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.

Prawn cocktail starter or melon
casual lasagna or apricot chicken main
posh beef Wellington main
casual vienetta desert
posh baked Alaska desert
cheese board with fig paste

In the winter I would cook currys and in the summer rice salad with tandoori chicken.

That was 1977.

By the mid 80's we were so much more sophisticated...

And yet that very 90s dessert craze, tiramisu, doesn’t seem that different. Amaretto biscuits soaked in liqueur and espresso coffee and covered in cream and cocoa powder anyone?

No, I never warmed to tiramisu either. But then I don’t like summer pudding or bread and butter pudding, so maybe it’s that I’m not a wet cake/dunked biscuit person anyway.

Spinach, avocado & bacon salad was definitely a late 80s starter, desert of double chocolate gateau or summer pudding, main of boeuf bourguignonne or beef in Newky Brown. French dishes were certainly a thing, we did a lovely dish with pork loin & coriander from the St Michael French Bistro Cookery book - in fact we used that book for most times we had people round for dinner, published in 1984, I've just checked!

And I still use the Dairy books, though I prefer the British Food one to the Family Cooking one - published later & less reliant on cream

You may well have served me on my 18th then. 😂

M&S introduced microwave ready meals in the 80s and Delia Smith was big on TV as were Madhur Jaffrey and Keith Floyd. There were lots of different influences on British cooking and regularly getting a takeaway that wasn't fish and chips became popular for lots of people.

I was a student in the early 80s and we had lots of one-pot stuff like Bolognese or shepherds pie, and butterscotch Angel Delight was our pudding treat 😀There used to be a wonderful Italian place in Leicester called Joe Rigatoni and it opened my eyes to food I'd never heard of before!
I got married in the late 80s and we would go out for a Sunday pub lunch. As a vegetarian my choice at one venue was vegetable lasagne (when I say choice, I mean only option) or, at the other, cheese & onion pie.
The posh restaurant we went to for special occasions offered mushroom stroganoff or asparagus tart. Pudding there was either Tarte au citron or chocolate torte (like the Delia recipe I used to make which made chemists everywhere sell out of liquid glycerine)
I think things were regional or influenced by social factors as I'd never eaten (or even seen) pavlova before the mid 80s, much less had one homemade!

With corn on the cob forks which have little plastic corn cobs on the end ?

I've still got mine and use them regularly! Corn on the cob is so messy otherwise, especially with loads of melted butter.

I hate tiramisu too, and trifle.

And bread and butter pudding

I saw the ginger biscuits version of this demo'd at a Tupperware party in the 80s, and after the sales pitch we scoffed it all. I loved it!

Artic roll for pudding! 😂

Lasagne and profiteroles yum

Gammon with a pineapple ring

Yes.

A glass of orange juice on a plate with a doily was a starter!

Yes, definitely 1970's. Your menu would have been dated in the 80's, the era of yuppies eating avocado sandwiches and the lasagne.

onedeadyukka you're wrong...

Vesta Paella was THE best

I was 20 in 1980. My typical meal would be
Pint of lager
Bag of crisps
Another pint of lager

I still buy a Vesta Chow Mein with crispy noodles every now and then. And it's still bloody lovely but don't tell anybody.

1980, I was 14, loved a Vesta Paella.

PAFMO
So do I
Unfortunately The Paella isn't in our shops very often.

I plump for the Chow Mein instead

small salad with smoked mackerel as starter, then home made chicken curry or a quiche with various salads for main (assuming we hadn't had a salad as starter) tiramisu for dessert