Chicken à la King
This creamy classic featuring chicken and mushrooms in white sauce over toast was everywhere in the 1950s and 1960s, gracing both household tables and restaurant menus with remarkable consistency. The simplicity worked in its favor back then. Let’s be real though, somewhere along the way we forgot about this one, and it doesn’t deserve that fate.
Simple favorites like chocolate milkshakes and classic fudge topped popularity lists in 2024, suggesting a broader nostalgia trend that makes this dish ripe for rediscovery. The beauty of chicken à la King lies in how diners could put their own spin on it, making each version slightly different from the last.
Salisbury Steak
This diner staple dates back to the late 1800s when Dr. James Salisbury promoted ground beef as a remedy for digestive illnesses among Civil War troops. Once considered essential menu fare, it’s now mostly relegated to frozen dinner sections. The dish had a meteoric rise and fall in popular culture, and you’d be hard pressed to find a modern diner that offers this meal.
Yet this gravy smothered patty served with mashed potatoes and vegetables represents pure comfort food at its core. Despite how easy it is to make a classic Salisbury steak, it seems destined to remain a relic of the past, though honestly, that destiny feels unfair.
Casseroles
Here’s the thing about casseroles. These simple pan dishes that freeze easily and reheat well once allowed diners to make a lot of product and serve as needed, rather than making everything fresh to order. They were smart business and genuinely delicious.
Their convenience now outweighs their desirability, and when people eat out they’re not always looking for something they can make themselves, so slowly the casserole slipped from diner menus. Tuna casserole was especially ubiquitous. By the 1980s and 1990s, diners were shifting to burgers and fries, and tuna casserole started to feel like something best left to potlucks, with its reliance on canned ingredients making it seem dated.
Croquettes
Diner cooks would shred turkey, mix it with a starchy binder, roll it into small cylinders, bread it, and fry it until golden brown, introduced during the Depression and remaining relevant during wartime years when stretching meat was a necessity. They were hearty, inexpensive, and perfectly practical. I know it sounds crazy, but these deserve another chance.
With the wide availability of other comfort foods like chicken tenders, fries, and burgers, the humble croquette simply wasn’t catching anyone’s eye and was quietly retired from diner menus. However, croquettes found a new audience through Spanish street vendors, which surely indicates there’s a potential market for them in restaurants.
Liver and Onions
For decades, liver and onions were as standard on a diner menu as meatloaf or fried chicken, cooked quickly on a flat top, affordable, and packed with iron at a time when people cared less about flavor and more about staying strong. The caramelized onions helped soften that sharp bite that not everyone appreciated.
By the time the 1970s came, America had moved on, with organ meats falling off most menus. It was a popular dish in wartime America, when harder times made people less picky about their meat cuts, but in the early 20th century it fell out of fashion as liver was abandoned in favor of milder tasting meats like chicken breast and ground beef. Still, high protein diets and high profile health coaches have started to change the tide of public opinion toward liver, getting a rebrand as the original superfood.
These dishes represent more than just food trends from decades past. They’re part of the fabric of American diner culture, each one carrying memories and stories worth preserving. What would you order if your local diner brought these back?
