"The Time Traveler's guide to 14th century England" has some good bits about food. He discusses feasts and compares foods ye olde peasants would've had to that of their wealthier contemporaries. It's a great book, I highly recommend it. In fact, I think I read about it here.

The main takeaways for me regarding feasts were the abundance of pottages in the English diet (for all classes) and the lack of sweet flavorings (like cinnamon [bad example, see /u/cybelechild below] cardamon) for desserts. Making a pottage is when you throw a lot of things into water and cook it down, like oatmeal or lentil stew. They were popular both for savory meals and sweet desserts. You can even look for "medieval pottage recipes" on the good ol' interwebz and find a whole bunch. I did it and had a medieval food party, it was alright.

As for dessert, rose flavor was used sometimes. One of the pottages I tried to make was a dessert pottage that had rose water and a bunch of fruit boiled down. It tasted like old people mixed with a more boring version of oatmeal to me. It wasn't quite as bad as that sounds, but it wasn't my favorite.

I'm normally a lowly lurker here but I can actually contribute to this one!

I'm currently reading A Distant Mirror : The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman. There's an interesting description of the extravagant feast layed on in honour of the Holy Roman Emporer by King Charles IV of France:

The state dinners drew on all the resources of the 14th century to delight, amaze, and glut the guests ... So many courses and dishes were served that for once there were “too many to tell,” and indeed too many for the ailing guest of honor. The King had ordered four courses of ten pairs of dishes in each, but thoughtfully eliminated one course of ten to reduce the time the Emperor would have to sit at table.

As it was, he would have had to partake of thirty pair of such dishes as roast capons and partridges, civet of hare, meat and fish aspics, lark pasties and rissoles of beef marrow, black puddings and sausages, lampreys and savory rice, entremet of swan, peacock, bitterns, and heron “borne on high,” pasties of venison and small birds, fresh- and salt-water fish with a gravy of shad “the color of peach blossom,” white leeks with plovers, duck with roast chitterlings, stuffed pigs, eels reversed, frizzled beans-finishing off with fruit wafers, pears, comfits, medlars, peeled nuts, and spiced wine.

Obviously some of these dishes would be considered highly unusual in a restaurant today. I'm also assuming that the uses of spices and dressings might be unusual to modern palates, but the book doesn't go into detail about the methods of preparation.

How good? So, so good. And a bit boozy and malicious.

Feasts were a big deal in Anglo-Saxon England, with a custom of hearty feasting and toasts inherited from Norse and Germanic pagan traditions.

As such, feasts were undertook to celebrate seasonal events, saint's days, religious festivals - the writings of Ælfric of Eynsham (955–1010 CE) record 54 such 'sanctoral' feast days a year - coronations, funerals and hosting/impressing visiting dignitaries.

Proving that cliches about British food were true, Sharon Turner recalls in her voluminous The History of the Anglo-Saxons that:

They boiled, baked, and broiled their victuals. We read of their meat dressed in a boiling vessel, of their fish having being broiled, and of an oven heated for baking loaves.

The feast was the heart of society well into the Christian era, a ritual that clearly enforced hierarchy, faith and social bonds. Alcoholic mead (made from honey) and ale was shared between the monarch and his retainers, and gifts were distributed, strengthening bonds between the king and his subjects. The seating plan was highly politicised - designed to make clear the order of precedents, there'd often be a scramble for the places closest to the king.

Storytelling, riddles and song were popular, but practical jokes were a huge source of entertainment too - fuelled by the drinking which often continued well after the the last scrap had been cleared away or fed to the dogs. One even suspects (if you'll forgive the assumption) that the cruel dominance asserted by the joke-player on the victim was another way of demonstrating their respective places in the pecking order.

John Thrupp writes disdainfully in The Anglo-Saxon Home: a History of the Domestic Institutions and Customs of England, from the Fifth to the Eleventh Century:

Although the Anglo-Saxons cared little for verbal witticisms, they had an intense passion for practical jokes in which they indulged with the most reckless disregard of justice, humanity, and decency. Numerous instances have already been given of the tricks they practised at feasts and weddings. On these occasions the quantity of beer and mead which was drunk formed some sort of excuse for the excessive roughness of their jokes.

This raucous behaviour has a whiff of male bonding about it, and with the mead-flowing warriors would make their oaths to their king. The Battle of Maldon - an Old English poem of uncertain dating (historians generally agree that it's pre-1066, and the Battle itself took place 991 CE) features the mead-sharing and oath-taking prominently:

Let us call to mind those declarations we often uttered over mead, when from out seat we heroes in hall would put up pledges about tough fighting; now it can be proved who is brave.

It's clear that with all this testosterone and ale flowing, feasts could turn nasty. Drunkenness wasn't a sin in itself (that would come with the Normans and the erosion of vestigial pagan customs) but hot-headed behaviour while under the influence was clearly endemic, as the law code of Æthelberht of Kent (?-616 CE) made clear the compensation due for an offence committed in the presence of a king while a guest in someone's home.

More seriously still, anyone found fighting in the house of the king was to lose his property, with execution an option at the discretion of the monarch.

According to Majorie A. Brown's essay The Feast Hall in Anglo-Saxon Society (from Food & Eating in Medieval Europe) the hall itself was the centre of the early Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Danish community (as evidenced by Beowulf, which may be a myth but it reflects the values of the culture that composed it).

Remains of a royal feast hall 80 feet long by 40 feet wide and lined with plank walls set eight feet into the ground has been found in Yeavering - the site of Edwin of Northumbria (586-633 CE)'s royal vill, and Rural Settlements and Society in Anglo-Saxon England by Helena Hamerow describes halls as 'competitive architecture' - a projection of the power and influence of the ruler and his realm.

Anglo-Saxon literature has a wealth of words to describe the hall's decor, servants, purpose and contents - and even the sadness felt at a hall's loss, "seledreorig".

How would the best of these compare to modern food and restaurants now?

Well, I like to think of an Anglo-Saxon feast hall as the cheeky Nando's of its day.

There's much meat, ale and eating with fingers. It's the ideal setting for guys to get together and tell tall tales of battles won and foes defeated (bants), excessively boisterous practical jokes (epic bants), and a clear hierarchy, with the king (ledge) at heart of things. The interior is wood panelled, too.