambassadors. He used to serve chicken kiev (the frozen in breadcrumbs one, not home made) with pesto spaghetti and I thought it was the most sophisticated food I'd ever had.

Smoked salmon. I don't think it was as readily available in the 1980s as it is now and I thought it was super-posh back then.

Me too ScreamingValenta but for my North London, Jewish husband it was everyday food. That really blew my mind.

I felt very sophisticated when I first sat outside a coffee shop in the sun with a black coffee, a cigarette, a big pair of sunglasses and a copy of the importance of being earnest (I was reading it for my GCSEs and we had a week off school to revise, I felt very cosmopolitan)

Travelling internationally by air solo. I thought it was the height of sophistication. I wore high heels and did my hair and makeup beforehand.

15 years and several dozen flights later, I am now the person in tracksuit trousers or leggings, fluffy socks and hair up in messy bun.

Myfoolishboatisleaning I think back in the 80s there was a huge divide between the variety of food you could buy easily in London and other big cities, and what was available in the provinces (where I grew up). In the 80s I'd have assumed if someone ate smoked salmon every day they must be a member of the Royal Family!

I remember in the very early 90s my mum bringing out a Sara Lee chocolate gateaux for dessert and I felt very sophisticated! Oh how times have changed

Fresh tomatoes on toast in the heat of a NZ summer in a city centre flat with a balcony. Mind blown for wee girlie from the Midlands.

Avocado! 1987 people on the greengrocers asking what it was.

I forced myself to like olives because I thought they were sophisticated. The first time I tried one I spat it out. I kept on trying them and now I love them and eat them most days with lunch.

Chicken Kiev! In a small bistro in Twickenham in the late 70s/ early 80s. The whole family thought that we were sooooo sophisticated 😂
We’d go there regularly and thought that the chicken Kiev was really exotic 😂

Proper shellfish - that is, prawns and the like in their shells, not the ones ready prepared at the supermarket. Eating them in a Breton restaurant overlooking the sea. This sort of thing wasn't available where I lived when I was a child.

Even restaurants with white tablecloths seemed sophisticated and quite scary then, we ended up in one on a summer holiday as the fish and chip shop was closed. It wasn't relaxing as my parents were terrified of 'showing themselves up' - think Alan Bennett. Eating out just wasn't a thing then for many working class people.

I remember ordering my first Bloody Mary on a flight... I thought I’d look so sophisticated and worldly. In fact, I had to give it back because after the first sip I just couldn’t bring myself to knock back something that tasted of cold tomato soup with a vodka chaser!

I grew up in NZ OP, my mum used to regularly have tomatoes on toast with pepper for breakfast.

My first overseas trip at 19 with my BF drinking cocktails on a roof bar overlooking an Australia city skyline.

Oh and when I bought my first car in the early 2000s, I though it was very flash. A Subaru Impreza

It took me a while to like a bloody mary, but now a tomato juice on a flight feels right.

Remember my first white table cloth dinner, in a restaurant in France, I kept thinking we'd get asked to leave for doing it wrong.

Going to a Berni Inn for scampi and garlic mushrooms with my best friend after we'd finished our A levels. Happy days

Going on a date to an independent italian restaurant and ordering carbonara with a half caraf of house white when i was around 17. I had never even had pizza up to that point.

Sophistication had nothing on me

I had no idea what carbonara was but it sounded sophisticated.