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food dishes of the 1980s


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Can anybody list dishes that epitomised or were devised in the 1980s?

In some ways this was a decade of contradictions: on the one hand we saw the popularity of delicate nouvelle cuisine and yet this was also the decade that the hamburger took off in the UK.

Your suggestions would be appreciated

Regards

David

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How about egg mayonnaise - those little half eggs covered in mayo and topped with paprika, or Avocado Prawns, prawn cocktail, trifle, melon balls, duck a l'orange, salmon en croute, heef wellington....

If a man makes a statement and a woman is not around to witness it, is he still wrong?

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bloody hell david where did that come from?! obviously a different conversation from when i left the pub last night :laugh:

chicken kiev, beef stoganoff, black forest gateau, beef wellington, steak rossini, steak au poivre spring to mind but on reflection they may be 70's ?

you don't win friends with salad

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Oooh, also Steak Diane, fondue, arctic roll, chicken cordon bleu, Tiramisu, the obligatory box of wine, babycham, cheese and pineapple on sticks, vol au vonts - oh, the memories!!! (Thanks god things have moved on!)

If a man makes a statement and a woman is not around to witness it, is he still wrong?

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Gosh some of the things listed above like arctic roll were very much early 70's food for my family.

I was at University in Bristol in the early 1980s and at that time vegetarian food was very popular, wholewheat pastry in all the bakeries and many books being published with titles like load of lentils and beanfeast. Sarah Brown's name comes to mind. The Italian Pizza restaurants were also hugely popular.

Cheesecake might be a contender but again perhaps a bit more late 70's. Could this be when sticky toffee pudding appeared everywhere? Carrot cake and was a 1980's discovery for me.

The early Curry Club cookbooks were published in the 1980s so I guess people were starting to cook curry at home around then too.

Keith Floyd seemed to be on the box a lot; not sure I can pick out anything in particular.

I am pretty sure the fascination with french food was fading a bit by then.

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Most of the dishes quoted so far are 60s or 70s fodder, surely. My most treasured (?) memories of the 80s are of nouvelle cuisine. To perfectly recreate that 80s ambience:

1. Get an industrial chemist to redecorate your restaurant. Don't forget the chrome chairs, black tablecloths and a floor covering that looks like graph paper.

2. Put two small slices of rare roast beef on an unfeasibly large plate. Add three barrel-cut new potatoes and a maximum of four green beans. Dribble with jus. Cover with a very big silver cloche.

3. Place covered plate in front of diner and, at a cue from the head waiter, lift the cloche.

4. Luxuriate in the admiring gasps and mutterings of "Is that it? For a tenner?".

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They may well have been 60's and 70's dishes, but they were still prevalent at most of the restaurants outside of London but around the UK when I was a kid, and if you googl 1980's food there is no end of menus and recipe's using the above.

If a man makes a statement and a woman is not around to witness it, is he still wrong?

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How about deep fried camembert

You forgot the gooseberry sauce - it makes the dish.

I also remember it was the age of the wine bar, quiche and "interesting salads".

mmm, Quiche Lorraine, happy memories!!

If a man makes a statement and a woman is not around to witness it, is he still wrong?

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Veal Parmigiana from Burger King is right up there with betamax tapes and cell phones the size of your shoe.

Peter Gamble aka "Peter the eater"

I just made a cornish game hen with chestnut stuffing. . .

Would you believe a pigeon stuffed with spam? . . .

Would you believe a rat filled with cough drops?

Moe Sizlack

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fondues, vol u vents and raspberry coulis lthough not altogether obviously!!

Seventies, fifties and eighties respectively, I would say.

I would also maintain that the late eighties were a fantastic time for restaurants in London, the best far eclipsing what we have today.

Edited by muichoi (log)
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Nouvelle cuisine is what I dismally remember from restaurants. And it's only fairly recently that one place near home has finally stopped dome lifting and announcing "dinner is served". Tossers!

St Delia had only just published her "Complete Cookery Course" (1978) - and I still make the country pate. Keith Floyd was never off the box - so it didnt really matter what you cooked so as you got pissed while cooking.

I have a sense that it will have the 80s when home cooking of Indian & other asian cuisines started to take off. And it was definately the decade when I found a love for the food of the middle east.

John Hartley

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fondues, vol u vents and raspberry coulis lthough not altogether obviously!!

