The 70s has a bit of a reputation problem when it comes to food. Talk about the decade, and people immediately picture Jell-O molds, fondue sets gathering dust in garage sales, and suspending things that had no business being.
Some of it earned that reputation (like whatever was happening with aspic), but underneath those questionable experiments was a solid menu of comfort food that makes people feel something till today. Hearty stews, cocktail meatballs, casseroles with buttery mash. Food full of flavors, convenient to cook, and a way of bringing people together. There’s a reason these dishes keep coming back.
Why 70s Comfort Food Is Having a Moment
For people who grew up eating these dishes, there’s comfort in rediscovering them. It reminds one of a time when food was less complicated and more about feeling taken care of.
But it’s not just nostalgia. Food reflects the times, and right now people are gravitating toward meals that feel familiar over complicated dining. After years of elaborate tasting menus, deconstructed everything, and food that prioritizes the concept over the eating, people are returning to dishes that are simple and hearty.
What’s also changed is how these 70s dishes are now being approached. Instead of ironic recreation, there’s more focus on doing them properly. You can see this in cities like New York, where diner classics are reworked with better ingredients and modern alternatives, without losing what made them appealing in the first place.
The Dishes Worth Talking About
Bananas Foster Beignets
Bananas Foster started as a dinner-party showstopper: bananas cooked in dark rum, butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon, then flambéed and served over vanilla ice cream. It was rich and a bit theatrical, but its structure was simple: caramelized fruit and sauce with ice cream doing the contrast.
The modern beignet version builds on the same core flavors, but the structure is a bit different. Instead of pouring the sauce over ice cream, the caramelized bananas and rum sauce are paired with fried dough. The beignets have a crisp exterior and a soft interior, while cinnamon sugar and a light anglaise build out the flavor rather than relying on sweetness alone.
It works because of the balance; you get the richness of the original, but with more texture. It’s soft, saucy, and crisp all at once.
Crispy Chicken Sandwich
This 70s diner version was so straightforward; a piece of crispy chicken on a bread bun, sometimes with a bit of lettuce or pickles.
Now you’ll see additions like vinegary slaw or hot honey, but the bones of it are the same: properly fried chicken with a crunch and soft bread. The modern version brines or marinates the chicken for flavor and upgrades the bread to potato buns or brioche. Additions like pickles, slaw, and hot honey add acidity to cut through the richness. Instead of just crispy and heavy, you get crunch, softness, acidity, and spice.
Classic French Toast
French toast in its older, home-style form was often made with sliced white bread and an egg-and-milk mixture, cooked in a pan and served with syrup. It sounds simple, but French toast is easy to get wrong. Too little soak, and it stayed dry inside; too much, and it turned soggy.
The difference between a rushed version and a good one comes down to a few things: the quality of the bread (brioche holds the custard without going soggy) and the custard ratio (enough egg so it sets properly, enough cream so it doesn’t taste like an omelet). Then cinnamon sugar, spices, real maple syrup, and the patience to let it cook through. That’s the whole recipe. Cooked more slowly so that instead of tasting like eggy bread with syrup, it’s custardy in the middle with lightly crisp edges.
Country Boy Benny
Eggs Benedict is very much a 70s brunch staple, built on an English muffin with ham, poached eggs, and hollandaise sauce. Separately, biscuits and sausage gravy were already staples in American comfort cooking and often eaten as a standalone dish.
Country Boy Benny leans into both ideas. Instead of an English muffin, you get biscuits, sausage gravy, poached eggs, and usually a side of fries. A good version depends on the basics: biscuits that aren’t dry, gravy that isn’t greasy, and eggs that are properly poached. The biscuits add texture, the gravy adds flavor, and the eggs bring softness.
A lot of 70s cooking relied on convenience: canned soups, packet mixes, processed cheese. Those shortcuts were practical at the time, but they’re also why some of these dishes can feel tired if you try to recreate them exactly.
What separates a nostalgic dish that lands from one that tastes dated is usually the same thing: the foundations. A proper béchamel instead of a tin of soup. A real cheese sauce. Custard made from scratch. The point isn’t to change it into something unrecognizable, but to improve the execution while keeping the flavor profile the same.
Restaurants like Peachy Keen in New York are doing exactly this: keeping the familiarity and emotional core of these dishes but paying attention to quality and execution. Scratch-made sauces instead of condensed ones, properly cooked components instead of rushed assembly. It’s more about doing it properly than reinventing the dish.
The Verdict
The best comfort food was never really about the decade it came from. It was more about the feeling of being full and looked after. That’s why these dishes keep coming back.
While some retro dishes are better left in the past, others endure because they’re simple and well-executed, with flavors that are both satisfying and comforting. That kind of food doesn’t go out of style. The era just happened to be when a lot of them had their moment, and it might be time to give them another one.
