If you were an adult in the 80's

[Gr33ngr33ngr4ss]

What was your typical dinner party / restaurant menu?

Im thinking
Prawn cocktail / melon
Coq au vin with duchesse potatoes & peas
Pavlova?
With a glass of orange juice on the table before the starter.

I worked in a gastropub near Henley in the mid 1980s and I’m racking my brains to think of the menus…. I can remember one popular main was chicken breast wrapped in Parma ham and served with a mushroom and white wine sauce; calves’ liver in sage and pan-fried in butter was another, seafood pancakes in a cheese sauce, and baked avocado with prawns mornay were others. Chicken Kiev was often on the menu too, but some of the other things mentioned earlier were more 70s than 80s, I think - the glass of orange as a starter was old hat by the 1980s. Oh, lamb kleftiko (that was one of my favourites) and salmon pithiviers I remember from those days too…it was a great time. Busy shifts, but we all got a meal after service and often leftovers to take home. I lived so well in those days!

Melon balls or Melon balls served in ginger beer or ginger syrup or ginger wine.

Melon boats i.e. a slim wedge of melon with a slice of orange held in place with a cocktail stick to represent a sail with a cherry on top of the cocktail stick.

Anyone still got their melon baller ? Their grapefruit knife ? Their long fondue forks ? The methylated spirits to keep the fondue pan's contents hot ?

Glass dishes shaped like half an avocado to serve avocado in or a flat corn on the cob to serve, yes you've guessed it corn on the cob. With corn on the cob forks which have little plastic corn cobs on the end ?

Guests were welcomed with sherry on arrival.

That sounds more like the sixties and early seventies to me. Cuisine minceur was big in London restaurants in the 80s, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food were very popular too along with Indian and SE Asian food. I don’t think I ve seen prawn cocktail and Black Forest gateau on a menu since I last went to an Angus steak house back in the 70s.

Dauphinoise maybe. Or mash, or those little piped blobs of potato. Can't remember what they were called. Or possibly rice?

Totally agree

Sounds 70s

80s spaghetti bolgnaise, pot noodle, lasagne, moussaka, thunderbird , Beaujolais nouveau, liebfraumilch.

Duchesse was the word I was looking for

Vinho verde

Lasagne and g/bread
Chicken curry
Beef bourgignone
Chicken parmigan

Creme caramel
Baked cheesecake
Chocolate mousse

Delia was queen.

A very 80s dessert was a pack of Maryland cookies, some whipped cream, and some sherry. You dip the Maryland one by one in the sherry, and sandwich them together into a long 'cake' with the cream. Cover it with cream and refrigerate for a couple of hours. Grate chocolate on the top before serving. Was the height of sophistication!

I was late teens / early 20s in the 1980s and didn't live a 'dinner party' kind of life.

Meals I remember eating when going out were

Prawn cocktail or crispy mushrooms for starter

Chicken Kiev or the similar breadcrumbed chicken with cheese and ham inside - with baked potato and sour cream .

I remember the liquor coffees as mentioned by PP above .

Also recall going out for Chinese (sweet and sour chicken) or Indian (chicken tikka masala or biriani)

What seems disgusting now is that I would sit and smoke in between courses .

I can so relate to this! Although my Berni Inn main was Gammon and Pineapple!

I’ve been disappointed by every Irish coffee I’ve had since. The Berni Inn Irish coffee was the best.

I remember my mum serving up halves of avocado with prawn cocktail in the hole for the stone as a very best posh dinner starter. There was a lot of Black Forest gateau and also Sara Lee double chocolate gateau. Just can't remember at all what she used to make for mains though.

Pavlova was 60s. My mum did it for my childhood birthday parties and I was born in 1959.

Ooh yes I do! Very late 80s, 88-89 I think, there was an outcry when she did a warm salad with lambs lettuce and bits of bacon. I was roped in to make lots of garlic bread in my nightie because it became clear that it was absolutely not enough food.

I was a waitress....

Avocado Vingarette
Pears and Stilton
Dublin Bay Prawns
Pate

Chateaubriand
Steak au Poivre
Steak Diane
Duck a l'Orange
Turbot
Trout and almonds
Pheasant in red wine sauce
Poached salmon with watercress
Garlic roast potatoes
Courgette souffle
Vegetable medley

Petit pot au chocolat
Chestnut Praline
Fresh Strawberries and Cream
Gateau - usually chocolate or more praline
Ice cream/lemon sorbet (or sorbet between courses)

Cheeseboard

Coffee and foil wrapped chocolates

Creme de menthe frappe
Brandy in enormous glasses. - or Port

Cigars

Indigestion

Pate or French onion soup, Chicken in white wine, banana long boats 😁

I'm obviously stuck in some kind of time warp as it's my favourite desert and I would still serve it today .

My mum made that with ginger biscuits once, it was absolutely revolting. Soggy alcoholic biscuits in cream, no thanks.

You are very lucky I still have the first cookery book I ever bought in 1982. I was 24 yrs old, so really into suppers instead of dinners.

Its the St michaels (M&S) All Colour Cookery Book by Jenifer Wright.

Soup - Gazpacho, chowders, French onion, borsch.
Starters - crudities and dips, vol au vents, taramasalata, pate, prawn cocktail.
Fish - paella, moules mariniere
Main - boeuf bourgiugnon, beef wellington, stroganoff, Lancashire hotpot, Wiener schnitzel Hungarian goulash. Duck with orange.
Suppers - souffles, moussaka, chilli con carne,
Desserts- lemon meringue pie, crème brûlée, summer pudding, oranges in caramel.

Noooo, you are back to the 70s
First course - Prawn cocktail (or small glass of fruit or tomato juice)
Main course - Coq au vin or steak
Pudding - Black Forest Gateau

My mum's early 80s menu was Melba toast with pate, coq au vin, creme caramel. By the mid 80s she'd embraced a takeaway with booze.

But that's a 70s thing (ghastly but have kept ours for the flapjack recipe and the laughs)

I was a pub waitress late 80s

Starters was prawn cocktail, soup or orange juice. The prawns were frozen and run under the cold tap to defrost, and the sauce was tomato ketchup and mayo mixed. The soup was powdered.

Main courses were things like chicken in a basket, steak and chips, pies of varying sorts which came frozen and the puff pastry lids were cooked separately and popped in top. We offered veg lasagne for the vegetarians (!) You could choose chips or jacket potato with your main course.

Pudding was black forest gateau, ice cream, and we had just started with sticky toffee pudding which was home made by one of the ladies from the village.

I remember someone asking for "soured cream" with her jacket potato. I had never heard of such an outlandish thing and bought her two plastic sachets of salad cream.

And yes, lemon sorbet for the slimmers! And one of the soups we offered was French onion. Maybe asparagus for the other? Came powdered in a tin!