Menu ideas for 1980's themed dinner party

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Can anyone give me some ideas for 1980s food. Preferably home cooked stuff. Tempting as it is to serve Findus Crispy Pancakes I'm not sure my guests would actually eat them.

Has to be black forest gateau for dessert

Prawn Cocktail
Coq au vin
Black Forest Gateaux

Prawn cocktail starter? Easily home made (50:50 mayo and ketchup) .....

Half a teaspoon of Horseradish adds zing.

Prawn cocktail or melon and ham/smoked salmon.

Stupidly tiny bits of stuff beautifully arranged on huge white plates, with an artful smear of sauce (it was the decade when all that came in for the first time, and people took it to extremes).

Kiwi fruit. Lots of kiwi fruit.

Puddings with the entire plate heavily dusted with icing sugar.

Grey, black or red plates and tableware.

My parents say they used used to have prawn cocktail starter, steak and chips and then Black Forest gateau or vienetta for pudding.

Vol au vents

Chicken kiev
Chicken satay

Profiteroles or maybe even Croquembouche if you can!
Trifle
Jelly, possibly with ice cream!

Prawn cocktail or just a (very) small glass of orange juice for starter

Scampi? (Not sure its partically 80's but for me it was a treat in the 80's remember eating it if we stayed lat at my grandads water skiing club)
Chicken kiev

Angel delight or blamange for pudding or a proper ice cream bomb (frozen fruit sauce surrounded by icecream in a chocolate shell)

I asked this qu around December last year except mine was 70s. Quite a long thread thereafter but I can't link on my phone - might be worth a search?

Oh, and you must have Viennetta for dessert.

Chicken and chips in a basket.
Can you still get Sara Lee chocolate gateau?

Chocolate mousse for pud, though in my mind the actual best 80s pudding was the long-lamented Romantica ice-cream cake.

Some of this feels quite 70s to me, I remember food in the 80s as being a bit fancier than that - though mind you, I only discovered garlic bread in 1985. I lived in the country though.

A curry with fruit in it is very 80s, it was very much the decade of the canapé too. Rhum baba for pud, salmon coubilliac (sp?) for main?

Nymphinyellow no you can't but Tesco do a really similar frozen one, it's delicious!

Vol au vents
Pineapple/cheese hedgehog
Prawn cocktail

Blanmange
Trifle
Black Forest gateaux
Arctic roll

Prawn cocktail
Steak and chips
Black forest gateau or profiteroles

Lush!!

I'd also say the suggestions so far have been more 70s but am struggling to think of what foods would be considered the 80s. Does it have to be 80s? I guess if you are celebrating something related to the 80s it will have to be

Coronation Chicken
Deviled eggs with tuna

Peach Melba
Chicken Kiev
Vol au vents
Curried eggs
Scampi
Mushroom stroganoff
Coq au vin

Just about anything from The Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook They are not lying about the "all colour" bit, the illustrations are in horrific technicolour.

I think food tastes had moved away from Black Forest Gateaux and prawn cocktail by the 1980s.

Main courses were dishes such as
Coq au vin
Beef Bourguignon
Goulash
Mushroom stroganoff for vegetarians

Starters were simple combinations such as pâté and toast, a few scampi & salad, and the avocado had been invented (!) so avocado vinaigrette was exotic.

Puddings were often a Pavlova with fruit, Pear Belle Helene, or Crepes Suzette.

Pear Belle Helene is bang-on, I used to make that for Sunday lunch!

Hmm - agree lots of these originate in the '60s and '70s.

1980s - IIRC, carveries v. popular and quite a revival in traditional UK food generally. I think the revival of goose for Christmas was 1980s. I'd completely forgotten the 'little bits' ^^ aka 'nouvelle cuisine'. I think Thai food also starting to be popular.

I have an actual 1980s cookbook and can confirm the prawn cocktail/ steak/ BFG theme is too 1970s. By the 80's we had moved on to Delia's Cookery Course.

My 1980s book includes suggestions such as:

Surprise Avocado Pears - the surprise is you scoop out half the inside and mush it up with some raw minced beef & then hide it in the middle of the other half, which you then cover with lemon slices

Main course - Chicken and Mushrooms in Crab Sauce - cold roast chicken with raw mushrooms coated in a sauce made with a tin of crab whizzed up in blender with some cream

Pudding - Arctic Sensation - basically a frozen trifle, covered in merigue and baked in oven or if you cba you could do Kiwi fruit bowl - coat a bowl with home made creme fraiche and slice up some kiwi fruits.

A lot of faffing with not v delicious outcomes

Vienetta was my mums pud of choice in tge 80's, 90's, 00's, 10's and on doubt 20's