Holding a 1990s dinner party - please give me some food suggestions!

[lorettalemon]

I'm holding a 1990s themed dinner party to celebrate my niece's 30th birthday as she grew up in the 90s.

Can anyone give me some suggestions of meals which used to be really popular at the time, or things you remember really enjoying if you were a child or teenager then?

I know pizza was popular, but that's so commonplace for people to eat anyway that I would like to go for something a bit more nostalgic!

Ideas for starters, mains, desert and nibbles would be much appreciated! Party decorations too if anyone can think of anything!

There aren't any vegetarians/vegans/dietary requirements to cater for, so all ideas welcome. Thank you ever so much!

Nineties food doesn't seem to have had much character does it? The bloody Chardonnay is all I remember. Or, for rebels, the alternative, ABC, (Anything But Chardonnay).

Sun dried tomatoes
Pesto
Domino pasta sauce
Salad dressing with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, seedy mustard & garlic
Ben & Jerry's or Hagen Das ice cream
Nachos

Yes! Tuna pasta bake!!

Pop tarts!

I started uni in 1996

Agree many of the things mentioned above are definitely 80s! Arctic roll and angel delight.

90s to me
Cajun chicken, tex mex, pesto. Thai food was just coming in to fashion

I started uni in 1996

Agree many of the things mentioned above are definitely 80s! Arctic roll and angel delight.

90s to me
Cajun chicken, tex mex, pesto. Thai food was just coming in to fashion

Chicken wrapped in bacon.

Lamb shanks

I can't recall the 90s standing out for anything specific food wise. 70s yes, 80s yes but not really 90s...I seem to recall mum making chicken or turkey lasagne a lot but that's about it.

Blue WKD was launched in 2000 I’m afraid. I remember it coming out like a loser 😂

Haven't seen this on the thread, but I might have missed it....

Nigella's How to Eat came out in 1998 and is full of recipes I use now. It has suggested menus for different occasions and even wines that go well with each menu.

I think it's her best book. There are hardly any pictures, but the instructions and blurby bits are wonderful.

raspberry coulis was on everything on the 90s masterchef. Avacado mousse for vegetarians?

Hooch.
Many alco-pops.
Yuk!!

I think a nineties style dinner party is a great idea but there isn’t enough disparity between the food eaten then and the food we eat today. The ‘irony’ might be lost on your dd if she grew up in the nineties... at the age she was then she might have been on Findus crispy pancakes and Chicken Kiev’s and I’m not sure if that’s dinner party fayre.

If someone served up Tuna Pasta bake or Lasagne I’d be more likely to think that I hadn’t had it for ages rather than immediately think of the nineties...

Sorry, your niece. And excuse the rogue apostrophe on kievs (autocorrect!)

I remember my mum's dinner parties all being Delia recipes - usually chicken liver pate to start and always profiteroles (homemade) for dessert (we we're always put to bed and had to hope for leftovers in the morning )

Low key meals I remember having a lot of were lasagna (served with chips and garlic bread ), tuna pasta bake, stir fries, cheese & onion quiche and egg & chips

Cheese toasties and Sunny Delight

Tuna pasta bake....

Stuffed mushrooms
Stuffed peppers

Fruit salad for desert
Prawn cocktail on a bed of iceberg lettuce was still about from the decade before.
Curry seemed to be getting more popular.

I think DonkeyHotty has it right. For a decade themed part you need iconic food from the decade. Dinner parties in th he 90s were similar to those UK n the 80s, 70s and 60s (minus the fad foods). As is being proved by multiple posters claiming other posters are wrong and remembering 80s, 70s or 60s food.

Prawn cocktail would still be served, Coq au vin, beef bourguignon etc

Similarly to foods lasting those decades to the 90s, foods that raised in popularity (like pesto) are still about today. So aren't considered 90s.

(Though in 30 years time, when someone wants to to a 2010s themed party for their niece will some posters be told they are remembering 90s food if they suggest pesto!!)

Saying that though I do think stuffed mushrooms, goat's cheese and sundried tomatoes are quite symbolic of 90s.

@lorettalemonyo you'd be better off just serving up less fancy foods. There's a lot of them about in the 90s. Washed down with Sunny Delight and Snapple. Or Cava.

Didn’t Delia invent blueberries in the 90s, or was the cranberries?

Came here to say exactly what @broomzoom and a couple of others are trying to point out. Your niece is 30, so probably wouldn't have been a regular attendee of dinner parties or fancy restaurants. Fine if you are going for that sort of vibe, but it won't be nostalgic to her. She would have only been turning 5 in 1994!

As a fellow 90s child, our nostalgia does unfortunately rest rather heavily on processed food - that's what says 90s to me! I'm 32, if it helps.

If you're hoping to evoke childhood memories, I'd steer away from chargrilled veg and move towards the turkey twizzlers and crispy pancakes if I were you...

Ready, Steady, Cook and Masterchef were the two biggie XV cookery shows of the 90s. Delia featured more on tv in th 80s and Jamie didn't start to be annoying till right at the very end.

Maybe give your niece a bag with five pond worth of random food items and get her to create two courses!!

Delia was cranberries.
It was specifically the summer and winter books, the cookery course was a lot earlier.

I think your memories of food in the 90's will depend on your age and life stage at the time.

I was late 20's / early 30's and went out a lot for meals, got married 1994 so I would be cooking dinner parties from my Delia Smith books and Good House Keeping magazine thinking I was all sophisticated.

I remember monk fish as being the 'in' fish in restaurants. And things like goats cheese, sun dried tomatoes and pesto coming in.

When cooking at home for me and DP I did a lot of pasta with tuna and condensed soup as a sauce. I think I got that from my mum though. Also chicken Kiev and lasagne.

I also did a lot of fat free dieting and agree with the poster who says they struggle to eat avocado today because of it being a complete no-no in 90's diets. Same as nuts.

Friends who had young children at the time definitely had sunny delight and turkey twizzlers in the house.

Lucky charms were still available and weren’t American imports.

Chicken chasseur - that’s probably earlier than 90s but that’s when I had it as a child.

Sundaes and fools were always done on ready steady cook, but again, technically these were probably earlier. A young James Martin was fond of spun sugar in the 90s.

Frubes yoghurts, cheese strings, zaapp lollies, Birdseye hungry joes!

@zandapanda my mum used to cook Chicken Maryland in the 1970's. it was one of my favourite meals as a child.