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==Background==
The Great British Meal out was a meal in a restaurant designed to appeal to those for whom eating out at all was unusual and for whom a prawn cocktail, steak garni or gateau were exotic foreign food. [[Nigel Slater]] wrote of his childhood in the 1970s: "As a family, we never went out for dinner unless we were on holiday, but there were occasional Saturday lunches at the local Berni Inn" adding "Steak garni always sounded so much more exotic than plain steak."<ref>[http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2007/sep/30/foodanddrink.shopping National treasures] Nigel Slater, ''[[The Observer]]'', 30 September 2007. Retrieved 1 July 2014.</ref>▼
Laura Mason in ''Food Culture in Great Britain'' wrote that "In mid-twentieth-century Britain, eating out had a dreadful image. Badly served, poor and unimaginative food, discourteous staff, and dining rooms with limited and inconvenient hours".<ref name="Mason2004">{{cite book|author=Mason, Laura.|title=Food Culture in Great Britain|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=9rFIyN1OWfQC&pg=PA153|date=2004|publisher=Westport: [[Greenwood Press]]|isbn=978-0-313-32798-8|pages=153}}</ref>
▲The Great British Meal out was a meal in a restaurant designed to appeal to those for whom eating out at all was unusual and for whom a prawn cocktail, steak garni or gateau were exotic foreign food. [[Nigel Slater]] wrote of his childhood in the 1970s: "As a family, we never went out for dinner unless we were on holiday, but there were occasional Saturday lunches at the local Berni Inn" adding "Steak garni always sounded so much more exotic than plain steak."<ref>[http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2007/sep/30/foodanddrink.shopping National treasures] Nigel Slater, ''[[The Observer]]'', 30 September 2007. Retrieved 1 July 2014.</ref>
The standardised menu suited the restaurant, who could purchase and prepare food in bulk within tight cost controls,<ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1347993/Frank-Berni.html Frank Berni] ''[[The Daily Telegraph|The Telegraph]]'', 12 July 2000. Retrieved 1 July 2014.</ref> and avoided the need for the customer to choose courses from a menu which might include foods with which they were unfamiliar or which might be in a foreign language, both of which had the potential to cause social embarrassment.
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