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Prawn cocktail Prawn cocktail, also known as shrimp cocktail, is a seafood dish consisting of shelled, cooked prawns in a Marie Rose sauce or cocktail sauce, served in a glass. It was the most popular hors d'œuvre in Great Britain, as well as in the United ...

, steak garni with chips, and Black Forest gâteau was the most popular dinner menu in British restaurants in the 1980s, according to contemporary surveys by trade magazine ''Caterer and Hotelkeeper''. It was associated with the Berni Inn chain, which popularised mass-market dining out after the end of food rationing in Britain following the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. ''The Prawn Cocktail Years'', by

Simon Hopkinson Simon Charles Hopkinson (born 5 June 1954) is an English food writer, critic and former chef. He published his first cookbook, ''Roast Chicken and Other Stories'', in 1994. Early life Hopkinson was born in Greenmount, Bury, in 1954, the son of ...

and

Lindsey Bareham Lindsey Bareham is a British food writer. She began her career by editing the restaurant section of ''Time Out'' magazine. For eight years, she wrote a daily recipe for the ''Evening Standard'', and she currently writes for ''The Times''. Publ ...

, called this meal the Great British Meal Out.

Background

Laura Mason in ''Food Culture in Great Britain'' wrote that "In mid-twentieth-century Britain, eating out had a dreadful image. Badly served, poor and unimaginative food, discourteous staff, and dining rooms with limited and inconvenient hours." Food rationing, introduced during the Second World War, did not end until 1954 and the range of eating-out options and variety of meals available remained limited, only gradually expanding through the 1950s and 60s.

Meal

The Great British Meal Out was a meal in a restaurant designed to appeal to those for whom eating out at all was unusual and for whom a prawn cocktail, steak garni or gateau were exotic foreign food.

Nigel Slater Nigel Slater (born 9 April 1956) is an English food writer, journalist and broadcaster. He has written a column for ''The Observer Magazine'' for over a decade and is the principal writer for the ''Observer Food Monthly'' supplement. Prior to ...

wrote of his childhood in the 1970s: "As a family, we never went out for dinner unless we were on holiday, but there were occasional Saturday lunches at the local Berni Inn" adding "Steak garni always sounded so much more exotic than plain steak."National treasures
Nigel Slater, ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...

'', 30 September 2007. Retrieved 1 July 2014. The standardised menu suited the restaurant, who could purchase and prepare food in bulk within tight cost controls,Frank Berni
''

The Telegraph ''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are popular names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include: Australia * ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, publ ...

'', 12 July 2000. Retrieved 1 July 2014. and avoided the need for the customer to choose courses from a menu which might include foods with which they were unfamiliar or which might include hard to pronounce foreign words, both of which had the potential to cause social embarrassment. The ingredients of the meal had a pleasantly sophisticated ring: "cocktail", the use of prawns, which was not common, "steak garni" rather than just steak, and "Black Forest gâteau" rather than just cake; all slightly foreign but easy enough to learn for next time, and allowing the diner to feel that they were enjoying a "continental" (European) eating experience. The meal eventually became unfashionable as British dining tastes became more sophisticated from the 1980s onwards and the Gallup survey conducted by the trade magazine ''

Caterer and Hotelkeeper ''The Caterer'' is a weekly UK business magazine for hospitality professionals. It covers all areas of the hospitality industry (including restaurants, hotels, foodservice, pubs and bars) providing news, analysis and features about senior industry ...

'' in 1989 confirmed that Black Forest gâteau had suddenly become less popular.

and

coined the term "Great British Meal" in their 1997 book ''The Prawn Cocktail Years'', which includes a chapter titled ''The Great British Meal Out''. They wrote that, "cooked as it should be, this much derided and often ridiculed dinner is still something very special indeed".

Association with Berni Inns

The meal became associated with the Berni Inn chain, established 1955 and which had 147 hotels and restaurants by 1970, making it the largest food chain outside the United States. The chain prospered by offering a menu with a limited number of options in "Olde Worlde" style restaurants that looked much the same in every branch. The most popular meal at a "Berni", even as late as the 1980s, remained prawn cocktail, steak and chips, and Black Forest gâteau. In their 2000 obituary of Frank Berni, ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' noted "the Briton's favourite menu of prawn cocktail, steak and Black Forest gâteau". ''

The Bristol Post The ''Bristol Post'' is a city/regional five-day-a-week (formerly appearing six days per week) newspaper covering news in the city of Bristol, including stories from the whole of Greater Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire. It was ...

'' noted that, by the 1980s, the Berni format was starting to look dated and "By then, Berni Inns were becoming popular shorthand for naff – prawn cocktail starter, steak & chips main, Black Forest gâteau for dessert". The Berni Inn chain was sold to

Whitbread Whitbread plc is a multinational British hotel and restaurant company headquartered in Houghton Regis, England. The business was founded as a brewery in 1742, and had become the largest brewery in the world by the 1780s. Its largest division ...

in 1990 and became the Beefeater chain. In 2013, ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' reported on the bankruptcy of the Scotch Steak Houses chain earlier that year, which it cast as latter day Berni Inns. The paper wrote that "for three decades he ownerhas run restaurants where time – and quality – appeared to stand still. While his rivals sought to keep pace with consumer tastes, Ali Salih's Aberdeen, Highland and Angus steakhouses continued to serve prawn cocktail, steak and Black Forest gâteau to diners seated on velour banquettes as they quaffed

Blue Nun Blue Nun is a German wine brand launched by the company H. Sichel Söhne (Mainz) in 1923 with the 1921 vintage, and which between the 1950s and 1980s was a very popular international brand. For most of its existence, Blue Nun was a single Germ ...

In fiction

In his 1990 novel ''Titmuss Regained'', John Mortimer has Sir Willoughby mention "prawn cocktail, followed by steak and 'all the trimmings', to be topped off with a liberal helping of Black Forest gâteau".

References

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External links