It’s safe to say our taste buds have changed a lot over the last 80 years. In the 1940s, believe it or not, everyone was eating turtle soup, the 1970s had us impressed by loaded potato skins, and in the 2000s we thought molten chocolate cake was haute cuisine. But have you ever wondered which dishes were dominating restaurant menus the decade you were born? While some are sadly long gone, others are still favorites today – and here we've rounded up the best of them all.
Fancy taking a tasty trip back in time? Click or scroll through our gallery to discover what the must-try restaurant dishes were the decade you were born.
By the 1940s, America's love affair with Chinese cuisine was in full swing. Chinese restaurants – often called chop suey houses – advertised this stir-fried dish proudly and there was often a choice of beef, chicken, shrimp, or vegetables. However, the dish wasn’t exactly authentically Chinese; it was invented in the US by Chinese immigrant restaurateurs with the very intention of appealing to Western tastes.
Legendary steakhouse Keens is probably one of the few places in New York where you can still order a juicy grilled mutton chop. But back in the 1940s, the bone-in lamb dish featured on upscale restaurant menus around the city. Now it’s largely fallen out of favor due to diners’ preference for beef steaks and lamb chops.
This dish of creamy chicken, mushrooms, and peppers served over rice, noodles, biscuits, puff pastry, or toast featured on hundreds of menus throughout the first half of the century, and was a particularly popular choice at wedding breakfasts. Despite its French-sounding name, it’s an American creation; legend has it the dish was invented in the late 1890s at the Brighton Beach Hotel, New York, in honor of the hotel's owner, E. Clara King II.
An indulgent dish of clams baked on the half shell with butter, bacon, and breadcrumbs, clams casino was reportedly invented by maître d’ Julius Keller of the now-closed Narragansett Pier Casino in Rhode Island in 1917. However, it wasn’t until the post-war boom that luxurious seafood dishes such as this one (and oysters Rockefeller) became more widely available in upmarket restaurants.
This curious dish, often made with cream, tomatoes, sherry, and (of course) turtle meat, was a common meal for the elite in the 18th and 19th centuries. Even in the 1940s and 1950s, you could find it at members’ clubs like the Philadelphia Club in Philadelphia and Keens in New York. However, its popularity waned soon after, and it disappeared from menus.
A specialty at mom-and-pop restaurants throughout the 1950s, this light-as-air dessert features a lemon mousse filling made from whipped egg whites folded into lemon curd. It’s poured into a blind-baked pie crust, topped with whipped cream, and served chilled.
This decadent appetizer, featuring sautéed scallops in a creamy sauce, topped with cheese and breadcrumbs, and grilled in the shell until golden, bubbling, and browned was a mainstay on fancy restaurant menus in the 1950s. Both celebrity chef Julia Child and cookery writer Elizabeth David were champions of the dish in the 1960s, but nowadays it’s only really spotted on the menu at old-school French restaurants.
No one knows exactly who Diane was, but one thing's for sure: if you were eating out in the 1950s, steak Diane was considered a seriously sophisticated option. Featuring steak smothered in a rich sauce made from shallots, Worcestershire sauce, Dijon mustard, stock, Cognac, and black pepper, the dish was often flambéed tableside, to the delight of diners.
Found in the appetizer section of menus alongside clams, caviar, smoked salmon, and fruit supreme (fruit cocktail), shrimp cocktail was traditionally served in a sundae or martini glass, with spicy tomato sauce and a lemon wedge. Any restaurant worth its salt had it on the menu in the 1950s, and many still do to this day.
Far more common on menus in the 1950s than it is today, sautéed calf’s liver was a popular dish of sliced liver and onions fried in butter with herbs. At the Waldorf Astoria New York it was served with bacon and broccoli. If you have a craving for it, you'll still find it on the menu at New York institution Joe Allen, where it remains one of the most ordered dishes.
Bananas Foster was invented at New Orleans restaurant Brennan's in 1951. Restaurant owner Owen Brennan asked his sister Ella and chef Paul Blangé to come up with a dish to honor his friend Richard Foster, chairman of the New Orleans Crime Commission. The result saw bananas flambéed with brown sugar, butter, cinnamon, dark rum, and banana liqueur, and served with ice cream. It became popular all over the country, though it's still considered a New Orleans classic, and remains the go-to dessert choice at Brennan's.
An enduring American favorite for good reason, strawberry shortcake consists of crumbly, sweet biscuits (shortcakes) or sponge cake loosely layered with whipped cream and fresh berries. Served at the Waldorf Astoria New York and other upscale establishments of the time, it was a real special-occasion sweet treat in the 1950s. These days, its color scheme also makes it a popular dessert option to celebrate Canada Day each July.
