From chardonnay to Cheestrings: The 1990s food and drink that’s back in fashion
It was the decade that brought us the Spice Girls and Oasis, Tracey Emin and her bed, supermodels and David Beckham, City boom years, and the “Rachel from Friends” haircut. It also introduced us to Bridget.
Fans of the original Bridget Jones’s Diary film sympathised as the hapless heroine endured familial Boxing Day turkey curry, winced as she served blue soup to friends, and sang along with her to Chaka Khan’s I’m Every Woman as she spooned muesli from the carton and drank vodka in her Borough Market flat. (You too can eat in that space: Bridget’s flat is now home to Thai restaurant, Khao Bird.) Just as the sequel, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, lands in cinemas, it seems our interest in this maximal decade has been renewed – starting with its food and drink.
“For much of the 90s, it was a procession of the Next Big Thing as people discovered a new cuisine or fusion [of cuisines],” says Phil Harriss, then deputy editor of Time Out London Eating & Drinking Guide.
From fusion to modern British
Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten championed the fledgling notion of fusion at his Berkeley hotel restaurant, Vong, where sautéed foie gras with ginger and mango was an early hit. Glamorous Chutney Mary, then on the King’s Road (now relocated to St James’s), served pan-Indian food that was a world away from familiar curry house fare. The art crowd flocked to St John, Fergus Henderson’s Smithfield restaurant, for bone marrow and parsley salad. “It was all so exciting,” recalls restaurant PR Maureen Mills. Alastair Little, Rowley Leigh and Simon Hopkinson lent their weight to the concept of modern British cooking, and The Eagle in Farringdon introduced the idea that pubs could be more than boozers – gastronomic even – and we never looked back.
Big personalities
The words “celebrity” and “chef” were joined up for the first time, nowhere more visibly than with Marco Pierre White, who dominated in the early 1990s, giving rise to emergent chefs including Gordon Ramsay, Jason Atherton and Phil Howard. Their spats and stories regularly spilled from the kitchen into the papers – remember the “theft” of the reservation book from Ramsay’s Aubergine restaurant? – and were lapped up as hungrily as their mushroom cappuccino amuse-bouches.
The face of dining out
And then there was Sir Terence Conran, the designer-restaurateur behind London’s 1990s-defining restaurants such as Le Pont de la Tour, Bibendum, and the revived Quaglino’s. “You can’t overstate his impact,” says chef Chris Galvin who runs restaurants including Galvin La Chapelle near Liverpool Street with his brother Jeff. Galvin spent 10 years with Conran, opening the 700-cover Mezzo gastrodome in Soho with chef John Torode (1995), and Orrery in Marylebone (1997). “I once asked [Conran] how he did it. He said ‘I travel, I eat in the best places, I collect the best parts and I lay them out’. His restaurants were things of beauty.”
Even the BBC took note when Conran relaunched Quaglino’s in 1993. Peter Harden who launched Harden’s Restaurant Guide with his brother Richard in 1991 says: “They interviewed me – it was that exciting – wanted to know if I thought people would really eat there. Until the 90s, the idea that young people could spend money on eating out was unheard of.” Suffice to say people did and pocketing a Conran-designed Quaglino ashtray became a thing.
Beyond London
The buzz wasn’t just around the capital. “There was a lot more happening outside London, actually,” says food writer Matthew Fort. “Paul Heathcote was cooking in the most unlikely village in Lancashire [he won a second Michelin star for his Longridge restaurant – now closed – in 1994]. There was Shaun Hill [The Merchant House, Ludlow], Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons who trained chefs like Paul [Heathcote] and Marco, and Heston Blumenthal who literally changed the face of restaurant cooking.” Blumenthal’s Fat Duck restaurant in Bray opened in August 1995 and celebrates its 30th birthday later this year.
At Manchester’s Mash & Air, Oliver Peyton’s bar-restaurant with microbrewery, the Spice Girls and Manchester United footballers were regulars, and the food was that of a youthful Atherton, then in his first head chef role. “It electrified the 90s scene here,” says food writer Clarissa Hyman. “Many people were horrified at the thought of eating in a post-industrial warehouse with exposed pipes and no tablecloths. Going there felt adventurous.”
The revolution will be televised
The media fanned the 90s’ flames. MasterChef, first broadcast in 1990 with Loyd Grossman hosting, now has an estimated global audience of one billion. In 1995, Rick Stein’s first food-travel series, The Taste of the Sea, had us longing to be wherever he was pan-frying mackerel or hosting a clambake. Gary Rhodes championed simplicity and British food on Rhodes Around Britain, and the decade ended with a fresh-faced Jamie Oliver sliding down a spiral staircase as The Naked Chef, showing cooking as cool, easy, fun and sociable.
Supermarkets would hang on chefs’ and presenters’ every word, says Waitrose buyer Andrea Watson. “I remember the ‘Delia effect’ and buyers watching the TV guides so we could buy enough to meet demand.” Cranberries famously flew off shelves after Delia paired them with duck rillettes in 1995.
