Meals that were basically a reward system growing up
Every family had its own version of the hierarchy. Weeknight meals simply appeared, reliable and unremarkable, the kind of food that existed because someone had to make something. Then there were the other meals, the ones attached to a report card, a good week, or the simple fact that it was Friday.
The emotional logic was the same everywhere. Certain meals meant something had been earned, or at least that the ordinary week was being officially set aside.
Here are five of them.
Image Credit: RiverNorthPhotography/istockphoto.
Pizza night
Pizza occupied a specific position in the 1970s and 1980s domestic hierarchy that it has never quite recovered from. It arrived on Friday or Saturday, from a chain with a red roof, a local parlor, or a Chef Boyardee box that required making the dough yourself. Pizza Hut’s cultural peak came in the 1980s, when it celebrated the opening of its 5,000th restaurant. For the families who ate there, it was not a chain. It was the destination.
Image Credit: McDonald’s
The Happy Meal
McDonald’s introduced the Happy Meal in June 1979, and within a short time, it had become one of the most effective pieces of marketing in fast food history. The box, the toy, the child-scaled portions: every element was engineered to signal that something special was happening. For most families, it was not a weeknight meal. It was what you got when a dentist appointment was survived without crying, or someone decided the week had been good enough for a drive-through detour.
Image Credit: DepositPhotos.com.
Red Lobster
Red Lobster was founded in 1968 and by the 1980s had become the aspirational dining destination for middle-class families who wanted a meal that felt like an occasion. Wait times could run to two hours. People waited. Red Lobster understood that seafood was not an everyday proposition for most inland families. Going there meant someone was being celebrated, or that the family had collectively decided to act as though they were.
Image credit: Public domain / Wikipedia
Sizzler
Founded in Culver City, California, in 1958, Sizzler was built on the premise of affordable steak dinners for families who could not otherwise afford them in a restaurant. By the 1980s, the all-you-can-eat salad bar had given the meal a sense of abundance regardless of what you ordered. For a child, carrying a loaded plate back from the salad bar felt like genuine agency. It was not fine dining, but on a Friday night, it was close enough.
monkeybusinessimages / iStock
The TV dinner
The Swanson TV dinner arrived in 1953 but peaked as a cultural phenomenon in the 1970s and 1980s, when its status in a household tracked with how the week was going. For some families, it was a treat; for others, a necessity. Peeling back the foil, working through the sectioned aluminum tray, eating in front of the television: the ritual had a specific texture that home cooking could not replicate, and a generation of adults still reaches for one occasionally without quite being able to explain why.
The Blue Benn Diner in Bennington, Vermont. Photo Credit: BlueBenn.com
Wrap up
The meals that got elevated to reward status said something about what each family valued and what they were working toward. Whether it was the Happy Meal box or a Red Lobster booth, the point was always the same. This week, we did okay.
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