A velvety leek, potato, and onion soup that’s served chilled, vichyssoise was invented at The Ritz-Carlton New York in 1917. It was just the thing to tempt appetites in summer and took the city by storm, remaining on fine dining menus for decades. In 1960, food writer Clementine Paddleford wrote that 'every New York restaurant of any rating serves the soup, and no two alike.'
Though its origins date back to 16th-century France, duck à l'orange didn't start tickling the taste buds of US diners until the 1960s. This was largely thanks to Julia Child, who had helped to popularize French food, leading to an explosion of French restaurants. This dish, featuring roast duck in a tangy orange sauce, continued to be a huge favorite well into the following decade.
A New Orleans classic, trout amandine became popular nationwide in the 1960s. Amandine means ‘prepared or served with almonds’ and that's exactly what this dish is. Trout filets are pan-fried, then finished in a brown butter sauce, along with plenty of toasted almonds and lemon juice.
Americans were introduced to cheese fondue at the 1964 New York World's Fair, where it featured at the Swiss Pavilion's Alpine restaurant. Diners quickly fell for it, and by the end of the decade fondue was a mainstay on menus nationwide. In the 1970s, the first branch of fondue chain restaurant Melting Pot opened in Florida, with over 100 more locations launching over the next 30 years.
If you were eating out at fine dining establishments in the 1960s, chances are you ordered chicken cordon bleu (chicken breast wrapped around ham and Swiss cheese, coated in breadcrumbs, and pan-fried or baked). It originated in Switzerland, but really took off in the US. United Airlines even mentioned it in an advert during the decade, hoping that the promise of an onboard chicken cordon bleu would attract passengers.
The decadent pairing of seafood and red meat was a huge hit in the 1960s. While lobster and filet mignon might be the most indulgent incarnation of the dish, other variations include steak with shrimp, squid, or scallops. Sky City, the restaurant which once sat on top of Seattle's Space Needle, is thought to be one of the first places it was served, during the 1962 World’s Fair.
This flambéed favorite is a true retro classic, and was especially ubiquitous on American menus in the 1960s. Invented in France in the 19th century, the dramatic dessert sees crêpes doused in a sauce made with orange zest, sugar, butter, and orange liqueur, then set alight, so they become wonderfully caramelized and smoky.
With cheese fondue at the height of fashion during the 1960s, it was only a matter of time before a sweet version came along. Created by Swiss restaurateur Konrad Egli at Chalet Suisse in New York, the original was made with cream, Kirsch, and Toblerone, and was served with walnut pastries and orange slices for dipping.
A classic Chicago dish, shrimp de Jonghe is a garlicky, herby seafood casserole. It was created by Belgian immigrant Henri de Jonghe at De Jonghe's Hotel and Restaurant around the turn of the 20th century, and quickly became popular. However, another restaurateur, Enzo Pagni, came across the beloved dish and put it on the menu at the now closed Italian-American restaurant Sabatino’s in the late 1970s.
Deep-fried potato skins topped with cheese, bacon, and sour cream found their way into sports bars in the 1970s, with TGI Fridays claiming to have invented the dish in 1974. Devoured in droves, this was an ingenious way to turn potato skins that would otherwise be tossed in the trash into a sell-out appetizer.
This veggie pasta dish attracted plenty of attention when it first appeared on menus in the 1970s. Featuring asparagus, broccoli, zucchini, tomatoes, and peas, it was made famous by the French restaurant Le Cirque in New York. It soon spread to Italian restaurants around the country and became one of the most popular choices for vegetarians.
Sushi's popularity soared in the US and Canada in the 1970s, partly thanks to the invention of California rolls – a type of maki roll with nori (seaweed) inside and fillings like cucumber, crab, and avocado. Now shuttered LA restaurant Tokyo Kaikan is often regarded as the home of ‘American sushi’, although other chefs have also laid claim to the title.
Although it’s named after a 19th-century general, this saucy chicken dish first originated in the 1950s, when Hunanese chef Peng Chang-kuei cooked it in a Taiwanese restaurant. When Peng opened a restaurant in New York in the early 1970s, he put his dish on the menu, making it sweeter for American palates. The rest is history and the dish is now an American-Chinese classic.
You might not think twice about ordering this sweet and smoky creation today – but when it debuted in the 1980s, it was considered pretty novel. Pizza chain California Pizza Kitchen had just opened with a menu devised by chef Ed LaDou (the man now widely credited with popularizing gourmet California-style pizzas), and the barbecue chicken option went down a storm.
