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.

I can’t think of anything, mum was really into food. Things she served me were really quite expensive, we ate out regularly and had Indian takeaways on holiday. Also fussiness was not tolerated (apart from the cats) so you had to eat it or go hungry.

Dh on the other hand had tinned ham, tinned chicken roll and frozen cooked beef in the freezer when I met him. Never had a meal out as a child or a takeaway . He ate a cake with rose petals on it a couple of weeks ago.

In the 70s, my grandparents had a sugar bowl full of multi-colour sugar. I thought they were dead posh.

The first time I had orange juice as a drink, not a starter. Wow!

I’ve never seen coloured sugar.

It was a Chinese meal I had in a restaurant with a friend. She had to find out what to have and we asked for sweet and sour pork etc which was a first for us. This was about 1957 in the Kings Road, Chelsea.

I remember going out to dinner with 2 other couples. My boyfriend at the time ordered an espresso. 100% sophisticated. None of had a clue what to do when a teeny tiny coffee appeared at the table The rest of us stuck to alcohol, we knew where we stood with that!

Prawns especially prawn cocktail. We only ever had prawns at Christmas. I love them and have most weeks now.

Pâté on holiday in Spain when I was about 6. We had it on crackers and I thought we were very posh.

Mini kievs at a work Xmas do as part of the buffet.

This is embarrassing but in 6th form in 1981 I thought pot noodles were exotic and sophisticated!

A year later I'd really gone upmarket with Sobranie cocktail cigarettes, a drink of brandy & babycham and a boyfriend with a very middle class accent!! Oh and I had a dress with shoestring straps, a ra-ra skirt and metallic stripes running through it. Loved that dress

Another - getting my first contact lenses, when I was 16. My mum, a lifelong glasses wearer, kindly forked out for them for me. They were gas permeable (hard) lenses, but I took to them like a duck to water and wore them for years. Not many people under the age of 18 wore lenses in those days, and I felt very sophis.

Sadly I have now reached the age where glasses do a better job of disguising my eye-bags!

I still feel really sophisticated and like a grown up when I get my Elizabeth Arden 8 hour balm out of my bag. It smells like posh ladies.

That wasn't an avocado, it was an avocado pear.

@LordProfFekkoThePenguinPhD tate and Lyle make it, sugar crystals all different shades like edible amber.

I had it as a child in a hotel in Stratford.

1976, sleepover with posh friend. Breakfast was fresh ruby grapefruit in the skin, scored and sprinkled with sugar followed by honey and toast.

I hated it all but felt so posh.

...then went home for a bacon mother’s pride sarnie.

Ruby grapefruit...I’m fairly sure that is sophisticated.

The first time my friends and I went to a pub - the bar at the end of Brighton Pier. We were 13 and 14 and ordered Diamond White because it was the only drink we knew.

And getting a freezer and getting to go shopping in the Sainsburys Freezer Centre (a few doors down from the normal Sainsburys), always near-deserted, but everyone with an air of 'look at us, we can afford freezers!'. Buying a Vienetta was the height of sophistication in 1981...

I got my first mobile phone aged 18 in 1998 (on contract with Cellnet for about £35 a month, no calls or texts included). It was a Nokia 1611 which was about the size of a house brick (the SIM was the size of a credit card). I thought I was the height of sophistication.

First time I went into a pub and ordered a West Coast Cooler I felt incredibly grown up.

Oh, yes - first time in pub with people of own age, not parents-having-meal. I was 18 because I was a swotty bore who didn't do anything underage. I ordered a pint of cider - not something I would ever drink now .

Baxter lobster bisque or baxter beef consomme. My parents used to go for a "big shop to something likr Tesco once a month and Dad wpuld buy them, the fact my mother used to.make her own never made it less posh)There used to be this roast beef dinner with gravy frozen thing you could get when my brother and myself were small when microwaves came out that we thought were the height of posh that we were never allowed. Bistro was also.super posh that we were never allowed in our mind. My mother used to make her own stock and roast bones to make homemade gravy.

My dad owned a few old fashioned grocers shops near a university as was always getting in weird and wonderful things for the students which were then in turn fed to us. However the standout thing was my grandma teaching me how to cook and eat an artichoke - felt very grown up and I can’t eat artichoke without thinking of her. She’s also responsible for my lifelong love of tapanade 😋

Ordering a vodka martini. I (still) think they look like the height of sophistication but less so when you spit it out because it's too strong.

Sushi when I was in my 22 and working in California for the summer.

Cocktails in Düsseldorf in Henry J beans I think it was called. My year out was pure joy

A glass of champagne for seeing in the millennium at aged 13 lol.

Vesta curry. Very exotic.