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==Meal==
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 name=Slat>[
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 include hard to pronounce foreign words, both of which had the potential to cause social embarrassment. The ingredients of the meal had a pleasantly sophisticated ring: "cocktail", the use of prawns which was not common, "steak garni" rather just steak,<ref name=Slat/> and『Black Forest gâteau』rather than just cake; all slightly foreign but easy enough to learn for next time, and allowing the diner to feel that they were enjoying a "continental" (European) eating experience.
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The meal became associated with the [[Berni Inn]] chain, established 1955 and which had 147 hotels and restaurants by 1970, making it the largest food chain outside the United States. The chain prospered by offering a menu with a limited number of options in "Olde Worlde" style restaurants that looked much the same in every branch. The most popular meal at a "Berni", even as late as the 1980s, remained prawn cocktail, steak and chips, and Black Forest gâteau.<ref name=GoFor>{{cite web|date=2010|title=The Berni Inn meal|url=http://www.goforanenglish.com/meals/berni_inn_meal.html|website=goforanenglish.com|accessdate=11 June 2014}}</ref>
In their 2000 obituary of [[Frank Berni]], ''[[The Guardian]]'' notes "the Briton's favourite menu of prawn cocktail, steak and Black Forest gâteau".<ref name=Guardian>{{cite news|last1=Jaine|first1=Tom|title=Frank Berni|url=
In 2013, ''[[The Times]]'' reported on the bankruptcy of the Scotch Steak Houses chain earlier that year, which it cast as latter day Berni Inns. The paper wrote that "for three decades [the owner] has run restaurants where time – and quality – appeared to stand still. While his rivals sought to keep pace with consumer tastes, Ali Salih's [[Aberdeen Angus Steak Houses|Aberdeen, Highland and Angus steakhouses]] continued to serve prawn cocktail, steak and Black Forest gâteau to diners seated on velour banquettes as they quaffed [[Blue Nun]]."<ref name=Times>{{cite news|last1=Walsh|first1=Dominic|title=Steakhouse king faces grilling over collapse|url=http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/leisure/article3799462.ece|accessdate=12 June 2014|work=The Times|date=25 June 2013}}</ref>
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