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!

I'm surprised only one other poster has mentioned coulis (or jus for the savoury version) because I recall eating a lot of food with some kind of sauce artistically dribbled around the edge of the plate. Nouvelle cuisine (or naff all cuisine according to my DH).

Julienne veg. Thin strips of everything (nouvelle cuisine again really)

Yes to the Beaujolais Nouveau and sun dried tomatoes as well!

Muffins and mini muffins (again, the Delia recipe), I remember work being full of muffins.

I recall cooking a lot of stir-fries in the 90's but that might have been just us as obviously that style of cooking has been around for a lot longer.

Sara Lee gataux for dessert - another thing we used to get a lot of in work for birthday cakes. Bonus points if you can serve and eat the strawberry one in the short space of time between the strawberries on the top being either frozen solid or total mush. Bon chance!

southern fried wedges

Yum, I love all the shite food mentioned on this thread, making me hungry.

So easy to knock up a plate of nachos grande at home now though, as all the fixings can be bought in any supermarket.

I remember trying to track down ingredients like chipotle and harissa.

Doesn't it depend on your age though, a 13 yr old would have been eating very differently to a 30 yr old.

HaagenDaz ice cream. Baileys. HaagenDaz Bailey's ice cream!!

We were not posh enough for 90s Jus 😁

Blimey - death by chocolate. Haven’t heard of that for years.

Definitely pesto, sundried tomato, monkfish, swordfish, baby corn, pitta with dips. I also remember meat substitutes taking off - Cheatin” Bacon and the like. And “posh” crisps, like Kettle or those from M + S, served in a big bowl from Whittards.

I also think it’s the decade where grabbing a takeaway latte took off - I had my first from Starbucks in 1996/7 when i started work. I had regularly drank coffee from the age of 12ish, but had always sat down in a cafe or at home before then.

I ate loads of crispy pancakes and waffles as a student in the 1990s but they’d been around since the 1980s I think.

I didn't have seedless grapes until the 90s

I thought Starbucks was very late 90s/early 00s

Jus was in restaurants only Mrsjayy, at home we just got gravy

Yy to coulis and jus. Isn't jus just non reduced gravy with no roux? Ie literally just cooking juices?

We did get gravy or if i was pushing the boat out sauce

Another thread has reminded me that in the 90s I convinced myself I had to have a magimix as all the TV chefs swore by them for julienning veg etc.

Nachos or lasagne for main.
Vienetta or Hagen daas ice cream for dessert

Sol beer with the lime segment stuffed in the top of the bottle to drink..

Starbucks was about 98 but Costa was around a while before that - the first one near us was in a branch of the Abbey National.

Huge confusion over food trends on this thread - nineties were definitely sundried tomatoes, kiwi on a plate, coulis, nouvelle cuisine aftermath.

Cafe rouge opened in the zone four north London suburb I lived in in 1995. Me and my flatmate went there and purposely sat outside next to four lanes of traffic talking about how European we were now that we had a cafe culture.

Sorry, not cafe rouge, costa coffee I mean.

So costa coffee was there in 1995.

Millefuille with a raspberry coulis
Lasagne, moussaka, tuna pasta bake, chicken breasts stuffed with mozarella and sun dried tomatoes and wrapped in bacon or Parma ham. Sometimes with a tarragon sauce. Tagliatelle, carbonara.

All with garlic bread!

Sorbet and granita
Balsamic vinager drizzled on everything
Caesar salad

Oh interesting - don't really associate food with the 90s. Nothing healthy or dinner party suitable anyway!!

Super noodles
Sunny D
Star bars
Vodka jelly

Pasta started making more of an appearance in my diet. Lasagne was fancy. Canalloni (however it's spelt) was fancier (because it was fiddly).

Did cordon bleu raise it's head? I've a vague memory of that.

Not read whole thread but has anyone mentioned Kiora orange juice and Trio bars?

Yes I remember Costa but Starbucks seemed more glamorous & I remember regularly going in 99/00 & thinking I was so grown up & professional with my takeaway coffee (it was actually a hot choc).

Not that I've done it myself, but I think jus is reduced cooking juices without thickening - quite intensely flavoured. Had some quite nice ones, and really you'd want them in the quantity of gravy instead of scraping the plate dipping your fork in it.

Coulis is cooked fruit, sieved and pureed.

I'm not a chef no shit, sherlock you'll be surprised to hear

Some of you are very much still in the 70's and 80's!!