What food can you remember from the 1970s and 1980s? Bring your crepe suzette memories over here!

[TheStroppyFeminist]

We are cooking deep fried brie tonight, which we will have with cranberry sauce. We are following it with brandy snaps filled with cream. Lovely but very fattening and very 1980s restaurant style. I know it was mainly wedges of deep fried camembert in the 80s though.

Other dishes I remember:

Steak Diane, flambeed at the table with a French mustard sauce
Crepes suzette, also flambeed at the table, with grand Marnier, which was an orange liqueur, urgh!
Tornedos Rossini, which was fillet steak with pate on top IIRC
Cockles cooked in a French mustard sauce
Sole Veronique, which had green grapes in the sauce
Egg mayonnaise, which was hard boiled eggs, cut in half with mayo and paprika on top

What other delights were there? Most of these are my memories of restaurant food bur I also remember butterscotch Angel Delight and the disgustingness that was blancmange!

So many things already mentioned but especially Ski yoghurt in that awkward shaped pot. I loved them.

The Food and Drink show on BBC2 revolutionised food in my family - DF started cooking and things like broccoli and avocados and fresh rather than tinned salmon were introduced to us. We all started drinking wine regularly too and never looked back. Sicilian Red was a particular favourite after being recommended on the show.

I met and married DH in the mid 80s. We used to eat out now and again in a particular place and he always went for Tournedos Rossini. I used to have trout with almonds which I haven’t seen on a menu for years.

@OhMaria2 thank you! I’d totally forgotten about hippo-pota-mousse 😍

Half a grapefruit with a cherry in the middle or a melon boat with an orange slice sail for a starter.
Chicken Maryland with a fried banana on the side for main,
Knickerbocker glory or a banana split for afters.
Loved going to the local steak house with mum and dad in the 70s.

Heinz vegetable salad, loved that. Wish you could still get it.

Smash
Corn on the cob as a starter in a restaurant like a Berni Inn
Findus savoury pancakes
Half a grapefruit with a spoonful of sherry on top, put under the grill and served with a cocktail stick of glacé cherries
Steak Diane
Snowballs (drink)
Cherry B
Babycham
Basket meals including scampi and chips
Black Forest Gateau
Lemon Meringue Pie
Cream horns (at Xmas)
Cheese, pineapple chunks and silverskin onions on cocktail sticks
Sago
Tapioca
Junket
Treacle tart
Evaporated milk (with tinned fruit and jelly)
Tinned salmon with salad with bread and butter at relatives’ houses for Sunday tea
Floater coffees after dinner in a restaurant

My Mum always did chips with curry and rice, at our request. We nearly always had a cooked dessert after dinner, because my Dad liked them!

I bloody love vol-aux-vents, rum babas and crepes suzette. Bring back the 70s!

Sue Perkins and Giles Coren had a series where they ate the food of a specific period in each episode. The 1970s one was quite shocking in terms of the amount of booze people drank. An entertaining guide from the time advised allowing half a bottle of spirits per person for the first two hours of a dinner party. And the three-quarters of a bottle per person for each subsequent two hours!

The very strangest was something we got in a hamper at Christmas in something like 1970. It was in a big tin nestled in that paper straw amongst the boxes of brandy snaps, matchmakers and jars of whiskey marmalade.

A whole cooked chicken. We kids were gobsmacked. Needless to say we wouldn't eat it. I think my dad had it sliced in sandwiches for his packed lunches.

The boiled eggs chopped up in a cup with butter that my little sisters loved and I couldn't bear the smell of.
Getting a chest freezer and discovering exotica like "moussie puddings" and "pizza pies" which were like little frisbees.
Packet cake mix. Came in several colours, all tasted the same.
Discovering that pasta wasn't just macaroni cheese or spaghetti hoops/"worms in blood" from a tin. And the joy of eating bowlfuls of plain boiled macaroni.
Dinners in seaside hotels. Just meat, potatoes and vegetables like we had at home, but all those exotic sauces! Apple sauce with pork! Mint sauce with lamb! Horseradish sauce, yuck, nippy!
Rum babas for Mum and Dad when we were on holiday. No, you can't have a taste, they're not for children. (I'm over 60 and still haven't had one.)
A whole cow's tongue sitting in a bowl in my gran's kitchen.

