A pretty common example would be wholegrain bread in many countries. While the well off would consume white bread, poor people would consume brown bread, now revalued in the wake of consumers’ interest for healthy foods.
In Italy, for example, chestnuts were poor people’s foods (my grandpa would only eat chestnut bread in the dead of winter during WW2 shortages and couldn’t even mention chestnuts without a grimace of disgust), but now they’ve become quite an expensive item, especially when street sellers roast them at market stalls.
Stockfish or baccalà (cured codfish from Norway or Iceland) was also poor people’s food eaten especially for religious reasons, and now it’s much more expensive than many other fishes.
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I have over 150 years old Prague recipe book and the number of recipes I can’t simple do because one plate would cost about same whole family will use for several days is quite high.
For example salmon used to be poor people fish till 1936. Then become extint till recently, but still expensive
Seafood and cod. It was the humblest of meals. Now through the roof.
Funny that we kept for over 2000 years the name of a seafood as Greek merchant and travelers referred to it: berberecho (cockle), “food of barbarians”.
What comes to mind spontaneously is Rauke, you call it Rucola. Until the end of the 20th century it was practically considered a weed and in Germany only really poor people ate it.
Then Italian cuisine became popular here…
Chestnuts and codfish are also a great example for Portugal as well.
Another one are eels. Used to be dirt cheap, but due to ecological disruption the become higly vulnerable and are now incredibly expensive food items.
***Čvarci*** or greaves weren’t cheap, they used to be literally worthless some 60 years ago. People used to feed pigs with it. And now you can find homemade ***čvarke*** for 30-40€ (even more than that) per kg.
When we switched from drachma to euro, it was koulouri as we now call the Ottoman simit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simit) that it got overprized.
During the memorandum years, if I’m not wrong, it was tyropita snack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiropita) that got overprized.
Now with the post-covid (aka ukraine war) crisis, it is souvlaki that got overprized :p
Just recently the Swedish butter prices have gone up massively. Especially spreadable butter. Roughly a doubling of the price just the last year or so. (I don’t have exact data.) It has even become a Swedish meme that it’s the most expensive of luxury goods only the richest can afford.
Personally I use spreadable margarine and in pretty small amounts so I am not particularly affected. For cooking I use liquid fats.
Finland/Sweden. Reindeer meat. Used to be viewed as a “low class” meat but today is very expensive.
Fish and chips used to be cheap working class food.
Now it’s on the menu at gastro-pubs for prices that will make your eyes water. Even ‘chippy’ fish & chips are not exactly cheap anymore (much more expensive, for example, than a fast food burger meal).
Horse meat is rather rare and expensive nowadays. It was cheap up until the 1960s, when working horses were butchered at the end of their lives.
Since there aren’t many working horses left anymore and racing horses are usually unfit for consumption, horse meat got expensive.
Cigarettes and beer. A pack of cigarettes costs something like 10€ and the cheapest 24 pack of beer is 24€. Anything stronger and it costs too damn much. Thank god I’m trying to quit drinking.