Everywhere you look, the past is back in fashion. Playlists, wardrobes, and now, it seems, our dinner plates are all taking cues from 2016.We set out to understand why, commissioning new research into how British dining habits have evolved over the last ten years, and what the findings mean for restaurants, pubs, and cafés hoping to pull in diners throughout 2026.
The results, drawn from a survey of 2,000 diners across the UK, paint a picture of a country stuck between two instincts: holding onto the food from our childhood, while constantly reinventing how that food is eaten. Roast dinners, fish and chips, and the full English are as popular as ever, but the details, from the sauces on the plate to the plating itself, look nothing like they did a decade ago.
Ketchup, mayo, and the rise of the “wrong” condiment
Ask any traditionalist what belongs next to a roast dinner and gravy will top the list. Increasingly, though, that’s not the whole story. Our research found that 26.9% of diners now add ketchup to their roast, a figure that climbs sharply to 39.2% among Gen Z and 32.5% among Millennials. Mayonnaise is close behind, favoured by 18.2% overall and roughly one in four Gen Z diners.
It’s not really about ketchup or mayo specifically. It’s a broader appetite among younger diners for bold, punchy flavours layered onto familiar dishes, whether that’s a squeeze of hot sauce, a spoonful of kimchi, or whatever condiment happens to be trending that month.
Diners want the classics back, and they’ll pay for it
For all the reinvention, British diners haven’t fallen out of love with tradition. More than four in five (81.2%) said they want restaurants, pubs, and cafés to bring back the classic dishes they grew up eating, and Millennials feel this most strongly, with 85% backing a return to nostalgic menus.
Importantly for operators, this nostalgia comes with a real commercial upside. More than three-quarters of respondents (76.6%) said they’d pay more for dishes made using British ingredients, and 71.1% said they’re more likely to order something if the menu tells them exactly where in the UK those ingredients came from. Provenance, it turns out, isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a genuine driver of spend.
Why every dish now needs to be camera-ready
There’s a generational push and pull happening on British menus. Younger diners want the comfort of the food they grew up with, but they also expect it to look good enough to photograph. Social media has clearly changed the bar here: 65.3% of Gen Z and 58.2% of Millennials said it has directly influenced what they expect their restaurant food to look like. Even a plate of beans on toast now has to earn its place on Instagram.
From data to dishes: Reinventing the classics with Sally Abé
To turn these findings into something restaurateurs can actually use, we teamed up with chefSally Abé of Teal in Hackney, whose CV includes stints at The Savoy, The Ledbury, Claridge’s, and The Harwood Arms. Sally developed three original recipes, fresh takes on the Sunday roast, fish and chips, and the full English, designed to meet modern diners where they are without losing what made the originals so loved in the first place. She’s known as much for her advocacy for British produce and for women in professional kitchens as she is for her cooking, and that perspective shaped every part of the reinvention.
The goal of this research is simple: to give restaurateurs a practical playbook, grounded in real data about what diners actually want, and backed by recipes that show how to act on it. Nostalgia clearly still sells in Britain, but the numbers suggest it sells best with a modern, unexpected twist.
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