Mum made an “exotic “ curry always with raisins , in the 80’s .

The worst part was even though the pan was washed whatever was cooked next was green !
It must have been a deep frying pan as I do remember green fried eggs and bacon .

My mum did a cordon bleu evening class one year in the early 70s. My dad, brother and I were uniformly horrified by everything she made - moussaka, lasagne, walnut bread. The moussaka had potato instead of aubergine because no way were you going to find an aubergine in a tiny West of Scotland town in 1973!

Grew up pretty much in a hotel as my dad was a hotel manager. Key food memories from the hotel were orange juice as a starter or prawn cocktail, pate or soup😬 my favourite meal ever was Steak Diane flambéed at the table by a matrie’d but most mains were cream laden, beef stroganoff anyone?? Didn’t love trout almondee with the whole trout looking up at you from the sliver service platter. On a casual day anything fried in a basket, scampi, chicken…..

At home food was much more plain. Mince and potatoes, cooked breakfasts, anything from the Hamlin all colour cookbook. On a fancy day a vesta curry with added chopped apple and raisins🤢

Supper was toast toppers or skippers in tomato sauce on toast. Also the after school joy of apple and sliced date block sandwiched on thickly buttered white bread, yum😋

Yes round on top and cylindrical - I absolutely loved them. Always a treat whenever I went to visit my grandparents from Manchester. Ironically I now live within walking distance of that same ainsleys but it’s now a cooplands!

My Mum was huge fan of Harveys Duo Cans (not sure if that's what they were called!) I think they were double ended tins with spaghetti in one end and bolognese sauce in the other.
Also Vesta meals, especially chicken chow main and beef risotto.

My Mum was a caterer,

Posh buffet weddings in a marquee.

They always wanted:

Vol aux Vents : many many.
Whole salmon with thinly sliced cucumber ‘scales’
Coronation Chicken
Stuffed Eggs
Lemon soufflé
Profiteroles

Everything was garnished with tomatoes cut in half with a zig zag.

In restaurants; Irish Coffee. Served in a big wine glass with whipped cream on top and the base of the glass tucked into a quilted paper coaster.

Brown Derby in the Wimpy! Donut with whipped ice cream and chocolate sauce!

I still make vol au vents at Christmas. My children all take the piss and eye roll but they are the first part of Christmas Eve buffet to disappear!

Brought to the table along with your burger so that it was just a wet doughnut in a sticky puddle by the time you got round to eating it.

Wimpy menu from 70s! Image added.

Vol au vents for when people were coming round
Beetroot in a jar.
Creme caramel - made from a packet. Ok but a weird texture.
Gooseberry fool. Didn't like
Rhubarb fool. Didn't like

Findus crispy pancakes
Daloon Chinese spring rolls
Primula cheese spread
Billy bear face
Frozen mousse
Angel delight
Birds eye burgers
French bread pizzas
Our parents worked and sometimes the convenience foods were an easy shout as teenagers.

Crepes Suzettes - yes. Made at your table by the Maitre D. Likewise something carved at the table - beef wellington???
the cheese chariot wheeled through - particular in French restaurants.
the desert trolley
the orse d’ouvres trolley (sp?)
it was all far more of a performance

melon and a maraschino cherry for a starter
orange juice as a starter.

oh. Whole Dover sole boned at the table.

I still do a whole salmon with cucumber scales AND coronation chicken.

Sugar free soft drinks being cans of Tab and Fresca, and good luck trying to get either of them in a bar or restaurant.

Rice Cremola, I think it was a milky pudding made with milk and sugar. Lovely, comfort food.