Comments on: 1980s themed food

Question: 1980s themed food

biffa — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 07:53:24 -0800

I need some 1980's themed food/drink ideas for a 1980s themed pot luck before a 1980s party.

The easier to make/buy the better. I'm in the UK so American specific products may not be so useful, but feel free to add them on the offchance that someone else will look this up in the future.

By: leapingsheep

leapingsheep — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 07:59:35 -0800

rice cakes

By: Atom12

Atom12 — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:00:53 -0800

Wine coolers

By: LeisureGuy

LeisureGuy — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:02:35 -0800

Go to the library and prowl through 1980s magazines on cooking and entertainment. You'll quickly find things that were hot stuff then, along with recipes, decoration ideas, etc.

By: hazelshade

hazelshade — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:05:13 -0800

Kool-aid

By: bifter

bifter — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:19:40 -0800

A hedgehog made from an orange cut in half with cheese and pineapple cubes on cocktail sticks stuck in it.

By: fidgets

fidgets — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:22:36 -0800

five alive

By: NoMich

NoMich — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:25:49 -0800

Cajun blackened anything and everything that used to live. And washed down with wine coolers.

By: NoMich

NoMich — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:28:06 -0800

Huh, my linked-to Google search is heavy on the fish recipes, but believe you me, we cajun blackened everything back in the '80s. Steaks, chicken, burgers, fish, your mom, everything.

By: Chunder

Chunder — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:28:55 -0800

Babycham? *shudder*

By: Bookhouse

Bookhouse — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:34:33 -0800

Quiche!

By: caddis

caddis — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:34:57 -0800

Jell-O pudding pops
Tofutti
Classic Coke

By: Alison

Alison — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:35:05 -0800

Tab. Fruit roll-ups. Starbursts. Skittles. Anything with oreos. Mello-yello floats. Handi-snacks.

By: caddis

caddis — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:35:35 -0800

Quiche is a good one.

By: ktrey

ktrey — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:35:46 -0800

Coca-Cola still manufactures Tab.
If you're up for some work, you can sort through M&Ms to remove all the red and blue ones.
They even have a machine for that.

You'd still be missing the tan ones though.

By: Bookhouse

Bookhouse — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:36:00 -0800

Pudding Pops!

By: spilon

spilon — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:37:04 -0800

Potato skins?

By: Alison

Alison — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:37:12 -0800

Also anything made with Hidden Valley Ranch Party Dip. I still make ranch chicken with that to this day.

Also, this page has a lot of food products from the 1980s.

By: bifter

bifter — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:39:35 -0800

Pimento stuffed olives.

Vol au vents.

Scotch eggs.

By: caddis

caddis — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:41:02 -0800

Tiramisù

By: Opposite George

Opposite George — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:42:23 -0800

Chipwich

By: Elsa

Elsa — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:43:32 -0800

What kind of party?

Brunch: Oat bran muffins. Hazelnut coffee. Quiche.

A Yuppie dinner: for hors d'oeurves, skewered tortellini, snowpeas stuffed with smoked-salmon cream cheese, mini-quiches. Blackened chicken or fish. Arugala with raspberry vinaigrette. Anything with sun-dried tomatoes. Fior dessert, tiramisu.

On the plus side, these are all delicious, but I remember being heartily sick of seeing them every month in the cooking magazines of the 1980s.

In the 80s, I planned a thousand dinner parties. There must be many menus lurking in my brain; I'll check in later.

By: dchunks

dchunks — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:45:14 -0800

Spodi.

By: rglass

rglass — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:58:50 -0800

My mom used to serve salmon patties and tuna noodle casserole in the 80's. Also, BLTs with fake bacon.

By: Robert Angelo

Robert Angelo — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 09:06:56 -0800

Try a search for "Nouvelle Cuisine" recipes...?

By: Rash

Rash — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 09:11:37 -0800

Did you hear about the thing they call McDLT?

By: padraigin

padraigin — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 09:13:23 -0800

Brie.

Baby corn (picture Tom Hanks in "Big").

SteakUmms.

By: beccaj

beccaj — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 09:40:24 -0800

Was Jello poke cake in the 80's??
So cheesy and all the covers of mom magazines...

By: oneirodynia

oneirodynia — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 09:56:25 -0800

Sushi, of course.

By: furiousthought

furiousthought — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 09:56:26 -0800

I wonder if you could dig up or somehow scarily fabricate those cookies that were crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 09:56:36 -0800

Cocaine. Sushi.

