16 Iconic '90s Recipes For Your Next Old School Dinner Party

So, you're thinking about having a 1990s dinner party. Great! We have some ideas for you. There are plenty of iconic 1990s dishes that come to mind. However, something we noticed about dishes we remember working moms whipping up in a hurry like Hamburger Helper or that latchkey kids heating up after school like Hot Pockets all had their origins in the decades before the 1990s. Finding party-worthy dishes that had firm ties mainly to the '90s is a little more challenging.

Some of the food of the decade was influenced by pop culture and politics of the time. Plus, there was a move toward world fusion cuisine. Looking at our list, we see a few themes emerging that could lead you in a more Asian, Italian, or Mexican-inspired direction for your menu. The 16 items on our list are ones that you can mix or match for your 1990s dinner party menu, making them yourself or assigning some to your guests.

For your 1990s old school dinner party, you're going to want to start with a few drinks. One of the most iconic cocktails of the 1990s is the Cosmopolitan. An early version of the Cosmopolitan shows up in cocktail book all the way back in 1927. However, the version we know today first showed up in a Miami bar in the late 1980s, with the television show "Sex and the City" propelling it to fame in the late 1990s. It was instantly sexy, glamourous, and the drink you ordered when out with your gal pals.

The drink is easy to make with just a few ingredients. It starts with regular or citrus-flavored vodka, and gets splashes of Cointreau, cranberry juice, and lime juice. Fancy it up with a twist of orange peel, and you'll start feeling like you've got one foot in the 1990s. This drink should pair well with anything else on our list.

Recipe: Classic Cosmopolitan Cocktail

For a non-alcoholic beverage option, frozen mint lemonade is a good choice, especially for a summer party. This drink actually got its start in either Syria or Turkey. However, under the name Limonana, it gained popularity in Israel in the 1990s. It has managed to gain popularity over the years in areas of the U.S. and Canada with the Israeli Aroma coffee chain. So, making it for your party is really a callback to 1990s Israeli summers.

You start out making a lemon mint simple syrup. Once the flavored simple syrup is cooled and strained, you'll add water, ice, more fresh mint, and lemon juice to the blender. For an alcoholic version, add gin or vodka. Then, whizz until smooth and top it with even more mint. As you can imagine with all that mint, the resulting frozen lemonade is a lovely bright green. Serve it as a hint of what's to come for a menu that includes other green items like spinach dip or pesto pasta.

Recipe: Frozen Mint Lemonade

Moving on to appetizers, many people were getting their first taste of spinach dip in the '90s. While the dish might have been a little suspicious at first, once people realized you could barely taste the healthy spinach for all the cheese, it became a favorite to be made for dinner parties and ordered at restaurants, sometimes with artichokes added into the spinach as well. Making spinach dip was even easier since Knorr Vegetable Recipe Mix included the recipe on the package.

The authentic Knorr recipe calls for cooked spinach, sour cream, Knorr mix, water chestnuts, and green onions. However, we like the idea of a hot dip fresh from the oven, made from scratch with sour cream, cream cheese, spinach, Parmesan cheese, and mozzarella cheese, along with a few spices. If you're also serving guacamole, you might opt to have this as a second dip for your tortilla chips.

Recipe: Creamy Spinach Dip

If you're trying to think back to when you tried your first jalapeño popper, it was likely the 1990s. Perhaps you had your first one in a restaurant or someone made them for a Super Bowl party. Granted, their inspiration, chiles rellenos (stuffed chilis), have been around since the 1800s or earlier, with canned and Americanized fusion versions popping up in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the term "jalapeño popper" wasn't trademarked until 1992. Then, they started showing up on menus in places like TGI Friday's and Applebee's by the middle of the decade, making them ever more popular.

Some of the easiest jalapeño poppers to make are halved and hollowed rather than stuffed. Simply fill them with a mixture of cream cheese, shredded cheese, and crumbled cooked bacon, a few seasonings, and chopped chives. Then, you can broil them in the oven or even finish them on the grill if the rest of your dinner party involves grilling other items on our list like hangar steak.

Recipe: Broiled Jalapeño Poppers

Guacamole now seems like such a common part of the Mexican restaurant dining experience that you likely forgot the first time you gave it a try. However, it was possibly the 1990s. Avocados rode into the U.S. from Mexico on the coattails of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. It was a while before we started making avocado toast and instead started enjoying lots of guacamole when we could suddenly get avocados year round. So, you'll want to have some for your dinner party to accompany a few other Mexican-inspired dishes on our list like fajitas. Just don't forget the tortilla chips!

There are lots of variations on guacamole, but they all start with ripe avocados. Then, you add diced tomatoes, garlic, cilantro, and a squeeze of lime. Some people take it to the next step with ingredients like chopped onions, fresh jalapeños, and spices with a pinch of sea salt.