Seventies, fifties and eighties respectively, I would say.

I would also maintain that the late eighties were a fantastic time for restaurants in London, the best far eclipsing what we have today.

I think the trouble with putting absoulte eras on food like that, food in London has always (in my mind at least) been significantly ahead of the rest of the UK, with perhaps one or two exceptions. Certainly this lag outside of London has shortened over the past 5 or 10 years, but I would say that certainly my experience of the 80's in my home town and other places around the UK that I visited (not to mention the food my parents and their friends cooked for dinner parties in the 80's) was typical of most of the dishes mentioned above.

If a man makes a statement and a woman is not around to witness it, is he still wrong?

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fondues, vol u vents and raspberry coulis lthough not altogether obviously!!

Seventies, fifties and eighties respectively, I would say.

I would also maintain that the late eighties were a fantastic time for restaurants in London, the best far eclipsing what we have today.

I think the trouble with putting absoulte eras on food like that, food in London has always (in my mind at least) been significantly ahead of the rest of the UK, with perhaps one or two exceptions. Certainly this lag outside of London has shortened over the past 5 or 10 years, but I would say that certainly my experience of the 80's in my home town and other places around the UK that I visited (not to mention the food my parents and their friends cooked for dinner parties in the 80's) was typical of most of the dishes mentioned above.

It's an interesting idea. On a recent trip to Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, I was served food dateable to around the end of rationing in 1957.

Drawing a line between Ventnor and the Fat Duck, I reckon you'd find the eighties somewhere on the M3 between Winchester and Basingstoke.

Tim Hayward

"Anyone who wants to write about food would do well to stay away from

similes and metaphors, because if you're not careful, expressions like

'light as a feather' make their way into your sentences and then where are you?"

Nora Ephron

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I sadly lacked the funds to visit many good restaurants.

But wasn't the '80's the time when quite a few chefs were making names for themselves. MPW at Harveys, had Gordo opened Aubergine? (or was it early '90's), Simon Hopkinson at Bibendum, Koffman at La Tante Claire, and the River Cafe had opened. Does anyone remember any classics that came from them?

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Many or most of the dishes listed in the thread are definitely 70’s and earlier and can be found in Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham’s excellent “The Prawn Cocktail Years”. A book I urge you to buy, from whence you will follow this process:

1. Read it with laughter tinged with nostalgia and a knowing sense of superiority about how much better we do it these days.

2. Decide to cook from it - but only in a “let’s recreate a 1970’s dinner party” post-modern ironic kind of way.

3. Join your guests in licking the plate clean after the crepes suzettes in a way that has embarrassing little to do with irony and everything to do with it being just “yummy”.

4. Somehow find yourself referring to it and cooking from with a quite alarming – and alarmingly satisfying - regularity as part of your daily repertoire that you should never have lost in the first place.

5. Shiver with fear about how future generations are going to judge us for sardine sorbet with snails cooked in liquid nitrogen.

As to a genuine 1980’s menu, wouldn’t it read:

- Chilled “Kiwi” Gazpacho

- Chicken Breast wrapped in parma ham with a salad of kiwi fruit.

- Kiwi crème brulee

Gareth

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Many or most of the dishes listed in the thread are definitely 70’s and earlier and can be found in Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham’s excellent “The Prawn Cocktail Years”. A book I urge you to buy, from whence you will follow this process:

1. Read it with laughter tinged with nostalgia and a knowing sense of superiority about how much better we do it these days.

2. Decide to cook from it - but only in a “let’s recreate a 1970’s dinner party” post-modern ironic kind of way.

3. Join your guests in licking the plate clean after the crepes suzettes in a way that has embarrassing little to do with irony and everything to do with it being just “yummy”.

4. Somehow find yourself referring to it and cooking from with a quite alarming – and alarmingly satisfying - regularity as part of your daily repertoire that you should never have lost in the first place.

5. Shiver with fear about how future generations are going to judge us for sardine sorbet with snails cooked in liquid nitrogen.

As to a genuine 1980’s menu, wouldn’t it read:

- Chilled “Kiwi” Gazpacho

- Chicken Breast wrapped in parma ham with a salad of kiwi fruit.

- Kiwi crème brulee

Gareth

Agreed - it is a great book!

If a man makes a statement and a woman is not around to witness it, is he still wrong?

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