By: Human Flesh

Human Flesh — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 10:02:12 -0800

French bread pizza.

By: TheWhiteSkull

TheWhiteSkull — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 10:07:30 -0800

Bad Sushi. Ludes.

By: Robot Johnny

Robot Johnny — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 10:36:28 -0800

New Coke!

By: amtho

amtho — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:24:50 -0800

Frozen yogurt.

Baskin-Robbins ice cream cake.
Commercially-packeged granola bars.

I think of sushi as '90s - am I wrong to think this way?

By: oneirodynia

oneirodynia — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:57:08 -0800

The cocktail of choice (for everyone who wasn't drinking wine coolers) was a Long Island Iced Tea, or Jello shooters (at least in all the bars I was sneaking into). There was also a huge blue cocktail fad.

By: Gucky

Gucky — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:58:08 -0800

Too bad you can't get any Frusen Gladje, but perhaps you could serve Haagen daaz and say it it.

By: ramix

ramix — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 12:01:43 -0800

I grew up in England in the 80's and here's a partial list of what i remember eating:

Wimpys chips and hamburgers (better than McDonalds)
Birdseye fishfingers
Stringfellow chips (very thin cut french fries) smothered with Heinz baked beans
Wall's cornetto ice-cream
Marathon chocolate bars (now snickers i guess)
Smarties
Treetop orange squash
Vimto

(as you can see, my diet was very progressive for an 8 yr old!!)

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 12:02:55 -0800

Sushi was cutting edge in the '80s, but in the '90s it showed up at every grocery store across the country.

By: Dreama

Dreama — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 14:14:12 -0800

One thing that sticks in my memory of the 80s (perhaps it was just collegiate dining) was everything was served on bars. Salad bars, pasta bars, potato bars (baked potatoes with toppings), soup bars, sandwich bars. The 80s seemed a veritable buffet of (singularly themed) buffets.

Also: bar cookies, especially "blondies" which were essentially (IIRC) chocolate chip cookies masquerading as a brownie type thing.

And while we're still talking bars, Gallo wines (never served before their time) Riunite (on ice, very nice) and Martini & Rossi Asti Spumante (celebrate life!) would be appropriately themed. For the teetotalers, it'd be like totally awesome if you could put your hands on Pepsi Lite or Pepsi Free, Tahitian Treat or fruit flavored Nehi sodas. (I always liked the peach flavor, myself, quite yummy with ranch Doritos, for some reason.)

You could also go with food related to iconic 80s movies, birthday cake with Sixteen Candles, giant pancakes ala Uncle Buck, French bread, fries and dressing or hamburgers with faces for Better Off Dead (either way, skip the boiled bacon, please) Reese's Pieces for ET, pizza served with history books as decor for Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Cap'n Crunch and pixie stick sandwiches - with one slice buttered white and one slice buttered wheat - for Breakfast Club.

By: tundro

tundro — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 14:25:41 -0800

Jolt! (www.joltcola.com)

By: rob511

rob511 — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 15:38:18 -0800

Why not start with the sacred* and then finish up with the profane**?
*recreation of Babette's Feast (1987)
**make your own Cookie O'Puss (1982) (Google video)

By: Pocahontas

Pocahontas — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 18:26:20 -0800

Hamburger Helper
Wine Coolers
M&M's minus the blue and red and teal colors
Pesto (the garlic-basil-parmesan puree)

By: easternblot

easternblot — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 18:54:45 -0800

I don't know if this was as popular in the UK as it was in Holland, but when I think of eighties food I think of raclette and fondue. I don't know where the Swiss food hype came from all of a sudden (Switzerland, duh) but there was a big surge of these at dinner parties.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 20:35:22 -0800

Eastern: I believe that fondue was a 70s thing around here.

By: easternblot

easternblot — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 21:24:48 -0800

The raclette thing, too? I remember seeing commercials for those in the 80s.

By: biffa

biffa — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 02:17:30 -0800

Thanks all, we ended up taking quiche, mini scotch eggs and chip sticks (yeah, fairly down market party). Alas, someone else bagsied the vol au vents early so that was out. Would definitely have picked up some vimto if had seen this in time.

As an aside, does anyone remember a soft drink from the 80s that is no longer available? It was fruit based but didn't taste of any specific fruit, fizzy, available in the UK in cans and bottles, I think it had a 7 letter name.