Recipe: Crave Worthy Guacamole

Back in the '90s, it seemed that a potluck was never complete without someone bringing a Chinese chicken salad. It even showed up on some restaurant menus back then, too. This Asian fusion dish was likely popular because it was fairly easy to put together, and widely appealing because of all the crave-worthy flavors and textures.

It starts with cooked shredded chicken mixed with fresh shredded and grated veggies like cabbage and carrots. Then, there are crunchy toppings like sliced almonds, peanuts, or cashews along with dry crumbled ramen noodles or dry chow mein noodles. And the salad isn't complete without a tangy dressing made from ingredients like sesame oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, and ginger. The salad has evolved over the years as various ingredients have become more widely available. For example, a modern twist might include adding edamame and cilantro, or you might serve the chicken on the side to make it an option for vegetarian guests. This would work well with other Asian-inspired dishes on our list like tuna tartare.

Recipe: Crunchy Ramen Noodle Salad

If you have a good source for sushi-grade tuna, you might consider adding tuna tartare to your '90s dinner party lineup. A Japanese chef in California used his French cuisine training in the 1980s to create this French-Japanese fusion dish, which was wildly popular in the 1990s. Thus, it would be a great fusion addition for your party. 

This is another dish that has a variety of options for how to make it. Like beef tartare, tuna tartare starts with raw meat. In this case, the meat is sushi-grade tuna. It gets its flavor from a combination of soy sauce, oils like sesame oil, and sometimes rice vinegar and mirin as well. If you want to go in a spicy direction, you could add garlic, ginger, and Sriracha. Tuna tartare may contain crushed pieces of potato chips, can get a fresh fruit twist when combined with diced avocado and sometimes even pineapple. A sprinkling of sesame seeds adds extra texture and flavor.

Recipe: Tuna Tartare

Many moms of the 1990s were back in the workforce and not making a whole lot of bread from scratch without a bread machine. However, focaccia did become popular in the U.S. that decade, probably at least partially because there are some super simple recipes that are more fun than work and don't require kneading. The fact that it's an easy bread to make means it won't cut into too much of your prep time if you want to make it for your party.

You do have to prepare ahead since it requires several steps and a bit of time to become bread. You can either put the yeasty dough in the refrigerator the night before or leave it out on the counter for 4 hours before the next step. Then, you'll stretch the dough out in your pan, poke it down with your fingers to coat it in olive oil, and let it sit for half an hour. Finally, you'll stretch it and poke it again and let rise another hour or two before topping with garlic, herbs, or veggies, and baking for half an hour. This easily pairs with the Italian-inspired pastas on our list.

Recipe: Roasted Garlic Focaccia

Fajitas got their start in Texas in the 1960s, but they didn't really come into their own until a few decades later. Along with guacamole, fajitas started to become a more common menu item at chain Mexican restaurants like On the Border and Chili's in the 1990s. Those sizzling and smoking skillets coming to your table from the kitchen made you feel like the king or queen of the table, and they still feel special. If you're already firing up the grill for some of the other menu items for your party, it's the perfect place to make scrumptious fajitas as one of your main dishes.

You can make some really great fajitas by marinating strips of your favorite meat in lime juice, olive oil, and Tex-Mex spices. Then cook them on the grill or a hot skillet on the stovetop along with thin slices of onions and bell peppers. And don't forget all the fixings. Guacamole from our list we is a nice accompaniment. Guests will also enjoy tortillas to use as the vehicle to get all the fajita meat and veggies to their mouths. Plus, you might want to include fresh tomatoes, shredded lettuce, and salsa.

Recipe: Spicy Chicken Fajitas

Speaking of salsa, one of the dishes from the 1990s you might want to bring back for your dinner party is blackened fish with mango salsa. Alternative salsas made with fruits like mango, papaya, and peaches were all the rage in the 1990s. Celebrity chef Richard Blais really wants to see them make a comeback with the grilled and blackened fish that were popular in the 1990s. In a menu full of fried foods, blackened fish with mango salsa beckoned us to try it, especially on a hot summer day. So, if you're grilling for your dinner party, this might be a good option to go along with dishes like hangar steak.

There are lots of things that make this grilled fish dish great. The first is to have a highly-spiced seasoning mix coating your grilled fish. You'll want spices like paprika (or smoked paprika if not using the grill), garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, cumin, cayenne pepper, salt, and black pepper. You could go with ordinary fish like tilapia, but fish like tuna and mahi-mahi are even better. And then, you want a flavorful fresh salsa that substitutes fruits like mango and even blueberries for the tomatoes and includes other ingredients like your favorite chopped peppers, red onion, cilantro, and lime juice.

Recipe: Blackened Pan-Seared Tilapia With Mango Salsa

In the 1990s, we learned to embrace one of the most inexpensive cuts of steak: hangar steak. It offered a cheaper alternative on restaurant menus without sacrificing flavor. Unfortunately, that popularity has jacked up the price so that it's no longer as cheap relative to higher-end cuts.

