What ‘foreign food’ do you remember as a child?

Bazza
There was still rationing when I was a child.
No oranges, lemons or bananas at first after WW2, so they were quite exotic when they came into the shops.

Like Monica I lived in the far east as a child but our cook only served us British food.
Back in England my mother cooked spagetti, which was pretty exotic! The sauce was Cambell’s condensed tomato soup and about a pound of grated cheddar was stirred in.

Callistemon21

Marmin

I remember olive oil came in small bottles from the chemist. It was used medicinally, certainly not to cook with.

It was warmed and poured down your ear, then a plug of cotton wool pushed in!

That is not entirely true.

Boots started as a hebalist and well into the 1970s had a food section selling herbs, spices, diabetic, gluten free and other special diet food and that is where the olive oil was. That Boots customers were so ignorant that all they used it for was softening wax in their ears, was their problem. Boots sold it in the food section.

When we returned from service abroad, my mother used to go into Boots to buy paprika and curry powder and some other curry spices.

Having been brought up in a Third World country without refrigeration, things like baked beans, fresh (as opposed to powdered) milk, bacon, etc., were incredibly sophisticated!

Grandmabatty’s post reminded me of how exotic pineapple was back in the 50s. Hula hoops and Hawaii 5-0 were all the rage. Very occasionally Mum would buy a pineapple from the market. I suppose that was really my first taste of ‘foreign food’, along with bananas and, at Christmas, tangerines, dates and Turkish Delight. Before the Vesta delights arrived.

A couple of years ago I met up with an old grammar school friend and she laughed like mad when I recalled staying round her house and having boil in the bag paella which was really exotic to me!

My parents never ate or served us kids anything remotely foreign when I was growing up in the 60s/70s.
I'm not sure that there were any takeaways available locally anyway other than fish and chips for most of that time , not that Mum and Dad would have dreamed of eating curry-type meals even if they had been readily available.

Actually, that's not 100% true - I've just remembered that in the 70s my dad would sometimes have a Vesta beef curry if my mum was out for an evening. That was as foreign as it ever got in our house back then. 😂

The first 'foreign' food I ate was pizza, and that wasn't until 1978, when my boyfriend dragged a rather reluctant me into a pizzeria!

How things have changed.

Curry, with apple and sultanas. No garlic or herbs ever used.

Cooked red cabbage and meat balls ( exotic at the time)

My mother was a poor and resentful cook, she had a cupboard full of Colmans mixes, she used to make Boeuf Bourguignon, when she announced it she would always lower her voice a few octaves and try a French accent, it used to irritate the life out of me!

We didn’t have any interesting food , there was a garlic salt mill and a packet of Lyon’s curry powder in the cupboard in about 1973, I think they were still there when I cleared the house.

I learnt to cook with the help of the wonderful Delia Smith, not many foreign recipes but once I mastered the everyday stuff I got into more exotic dishes.

I now probably cook more foreign food than traditional, particularly in the summer.

Same here

Kiwis

My paternal grandparents met in France pre WW1, so they were used to a Southern Mediterranean diet and grandfather emanated from Malta anyway, so when they married and settled in London after the war they shopped for food amongst the Italian community. Garlic, olive oil, olives, aioli, spaghetti in long blue packets were considered quite unusual then, not anymore of course, but they were standard fare in our house, my dad's speciality was dressed crab, which we at Sunday tea time. I remember going to my grandparents house as a child and thinking how nice it was that granddad had so many pet rabbits until I found out!

My maternal grandmother was half English and half Irish and granddad on that side was half English and half French (Jewish) but we didn't know that then we just knew he wasn't a catholic like the rest of us!. I remember staying with them as a child when they moved to the Sussex coast and loved the food we had, very different from the other side far more traditional and English lots of home made scones, cakes, steamed sponges and they always made us cloudy lemonade, it was a contrast from what we ate with the other side of the family. My father was really a Francophile, his sister, my aunt having married a French man, both my parents liked it over there. I remember my father commenting negatively about English food, their idea of seasoning is an Oxo cube or the English can only cook one thing, roast beef and they still manage to ruin it, he didn't want his bien cuit or with soggy veg! He liked a moan, my father

There were no exotic restaurants or food sellers when I grew up in the 40 s / 50 s
Loved Vesta when I moved away from home and then lots of West Indian cooking After moving to the Far East Malaysian, Indian and Chinese by the time I came back to UK there were Chinese and Indian restaurants

Marmin

I remember olive oil came in small bottles from the chemist. It was used medicinally, certainly not to cook with.

It was warmed and poured down your ear, then a plug of cotton wool pushed in!

I remember olive oil came in small bottles from the chemist. It was used medicinally, certainly not to cook with.

A Chinese restaurant opened in our town when I was in my late teens. The food was excellent.

We lived in central London until I was 12, I remember Indian, Chinese, Italian & French restaurants and trying most things.

My dad worked in marine insurance for a Greek company based in the city of London . We were frequently taken to Greek restaurants in London where they did the plate smashing .
Otherwise it was a Chinese restaurant near where we lived . I was fascinated by the lazy Susan and the heated things with tea lights .

Grandma70s

Callistemon21, when I was a small child in wartime my mother tried to make me eat rabbit. I think perhaps it was unrationed. I wouldn’t eat it. I had read too much Beatrix Potter! Anyway it has a very strange, strong flavour.

My mother used to cook rabbit but I don't remember eating it, perhaps I was too young. Then along came myxomatosis and she never touched it again.
I did have a pet rabbit.

Ailidh

Vesta Chow Mein!!

Same here Ailidh so exotic

My meals as a child were very plain - meat and veg, egg and chips etc.

Like a few of you my first "curry" was Vesta. We had no takeaways where I lived that sold anything other than fish and chips, faggots and chips and the like.

Saturday night we always had faggots, peas chips and gravy from the local chippy.

I had an Italian aunt who lived on the same street. I wasn't keen on mum's early 50's ration food so ran up the street and sat down with the minestrone and parmesan which I grated for her and put in a fancy holder. She was a fantastic cook my love of Italian food lives on.
The two fish and chip shops were owned by Spanish couples maybe the batter was different? The coffee bars were all Italian. I can remember cappucinos and semifredos.

Hawaiian mince. Mum experimented in the 60s. It was mince with added tomato paste and pineapple chunks. It was vile

Yoghurt was delivered by the milkman in the late 50s in glass jars. Just plain and strawberry . My Italian aunt cooked spaghetti bolognaise for us again in the late 50s. What fun eating the spaghetti.
A friend's French mother used to eat very very ripe Camembert. Yuk. Love it now.
Vesta curries and Nicholas wine anyone?