If you’re craving a lavender-flavored oat ice cream, you can probably grab one at the store without a second thought. These days, it feels like the most unique and unexpected food combos are just a shopping trip away. But not too long ago, things like avocado or tofu were considered luxuries, hard to find and even harder to afford.
Thanks to globalization, modern farming, and the magic of food trade, a lot of what used to be “exotic” is now just another item on the grocery list. Foods that were once rare and reserved for the elite are now part of everyday meals. Today, we’ve rounded up some of the most surprising ones. Keep reading to see which foods went from impossible to find to totally normal!
#1
1976 I had hummus and falafel for the first time… had this Syrian guy teach me to make hummus. My yankee parents were so skeptical… it became a staple and I ate falafel every chance I got.
Image source: Grouchy-Fix485, Maryam Sicard
#2
Avocados. I grew up in Michigan and we didn’t have a lot of extra money. My mother used to buy me an avocado every year for Christmas.
I miss her.
Image source: ThreeDogs2963, Anita Austvika
#3
Vienetta ice cream
ETA: location is UK.
Image source: Crayons42
#4
Pineapple. We would get one fresh pineapple a year, in a christmas gift fruit basket from a more well-to-do relative. You could get canned pineapple, but the fruit itself seemed like from an alien world and was more expensive, if not impossible, to get parts of the year.
Image source: beardsley64, Getty Images
#5
When I was little we got oranges in our stocking. When I was a teenager we got pomegranates, very fancy for us at the time.
Image source: SomebodyElseAsWell
#6
General Foods International Coffees in the rectangular tins, like Orange Cappuccino or Swiss Mocha. If you had those in your house, you were high end.
Oh, and I thought Grey Poupon dijon mustard was for rich people in Bentleys.
Image source: Few-Boysenberry-7826, BFS Man
#7
Cashews. They used to be really expensive, I remember my grandmother bought a pound every year for Christmas from Fannie May, paid something like $20 around 1970(?). That was when the nuts were hand stripped from the fruits in India before automation.
Image source: Oldbean98, Towfiqu barbhuiya
#8
Sushi. I remember watching The Breakfast Club and how all the other kids reacted to Claire having sushi, and I agreed. Sounded weird and disgusting. Fast forward 40 years and sushi is my absolute favorite/if I had to eat only one thing for the rest of my life food! I live in the USA.
Image source: Equal_Mess6623, Vinicius Benedit
#9
Authentic Thai food, no restaurants in the 50s and early 60s either in Nashville or Atlanta where we lived.
Came back North after College, all over the area…Love Thai food.
Image source: Theo1352
#10
My grandad would say ‘oranges’ – he was gifted one every Christmas when he was a child :).
Image source: Apprehensive-Web3957
#11
I remember when a Mexican restaurant opened in our town in the early 70s maybe? That was exotic!
Image source: rexeditrex, Katlyn Giberson
#12
Mangos. I live in the Midwest, and we never had real mangoes in the 70s. We called green bell peppers mangoes for some inexplicable reason.
Image source: Tough_Antelope5704, Yevhenii Deshko
#13
I was in mid 20s before I ever heard of Pesto sauce.
Image source: paranoid_70, Monika Grabkowska
#14
Grew up in rural Ireland in the 60s/70s. I remember having pasta for the first time.. it was the wild exotic food that my father got from friends who came home from Italy. I remember neighbours coming in to taste it.
Never had an avocado, a kiwi fruit etc… we just had basic foods in the local supermarket/shop.
I do remember when dried potatoes came..in the late 70s…not having to cook a pot of potatoes and have lump free potatoes was amazing.
Image source: AnySandwich4765, Emanuel Ekström
#15
Fresh fruit and vegetables. I come from an isolated northern 🇨🇦 town and growing up we got the last of the produce on the truck. What we got was old and battered and cost a small fortune. Now I live in the south and sometimes it still surprises me at the variety.
Image source: No_Budget7828, Megan Thomas
#16
Craft beer. Correct that, good beer is what I meant to say. When I was young, it was Bud, Miller, or PBR. That was it. Literally.
Southern US.
Image source: Routine_Mine_3019, Josh Olalde
#17
I didn’t have the opportunity to eat Indian food until I was in graduate school; now it is my favorite international cuisine. Luckily, it has greatly increased in popularity over the years, so now it seems like you can find Indian restaurants in even fairly small cities.
Image source: biff444444
#18
Olive oil. When I was a kid, that was something in a tiny bottle you stuck in your ear for earache.
