Just yesterday I had a slice of Dubai chocolate cheesecake at a Mediterranean restaurant. The chef owner is Lebanese American, but in addition to Lebanese food they also serve Greek and Turkish food. I’m not sure which of those three cuisines, if any, Dubai chocolate cheesecake would fall under.
ETA. Yes, it was very good.
Yeah, Dubai chocolate is the first thing that came to mind for me. Depending on what company you keep, it’s been big for at least six months here in the US (Chicago, for me), though the TikTok videos sharing the recipe seem to go back about a year or so. But in my local supermarket, it’s just been showing up everywhere since about December. I’ve made some with the kids, it’s fun, with our homemade pistachio paste and the kataifi pastry. I hate to say it, but we made it once with Shredded Wheat instead and actually liked it a little better than the kataifi pastry, with the texture holding up a little more. Plus it’s a bit cheaper and easier to find (though now I’ve noticed even my local non-Middle Eastern grocery stocks it because of the trend.)
Pho’ is a surprisingly new dish but likely predates 1913. But you are right about báhn mì and Vietnamese baguettes, which only became widespread after Dienbienphu fell in 1954.
Ranch was invented in the 1950s, but it didn’t become known across the country until the 70s. As others have stated, the dressing choices at a restaurant were generally 3 of French, Italian, Thousand Island, or Bleu (blue?) Cheese. But when Ranch became mainstream, it took over, well, everything.
That’s really interesting… kinda the opposite phenomenon, a food that feels ancient but is actually pretty new. I never would’ve guessed!
What! Along similar lines, I thought this was one of those things you’d only hear about in antique Farmer’s Almanacs, lol. Never would’ve guessed it was a new food.
And those tiktok things do look quite tasty 
Dates back to around 1900 or so. Origins are murky and depend on folk stories / oral history.
I see quesabirria has also been mentioned (there’s tons of that stuff around here in Chicago; started showing up maybe three or four years ago? I prefer regular Jaliscan goat birria.) However, on that note: smashburger tacos. Those were viral maybe last summer? Think making a smashburger, then throwing a tortilla on top, flipping it to crisp, topping as a taco.
There’s also a current-ish trend of “egg flights.” They are essentially like a lazier deviled egg: you don’t scoop out the yolk and smash it up with your other ingredients to refill the egg hollow. Instead, the egg is simply halved and presented with various interesting toppings.
Didn’t realize it was that old. I mentioned it since Big Mac sauce is thought by many to be (almost identical to) thousand island dressing. Most experts say Big Mac sauce has slightly more pickle as well as added mustard. If making a Big Macs at home it is good enough.
Spinach salad with hot bacon dressing! Hadn’t seen or even really thought of that since I graduated from college, and left the restaurant that sometimes served it on banquet menus.
I’ve heard that guacamole was available in McDonald’s in the southwestern U.S. at least since the 1970s. It was called Mac-a-mole.
Kale is something that’s seen an uptick in popularity in recent years, that’s for sure.
The latest thing, in my area of the upper Midwest anyway, is Dubai chocolate, which is a chocolate bar with a pistachio filling. I have yet to see any for sale that doesn’t cost a small fortune (i.e. $30 for a half-pound bar).
I can’t remember the last time I saw this on on menu. Seemed common in 70s/80s. I kinda miss it too. It is yummy.
I’m thinking we need to start a restaurant of the 70s greatest. When I was in Georgia a few years ago I went to a restaurant that had Salisbury Steak on the menu. It was amazingly awesomely good! (waaaay better the the Swanson’s shit…and I liked the Swanson’s shit…I grew up on that shit)
This depends where you lived. Dedicated coffehouses are almost as old as coffee itself. What’s newer is espresso-based coffee.
I know that as a kid in the 1970’s that is the only way my late mother (not a notably talented cook) prepared them. I thought they smelled mildly of cat piss and tasted worse. Fucking loathed them.
Turn the clock to thirty years later and they become one of my favorite veggies, joining most everything else cruciferous.
The U.S. was pretty grim for a very long time. After moving to CA from NYC my father became an early convert to Peet’s in it’s formative years when it had a single location. Before that was jars of freeze-dried coffee and drip from Dunkin Donuts. Outside of a few neighborhoods the quality coffee revolution mostly arrived to these shores late.
Oh, it was probably worse in South Africa, for longer. But this thread specifically isn’t about regional novelty, I thought.
Well, novel to Americans since the 1970s.
Of course “Americans” encompasses well-off folks in trendy foodie cities, working class folks in ethnically diverse areas, and rural poor in Nowheresville, Agrostate. And lots more possibilities as well.
The future is here, but unevenly distributed. Money is here too, but even more unevenly distributed.
The advent of the WWW means that widespread awareness, if not local availability, of current food trends like Dubai chocolate happens quickly. Not so much so before, say, 2000.
But it’s still the case that much of the landmass of the USA is a total food desert, or at least foodie desert, compared to the best of the big cities.
Judging by old b&w street scenes, chop suey restaurants were all over the place for a while. Seems like they were usually upstairs, so cheaper rent made them the Subways of their day.
Chilean Sea Bass seemed to rise out of nowhere to become quite popular a few years ago. The original name is Patagonian toothfish which was rebranded to make it more attractive to potential customers.
Not to be confused with European Sea Bass, which is a completely different species.
We only discovered this when we moved back to the UK some years ago.
To be honest, we prefer the European variety…
Sriracha sauce was invented in the 1930s in Thailand. The popular Huy Fong sriracha (rooster sauce) was created in 1980 in California and became ubiquitous in the US around 2010. Now there are lots of competitors.
I understand that. I remember reading about coffee houses causing problems for kings in Europe during the 18th century when I was in high school. (To clarify, I was not in high school in the 18th century.) In 1990, coffee houses weren’t ubiquitous in Dallas, Little Rock, or Colorado Springs. When most Americans drank coffee, they got it from a freeze dried drip from home, or maybe McDonald’s, or whatever the company provided at the office. These days even Little Rock has dedicated coffee places everywhere with a myriad of options unavailable to most Americans in 1990.