With your grill already fired up for fajitas or fish, you might as well go ahead and add some hangar steaks as well. The key to making great hangar steaks is to marinate them for a couple of hours. One of the simplest marinades from back in the day is a mixture of balsamic vinegar, water, olive oil, and Italian seasoning mix. After marinating, grill the steaks on high heat to between 125 and 130 degrees Fahrenheit to avoid them being too mushy or chewy, and let them finish the cooking process off the grill. You also have to slice against the grain to make them easier to chew.

Recipe: Grilled Hangar Steak

Pesto suddenly became a thing in the U.S. the 1990s, which is why we think you need some for your '90s party. We remember our first taste of it being on a chicken and pesto pizza from Schlotzky's, but many food lovers in Italy were eating it even before the 1890s since it first showed up in a cookbook there in 1863. There are plenty of ways to enjoy pesto, but a classic pesto pasta dish is a great option if you're wanting to reintroduce a taste of the '90s to your guests.

There are lots of iterations of pesto, but the one that was popular in the '90s was a Genovese style one, which features a bright green mixture of fresh basil, Parmigiano Reggiano, good olive oil, fresh garlic, and pine nuts. To make pesto pasta, you'll want to toss it with a pasta that has a lot of surface area and crevices to hold onto the sauce well, like fusilli, farfalle, rotini, or radiatore (our favorite). We also like the idea of serving this with focaccia.

Recipe: Classic Basil Pesto Pasta

Like pesto, sun-dried tomatoes came on the scene in a big way in the '90s. We couldn't get enough of the slight musky tartness that sun-dried tomatoes added to our favorite dishes, especially Italian ones. Sun-dried tomatoes were starting to appear in specialty shops in the 1980s in the U.S. but they started to become easier to find at regular grocery stores by the 1990s. We fondly remember them in dips, crackers, and pasta from that era.

We like the idea of making a sun-dried tomato pasta that combines both basil pesto and sun-dried tomatoes. Even with the strong flavor of pesto, sun-dried tomatoes are still the star. You can start with jarred or homemade pesto, but you'll want to blend sun-dried tomatoes into the pesto with a blender or food processor. Adding lemon juice can add extra brightness to the dish that isn't present in a regular pesto pasta. Plus, you'll want to add fresh basil and sun-dried tomatoes on top. You could even serve it alongside a regular pesto pasta for contrast.

Recipe: Sun-dried Tomato Pesto Pasta

Dunkaroos wooed many cookie lovers in the 1990s with its deconstructed sandwich cookies that came in a double container with plain cookies on one side and a tub of cookie filling on the other side. They made a comeback as a bright light of nostalgia during our first COVID-19 quarantine year in 2020. Nostalgia is always a hit, which is why you might consider making a homemade version for your party.

Basically, you just need to make a set of hard cinnamon and brown sugar cookies alongside frosting for dipping. If you happen to have some small cookie cutters that never get used, this is the time for them to finally come out of the cupboard. Add some rainbow sprinkles to the frosting, and suddenly everyone's a kid again. If you don't want everyone double-dipping, you might think about making everyone their own container of frosting though.

Recipe: Homemade Dunkaroos

If your 1990s dinner party is a fancy one, with dishes like tuna tartare, you have to complete it with a fancy dessert like crème brûlée. A chef at the Palace of Versailles published a recipe for this amazing dish all the way back in 1691. However, if you were to travel back in time to the 1990s, it would be a dish you'd expect to find on fancy dinner menus. Your waiter might even bring a butane torch to your table to harden the top before your very eyes. You, too, can turn this dessert into a showpiece with oohs and ahs from your dinner guests with a culinary butane torch demonstration.

Despite its seeming fancy, you only need 10 minutes of prep time to create the custard portion of the crème brûlée. The ingredient list is also short since all you need is heavy cream, vanilla, eggs, and sugar. This dessert works as a large size, but it's more impressive if each guest gets their own private crème brûlée ramekin.

Recipe: Classic Crème Brûlée

Another showpiece dessert that makes a fun option for an old school 1990s dinner party is molten lava cake. Chef Jean-George Vongerichten is credited with creating the very first chocolate lava cake in the 1990s, and it's continued to be just as satisfying to eat every time.

The great thing about this dessert is that it doesn't have separate steps to make the cake and the lava. You simply make the batter and the cake separate as it bakes into its lava-filled form. Like the other desserts on our list, this one is best enjoyed in individual serving portions so that each guest can make their own chocolate lava flow from their cake. For a snow-covered seemingly-dormant volcano with a surprise inside, sprinkle powdered sugar on the outside. You might also consider serving these with fresh berries like strawberries or raspberries.

Recipe: Miso Chocolate Lava Cake