Image source: inkybluish, Michael Tucker
#19
Any lettuce other than iceberg. Grew up in the south and remember living in California for a month. Not just lettuces but the array of fresh vegetables was awe inspiring to my little mind.
Eta: which is funny because a lot of my family had vegetable gardens. But it was peas, okra, tomatoes, and maybe corn. Kale was still just a decorative plant.
Image source: kellogla, Petr Magera
#20
La Choy and Chun King canned Chinese food back in the day. Peak exotica. And TV dinners weren’t exotic, but pretty novel to us kids. Plus they were in little trays similar to the food trays in 2001: A Space Odyssey, so it was kind of like eating astronaut food in our minds.
Image source: dataslinger
#21
Blackberries. I used to have to pick them wild when I was a kid for a few weeks in the spring. My understanding is they weren’t really made into a viable crop until the USDA came up with a hybrid variety in the 1990s. Now you can get nice fine ones in the store whenever you want.
Image source: kumquatrodeo
#22
Tofu seemed exotic (to non-Asians) when we first started having it in the 1970s.
Image source: RemonterLeTemps
#23
When I was growing up in Indiana in the 70s stuff like sushi and pho soup were mostly unheard of.
Image source: hoosiergirl1962
#24
Toblerone. I grew up in the 80s and only got one when someone I knew traveled by airplane, so they must have been very fancy and exotic. Now you can get one anywhere.
Image source: johnstonb, Safwan C K
#25
I remember my mom (born 1948) told me the first time she had yogurt was when she was 18. Hummus was also a very exciting discovery for her.
Image source: nottoembarrass, Vicky Ng
#26
When I was maybe 6 years old (approx 1956) a brand new restaurant chain came to my Midwestern factory town.
McDonald’s!
I attended a friend’s birthday party, and the new and exciting birthday excursion was…a trip to McDonald’s!
My hamburger had *mustard* and *pickles* on it, which to me meant poison. I cried because I couldn’t (wouldn’t) eat the exotic new food.
Image source: Buckabuckaw, Brett Jordan
#27
Eggs Benedict – You would have to go to the fancy breakfast restaurants to get that mammy jammy. Now I think you can even get them at IHOP.
Image source: CapWild
#28
In a tiny town in northern BC Canada ca 1970, an uncle visited from Vancouver and introduced the family to pizza. It must’ve been from the local Safeway frozen foods section but it seemed very exotic – hmmmm, what is this strange food peet-za? I recall my parents marveling and feeling very cosmopolitan.
Image source: jimmyjo_spocktoe
#29
Shrimp and really any seafood. I buy bags of frozen shrimp as a regular thing now. We have a shrimp dish once or twice a month. I remember shrimp was a once-a-year maybe thing and only at a restaurant.
Image source: MotherofJackals
#30
Edamame.
Image source: HaymakerGirl2025
#31
Hummus. I made it in my middle school “Teen Living” [Home Ec] class and my mom thought it was the weirdest thing ever. It was not available in grocery stores. This would have been 1992-93.
Image source: veggie_saurus_rex
#32
I remember when nachos became a national fad, in about ‘77 after Monday Night Football went to Dallas and had them as a bar appetizer. My mother took 3×5 cards to a friend’s house to copy the recipe for nachos.
Image source: revdon
#33
Kiwi in the Northeast.
Image source: Aciuaciu
#34
Star fruit.
Image source: Ready-Ad-436
#35
Believe it or not, yogurt. I remember when they first started advertising it. We all thought it was very odd.
Image source: GrumpyOlBastard
#36
Artichokes, in 1960’s US.
Also, cilantro was really hard to find, until the late 80’s.
Image source: OldButHappy
#37
A slab of ham with a pineapple slice promoted as ‘Polynesian’.
Image source: MissHibernia
#38
Iced coffee. I learned to drink it in Boston in the late 80s in college, but when I was home in Colorado and tried to order it people thought I was crazy.
And in the early/mid 90s in Los Angeles, coffee shops were like nightclubs. There were lines to get at night, and you’d go in to order drinks, talk with friends and meet people. Very different from the Starbucks of today!
#39
Anything you could cook in a microwave.
Image source: Mongolith-
#40
I grew up in NYC, sushi was barely on the radar until the mid to late 1980s — longer in the outer boroughs. Same can be said for most Asian food aside from Chinese. Not necessary exotic but Mexican food, aside from a few neighborhoods, was also not popular back then. My wife grew up on the west coast and was disappointed in our lack of options when she moved to Queens in the 1980s.
Image source: damageddude
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