Back to the Future Dinner and Movie Night | The Fairytale Foodie

**Fair warning before we get into it: some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning I get a tiny kickback if you buy something. Think of it as tipping your server, except the server is me and I am wearing an apron and watching a movie. You pay nothing extra and I get to keep doing this. Win win.**

The Back to the Future Dinner & Movie Night That Is a Love Letter to the ’80s

There is a very specific kind of nostalgia that hits you differently than the rest. Not the nostalgia that you manufacture by looking at old photos. The kind that sneaks up on you in the middle of a Tuesday when you smell something cooking and suddenly you are eight years old again and everything is fine. Back to the Future does that to me every single time.

This chapter took me longer than most to figure out. Matt had been asking me to include it for a while, and I kept circling it because the second film gives you so much to work with visually. The pizza hydrator, the hoverboard, Pepsi Perfect. It practically writes itself. But this first movie is quieter in the food department. There is no single iconic dish screaming at you from the screen. What there is instead is a feeling. A kitchen. A family sitting down to dinner together in 1955. A suburban table that looks like every suburban table from every movie you watched growing up. Once I stopped looking for a gimmick and just leaned into that, the whole menu came together in about ten minutes.

If you want every recipe from this chapter plus the full Rewind & Dine lineup, grab the cookbook right here 👉 [Get Rewind and Dine Right here] but stick around because I have feelings about meatloaf that need to be expressed.

Here is the full Back to the Future menu:

Drinks: Enchantment Under the Sea Appetizers: Flux Capacitor Crescents, George McFly’s Peanut Brittle Entrees: McFly Family Meatloaf with Homestyle Gravy, 1.21 Gigawatt Mashed Potatoes, Buttered Hill Valley Veggie Medley Desserts: Welcome Home Uncle Joey Cake

All of it is in the cookbook. 👉 [Get Rewind and Dine Right here]

If you love a good flashback dinner and a movie – you might also love our Star Wars Dinner, Hook, and the Goonies!

Enchantment Under the Sea

There is a moment in Back to the Future that I think is genuinely one of the most romantic scenes in any movie from that era, and it involves a gym, a band, and a very stressed Marty McFly playing guitar in 1955. The Enchantment Under the Sea dance is the whole heart of this film. Love, time travel, stakes, Chuck Berry. It has everything.

So naturally I made it a fishbowl cocktail.

The color on this drink is that deep, glowing, oceanic blue that you cannot look away from. Swedish Fish floating inside. A mint sprig. A little paper umbrella. Nerds candy on the bottom for the “rocks.” You can make it with vodka and blue curaçao or go full mocktail and it is equally gorgeous either way. I was so happy with how this one came out.

Flux Capacitor Crescents and George McFly’s Peanut Brittle

The appetizer situation for this chapter might be my favorite bit of food styling I have ever done, and I say that as someone who has arranged crescent rolls into a Y shape on a sheet pan and photographed it completely seriously.

That is the Flux Capacitor. Crescent rolls. A Y shape. Garlic butter. Done.

It works because the crescents are warm and golden and genuinely delicious, and because anyone who sees them either immediately gets it or asks what they are, at which point you get to explain the flux capacitor to them and feel excellent about yourself.

The peanut brittle is a deep cut. George McFly references it in the film and I am betting the real fans will catch it immediately and everyone else will just eat excellent homemade peanut brittle and have a good time. Either outcome is a win. This brittle is glossy and amber and shatters perfectly.

McFly Family Meatloaf with Homestyle Gravy

I got some heat on Instagram for this one. Apparently people have opinions about meatloaf, and most of those opinions are wrong.

Here is the thing. The meatloaf you are thinking of, the sad, dry, ketchup-glazed brick from some dinner you did not enjoy as a child, is not this meatloaf. This is a beef and pork blend that stays genuinely juicy, seasoned properly, finished with a silky homestyle gravy that you will want to pour over everything on the plate. It is the kind of meatloaf that converts people.

There is a scene in Back to the Future where the McFly family sits down to dinner together, and it is such a perfect portrait of that particular era of American family life. This is that dinner. This is the meal that belongs on that table.

I served it with the 1.21 Gigawatt Mashed Potatoes because obviously, and with a straight-up frozen veggie medley because that is exactly what a 1985 McFly family dinner looks like and I was not going to apologize for it. The medley gets a butter and garlic treatment that makes it genuinely good. Do not underestimate it.

Welcome Home Uncle Joey Cake

I saved the best for last because I have to talk about this cake.

When I was developing this menu and rewatching the film to look for ideas, the Uncle Joey joke registered in a completely new way. Joey McFly. In jail. His parole keeps getting denied. His family made him a “Welcome Home” cake every year and he kept not coming home. It is a throwaway line that is so casually dark and so funny.

I thought the design was going to be a challenge. It was not. The jail bars, the blue door, the little bird. “Welcome Home” across the top. “Uncle Joey” across the bottom. It came together and it is genuinely one of my favorite things I have made for this entire cookbook. It photographs beautifully. It also makes everyone at the table laugh, which I think is the point.

The Full Spread

When it all came together on the table with the Back to the Future logo on the TV, I actually felt something. This one hit me the way I hoped it would. It looks like the ’80s. It smells like a real dinner. It feels like the kind of night you will actually remember.

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Tag me when you make it. Uncle Joey would have really appreciated a home-cooked meal.