This Italian dessert features just three ingredients: eggs, sugar, and Marsala wine, whipped together to make a wonderfully sweet, boozy custard, often served with biscotti or amaretti biscuits. It began appearing on US restaurant menus in the 1980s, and still makes the perfect light treat after a long, luxurious dinner.
It was Cajun chef Paul Prudhomme who introduced the world to blackened redfish. The dish consists of buttered filets coated in cayenne and spices, then seared until a black (but not burnt) crust forms. The dish went on the menu at K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen in New Orleans in the 1980s – the cooking method caught on and now you can find Cajun-style blackened chicken, shrimp, and steak on numerous restaurant menus.
Though it had been a regular at backyard barbecues and cattle roundups for decades, restaurant owners from the Rio Grande Valley on the Texas-Mexico border were the first to serve grilled skirt steak with cooked peppers and onions in soft tortillas in the 1970s. The popularity of the dish quickly spread and 'Sizzling Fajitas' were added to the menu at the Hyatt Regency Austin in 1982.
Although it existed earlier than the 1980s, this was the decade that Chinese chicken salad really came into its own. A Chinese-American dish, most versions include chicken, a soy sauce dressing, cabbage or lettuce leaves, and perhaps crispy noodles, wonton skins, or fruit pieces. Wolfgang Puck put a version on the menu at the Asian-French fusion restaurant Chinois, Santa Monica, in 1983. The Cheesecake Factory followed suit.
The popularity of this previously little-known layered Italian dessert, featuring mascarpone, sponge fingers, espresso, and cocoa powder, exploded in the 1980s. It was so ubiquitous that The New York Times even asked: "how does a dessert that was barely known in New York three years ago suddenly become so popular?"
This rich chocolate cake with a molten chocolate core was an overnight success when Jean-Georges Vongerichten served it at his New York restaurant JoJo in 1987. Within months, versions appeared on menus around the world. While perhaps not considered quite as exciting as it once was, the iconic, indulgent dessert is still adored today.
This 1920s salad of crunchy romaine lettuce, eggs, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, olive oil, grated Parmesan, and croutons reached peak popularity in the 1990s, when you could find it everywhere from coffee shops to elegant European restaurants. In more upscale spots, the salad was often prepared tableside, with plenty of flair.
The Chinese delicacy xiao long bao – paper-thin dumplings filled with hot soup – made its way to America in 1995. Taking inspiration from Din Tai Fung in Taipei, Taiwan, restaurateur Joe Si opened Joe’s Shanghai in Flushing, New York and put the novel item on the menu. Word spread, and soon, copycat versions were being slurped down all around the city.
Less a dish in itself, and more an accompaniment to one, foam started to appear on plates in high-end restaurants from the mid-1990s. The concept is often attributed to Ferran Adrià of the now closed three–Michelin star restaurant El Bulli in Spain, and it soon spread all over the world. That said, once foam became ubiquitous, it lost much of its wow factor.
On the menu at White Castle since the 1920s, these bite-sized burgers got the gourmet treatment in the 2000s. Featuring juicy patties, brioche buns, and elaborate toppings, they were rather more fancy than their fast food counterparts and could often be found at high-end steakhouses, as a way to entice budget-conscious diners.
When Momofuku Noodle Bar opened in New York City in 2004, it changed how America viewed ramen forever. No longer seen as a five-minute dinner for students on a budget, people lined up outside the city’s ramen houses to enjoy hot bowls of fresh noodles, pork belly, and vegetables served in a deliciously complex broth that took hours to make.
Although it was certainly around in the 1980s and 1990s, this dainty dessert, featuring rich vanilla custard topped with a crisp, caramelized sugar shell, really came to the fore in the 2000s. While the original was unquestionably delicious, a penchant for different flavors also took hold, with diners tucking into the likes of crème brûlée infused with chocolate, coffee, banana, blood orange, and more.
Fancy restaurants started filling with smoke in the 2000s, thanks to a trend for using liquid nitrogen in desserts and drinks. Celebrity chefs such as the UK’s Heston Blumenthal helped popularize the idea, and it became a common way for a restaurant to add a touch of drama to its offering. In 2018, though, the FDA warned that it could cause damage to skin and internal organs if mishandled or accidentally ingested. Liquid nitrogen’s appeal started to dwindle soon after…
Hungry for more? Discover the retro dishes we think deserve a comeback
Last updated by Clare Thorp.