Restaurant food at home
At home? Dinner parties were in. Some may have been Bridget-like, others more palatable. “We pretended we were doing restaurant food,” says Telegraph food columnist Xanthe Clay, “so we’d make individual smoked salmon terrines and put food on huge plates.” Delia Smith’s Summer Collection, the cook’s 1993 blockbuster, was the game changer: “Before, cookbooks had a picture of the author or some food on the cover, but this had a sunflower. It was the first to suggest ‘lifestyle’. Delia taught us to roast vegetables and mix them with couscous. Suddenly we were cooking with pesto and goat’s cheese, we could buy crème fraîche and fresh herbs. That book was astonishingly influential, it really did shift the dial.”
The 1990s food and drink that’s back in fashion
Chardonnay
As Bridget demonstrated by the bucketload, chardonnay fuelled the 1990s, and the bolder and butterier the better. Oaky Australian and Californian chardonnay fell out of fashion as leaner styles took hold but are making a comeback. Telegraph wine columnist, Victoria Moore, wrote in December that “with uncanny timing, [Bridget’s] favourite drink is having a moment,” noting that UK sales of oaky white wines from Bread & Butter in California are up 28 per cent.
Balsamic vinegar
“It has done wonders for the modern cookery repertoire,” wrote Delia, introducing a recipe for balsamic vinaigrette dressing in her Summer Collection. The nation took note and drizzled with abandon, splashing it on countless mozzarella, rocket and tomato salads, while in 1990s gastropubs it cut a glossy dash as a glaze next to steak and chips and made early appearances on desserts.
“I remember going to The Three Horseshoes in Cambridge and having strawberries with balsamic and black pepper,” says food writer Hilary Armstrong. “It blew our minds!” Overuse and cheap imitations hit sales, but balsamic is back. Searches on Ocado are up across the board, including a 58 per cent rise for the 10-year aged Filippo Berio Gran Cru balsamic vinegar. Meri La Bella, oils, vinegars and sauces buyer at Ocado, puts the lift down to the ongoing popularity of antipasti and mezze dishes typical of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisine.
Sun-dried tomatoes
Sun-dried tomatoes were used liberally in the 1990s. Jamie was a fan: in The Naked Chef, he cooks them with chilli, garlic, olives and white wine before folding through seared red mullet and taglierini. A victim of their own success, they slipped out of favour, but figures from online supermarket Ocado suggest they’re back in vogue – and that we’re buying premium styles. Searches for sun-dried tomatoes on the Ocado website increased 45 per cent in the year to 4 February, and by 67 per cent for organic types.
Cheestrings and other snacks
“My daughter was obsessed with Cheestrings, which was a source of enormous distress,” recalls Matthew Fort. She wasn’t alone: the 1990s lunchbox staple was adored by millions, and as those 90s kids become parents themselves the nostalgia is powering back. The pizza flavour, axed in 2008, returned in 2024. “We’re seeing younger consumers embracing 90s snacking classics such as Discos, NikNaks, and Club biscuit bars,” says Zoe Simons, senior brand development chef at Waitrose, referencing the power of “retro appeal”.
The Pret sandwich
Even sandwiches got a 1990s glow-up. Pret A Manger – Pret to its fans – had a rocky start in 1980s north London, but captured the desk-lunching zeitgeist and surged in popularity through the 90s.
“Pret was radical,” says Matthew Fort. “Until it came along, the sandwiches people ate at their desks were from the caff round the corner and were, let’s say, of variable quality. Pret made them consistent.” Crayfish and rocket on malted bread became the go-to for many and was back on the menu by popular demand in 2023.
Viennetta
Viennetta was a 1980s creation, but the popularity of the rippling frozen dessert with its crunchy chocolate layer rocketed through the 1990s. “It was a treat as a kid, it always seemed so posh,” says chef Tom Cenci, who serves a reimagined version at his Italian restaurant, Nessa, in Soho. “We’ve updated it with a gooey dark chocolate sponge, different flavours of ice cream and finish it with whipped cream and chocolate.” He plays with the nostalgia by bringing it to the table in a branded box.
Tiramisu
Nigella rather damned traditional tiramisu as “that Black Forest gateau of the 1990s” in her 1998 cookbook How To Eat. The marsala-infused Italian dessert has stayed the course, though. Tiramisu is a fixture on Angela Hartnett’s Café Murano menu, and the final serving at Manchester hotspot Skof.
Onda, a fresh pasta bar in Manchester grabbed attention last year with its under-the-counter tiramisu drawer. “We hadn’t seen anyone else do it before,” says founder Patrick Brown. “It was born of necessity and a small kitchen.” It makes serving around 500 portions a week easier, the team scooping through a drawerful in three hours.
Chocolate fondants
“Molten chocolate puddings were a 1990s classic,” says Xanthe Clay. In How To Eat Nigella encouraged us to make “gooey chocolate puddings” on those occasions when you get in from work at 7pm and have people for dinner at 8pm. They’re still a go-to: searches for a fondant recipe on Waitrose’s website are up over 80 per cent in the past three months compared with the previous three.
