Your birth year in food
Food types have been around forever. What did your parents eat in your birth year? The American website Delish has listed it for you from 1970 onward. And Marjan Ippel highlights the Dutch situation. Because well into this millennium, North America was miles ahead of our country food(hype)wise, but thanks to the internet, that’s no longer the case.
Let’s start with the birth year 1970: quiche (see photo above). This savory pie made with puff or shortcrust pastry, crème fraîche, eggs and bacon bits originated in the northeastern French region of Lorraine (quiche lorraine) and only became a hit here in the 1980s. Back then, translating North American food trends to our polders took between five and ten years—even when they came to us from ‘nearby.’
Croissant
In the birth year 1973, Swiss cheese fondue took off in the States and more or less simultaneously here too. But the granola that broke through in the US in 1974 thanks to the then newly published The Granola Cookbook remained in the waiting room here well into the new millennium. Although, we had been eating muesli since the nineties. But not homemade, nor with blueberries & co. With the croissant (1978) from France—at the time the most popular holiday destination for the Dutch—we were more or less keeping pace with America.
The North American eighties kicked off with New Zealand kiwis (1981). And we were reasonably quick to catch on to those too. But sushi (1988) took longer to travel here from Japan, arriving sometime in the nineties.
Tiramisu
Tiramisu arrived in the USA from Italy in 1990. We can proudly say that this dessert was already almost past its peak here by then. Coffee chain Starbucks (founded in 1974) took off across the ocean in 1992, but the first one here did not open until 2007 at Schiphol. The new millennium kicked off in the States with smoothies, after closing out 1999 with the Cosmopolitan cocktail. Thanks to the television series Sex and the city.
‘The Nullies: organic and local, but also cupcakes and froyo.’
The first ten years of this century (the Nullies) were dominated by organic, low-fat and local food both here and there. But also by cupcakes (2005) and froyo (frozen yoghurt, 2006, slightly later here). In 2008, David Chang brought ramen noodles over from New York. But it took until 2017 for an explosion of ramen restaurants to take place here. 2009 was the starting year of the worldwide bacon craze.
Food truck
The current decade began in LA with the food truck, which at the time was still illegally stationed on the streets. That’s why the trucks shared their coordinates via Twitter. See also the feature film Chef. 2012 was the year of kale. Even Michelle Obama planted kale in her White House vegetable garden. The cronut, the love child of the croissant and the doughnut, was invented in 2013 by French-New York pastry chef Dominique Ansel. This decade also brought quinoa (2014) and avocado toast (2015). By now, thanks to the internet, they have reached the Netherlands with little delay too.
The last year highlighted by Delish is 2016, dominated by viral foods—hypes that went, and continue to go, viral worldwide thanks to social media. Such as the freakshake from 2017. And bowl foods. Food for psychologists: What does the food from your birth year say about you? Are you a smoothie type—or more of a sushi type?
