I'LL DRINK TO THAT: Phoenix readers have always relished their expertise in libations, from California varietals and microbrews to, more recently, the "classic" cocktail.

The culinary generation gap of the 1970s also brought about a revival of interest in American wines, which until then had not recovered from Prohibition. Boston remained a good market for French, Italian, and German wines, and they were priced competitively in the 1970s (in the mid ’70s, second-growth Bordeaux were sold at Marty’s for $4.99 to $6.99; today these same bottles cost as much as a luxury dinner for two). But older people were the experts on the classic wines, while the explosion of California varietals was something new. A young person could become an expert on California wines a lot more easily, so we did. In a way, this cycle was repeated in the 1990s with the explosion of microbreweries, which made beer a level playing field for Generations X and Y. Why should they listen to 35-year-olds drone on about vintages and vineyard practices when they themselves could become experts on the malts and hops of the world in a few months? And now the new century has begun with a revival of 1950s-style mixed drinks. (Why listen to 35-year-olds drone on about hops, etc.?) Will we return to basement wet bars and fallout shelters? Perhaps not, but apparently each successive youth culture wants to develop its own beverage connoisseurship.

The ’70s also marked the beginnings of Boston’s coffee mania, led by George Howell’s Coffee Connection shops, which defined a Boston taste for distinctive terroir in coffee and a milder roasting style than the West Coast wave that literally engulfed Boston when all the Coffee Connection shops were sold to Starbucks in 1994.

The economic expansion of the 1980s mini-computer boom brought the excesses of nouvelle cuisine to the most expensive restaurants in Boston, but it also paved the way for a number of rising chef-owners, the establishment of neighborhood farmers’ markets, and new ethnic restaurants to serve the city’s increasingly multicultural population of international students and immigrant professionals in high tech and medicine, as well as more modest service employees and medical technicians. Authentic Cantonese and Hong Kong cuisine opened up for the general dining public. The number and quality of South Asian restaurants multiplied, and waves of Latin American, Caribbean, and African storefront restaurants began reaching beyond their core customers to curious and bargain-conscious outsiders.

The crash of the “Massachusetts Miracle” in the late 1980s doomed Michael Dukakis’s presidential aspirations, but it put only a temporary chill on the expansion of fine dining, and perhaps reinforced the hobby cooks at home. (All statistics show that more and more American meals are eaten out, but Boston is also a leading center of the contrary movement toward making the remaining meals at home more fun and innovative — hobby cooking.) The period during which the only new restaurants were conservatively financed, Northern Italian, or branches of established groups must have been a period of intense thinking and planning for the next generation of chef-owners. When the high-tech boom of the 1990s opened things up again, there was an explosion of restaurants by former sous-chefs. These restaurants were defined more flexibly and with an emphasis on small plates, so they could be repositioned with the economic seasons as well as seasonal produce.

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Boston’s culinary scene has always been somewhat resistant to national trends, and especially resistant to chain restaurants. But since 1966, Boston has given birth to national chains, and their special mark is high quality. Dunkin’ Donuts are for everyone, and the chain’s coffee beans are good enough to sell for home consumption. The original Bertucci’s and the remarkably skillful scaling up of Legal Sea Foods and Au Bon Pain follow this theme, as do the national chains that have won a foothold here: Trader Vic’s and Benihana, when they were fresh and stood for quality; McCormick & Schmick’s, a luxury chain; and top-quality steak houses. The successful and smaller local chains may move with economic cycles from seafood to Italian and back, but they always offer quality. I’d like to think that Phoenix food writers have helped rally the dining and cooking public around that principle, even as we sometimes vary in our support of a particular trend or establishment.

Robert Nadeau writes the weekly “Dining Out” column for the Boston Phoenix.