Why was a glass of orange juice a starter?

[NutellaEllaElla]

I learned this recently. Is it true? What don't I know that might help me understand this?

80s too for definite. And in some places well into the 90s!

It's not very clear, but I think the mushrooms are an optional extra to have with your steak, rather than a main course.

Our orange juice was served in these

This bringing me memories of my grandmother setting breakfast - orange juice in what I know of as a shot glass.
Not sure what type carton/can it came from but must have taken them ages to finish.
Don't think us as children got one just the grandparents

Remember Just Juice?

Fizzy drinks used to be called minerals because they were made by flavouring naturally carbonated mineral water. They still called them that in the sixties - the Mineral Man came round once a week and there was a returnable deposit for the bottles. My favourite: dandelion & burdock.

Think it was pretty much the same when I started going out for meals with a boyfriend or work colleagues in the 1980s. Chicken Cordon Bleu was always my choice. The prices seem high in comparison with wages compared to now .

Birds Apeel was my favourite.

Also Five Alive (allegedly made with five fruits)

I remember going to B and Bs and being offered orange juice or cereal for breakfast before your fried egg & bacon. I never had the guts to ask for both, because I was vegetarian and gave DH my cooked breakfast, so ended up with a glass of orange juice for breakfast. One B and B refused to have us when they found out we weren't married!

I remember frozen orange juice concentrate sold in maybe Sainsbury's in a kind of 3D triangle packet. And definitely suspect orange powder sold by sweet shops!

No ifs, no buts, just juice!

Ah, that makes sense.

My mum would sometimes do this as a starter for family meals in the summer. I can remember feeling very posh, having a starter!

I loved orange juice as a starter, it was such a treat, even if it was out of a carton or a Britvic bottle. I was well into adulthood before I ever tasted fresh orange juice and it blew my mind.

I really miss the dessert trolley piled high with delectable looking puddings.

I was born in 1963. Only one family I knew regularly had fizzy drinks or orange juice: in our house those were for parties or special occasions only. Most of the time we drank water or cordial. Then something called Sunny Delight was introduced in the 70s and became very popular. It was an orange-flavoured drink with around 2% concentrated juice and a massive amount of sugar. It became a favourite drink here in the UK. My family was quite hard up so we never had it, but friends' families did. There was a programme on Radio 4 about it which is the only reason I know this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001v3z4

In the early 70s my mum used occasionally to buy a small frozen container of concentrated orange juice from Sainsburys and dilute it at home. This stuff — made from concentrated orange juice — was the kind of thing served as a starter in restaurants in tiny glasses.

In the late 70s 80s orange juice as we know it became common in supermarkets at a price more people could afford. Apparently Sunny Delight was available until the late 90s.

I can also remember my mum bringing home a strange exotic red shiny vegetable* from the market in the late 60s and no one having the faintest idea what to do with it. I think she eventually cut it into slices so everyone could have some and served it with with salad cream. That was my first ever red pepper. Don't get me on the subject of yoghurt, which arrived at some point in the 1960s and was very strange and exotic...

Crikey, that makes me feel like 160 instead of just 60. It was a different world, OP. And when you're my age, now will feel like a different world too.

*I know a red pepper is actually a fruit. We thought it was a vegetable.

My parents went on holiday to Butlins in Mosney in the 60s before they were married and were split up into ladies and gents cabins where they shared with strangers!

Goodness, this all takes me back.

I was born in the 70s and I can remember being in quite a nice restaurant, aged about 7, and seeing my mother have a glass of orange juice as a starter. In fact, it was the first time I remember the concept of courses (other than main meal/pudding, a starter was new for me).

I also remember some kind of powdered stuff that came in little pods, my father brought them home once and there was everything from fruit juice to soup. Adults just not have thought much of them has we never saw them again but at 5 or so, we thought they were terribly exotic.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g That menu is very interesting, not least the difference in prices. Less than £1 each for starters and pudding but mains could be £6 or £7. That’s a big difference - if we went into a restaurant today and had starters at, say, £7 or £8 that would put mains at around £50 or £60!

The sadly-missed Wilko sold them... I used to buy them for my daughter's birthday tea parties.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g , The Criterion!

My parents went on holiday to rural Ireland before they were married and stayed in a guesthouse. My mum got a room in the house with walls covered in holy pictures and my dad's 'bedroom' was a shed at the bottom of the garden.

My mother used to have frozen tubes of orange juice. You had to dilute them. She served these well into the 1980s. I kept telling her nobody does this anymore.
When I was at school I used to have a Saturday job working in a Berni Inn. Strawberry gateau was on the menu for desert and I remember having to cut the mould from one.

Wow i'm loving this thread, it has reminded me of a quote I read somewhere that said: no matter how rich or powerful an individual is, they can never taste anything more delicious than freshly squeezed orange juice.

I can't imagine not having easy, affordable access to orange juice and won't take it for granted again! And yes, I agree about starters being too big these days, restaurant meals are quite incompatible with a balanced diet. I would be all over some interesting mix of fruit juices as an aperitif.

Orange juice very nearly caused an international disaster in St Tropez in the early 80s.

We were on a family holiday. I had a strong dislike of anything fizzy so my father bought me an orange juice in a French cafe. That orange juice was so expensive the bill for four drinks came to approximately £20 (early 80s remember) and my father nearly lost his mind.

He didn’t return to France until the mid 90s but by then I was happily drinking the wine 🍷

I remember a corn on the cob starter -eaten with special little forks- in a glass corn-on the cob shaped dish with butter.

I actually have some of those funny little forks. We use them at BBQs when we roast corn on the cob on the BBQ