British Food: Classic or Dud (S&D too)

Both of these are due of fanatical minorities who will need a lot of quelling, including extensive legislation. But there is one point on which public opinion could bring about a rapid change for the better: I mean cooking.

It is commonly said, even by the English themselves, that English cooking is the worst in the world. It is supposed to be not merely incompetent, but also imitative, and I even read quite recently, in a book by a French writer, the remark: ‘The best English cooking is, of course, simply French cooking.’

Now that is simply not true, as anyone who has lived long abroad will know, there is a whole host of delicacies which it is quite impossible to obtain outside the English-speaking countries. No doubt the list could be added to, but here are some of the things that I myself have sought for in foreign countries and failed to find.

First of all, kippers, Yorkshire pudding, Devonshire cream, muffins and crumpets. Then a list of puddings that would be interminable if I gave it in full: I will pick out for special mention Christmas pudding, treacle tart and apple dumplings. Then an almost equally long list of cakes: for instance, dark plum cake (such as you used to get at Buzzard’s before the war), short-bread and saffron buns. Also innumerable kinds of biscuit, which exist, of course, elsewhere, but are generally admitted to be better and crisper in England.

Then there are the various ways of cooking potatoes that are peculiar to our own country. Where else do you see potatoes roasted under the joint, which is far and away the best way of cooking them? Or the delicious potato cakes that you get in the north of England? And it is far better to cook new potatoes in the English way — that is, boiled with mint and then served with a little melted butter or margarine — than to fry them as is done in most countries.

Then there are the various sauces peculiar to England. For instance, bread sauce, horse-radish sauce, mint sauce and apple sauce; not to mention redcurrant jelly, which is excellent with mutton as well as with hare, and various kinds of sweet pickle, which we seem to have in greater profusion than most countries.

What else? Outside these islands I have never seen a haggis, except one that came out of a tin, nor Dublin prawns, nor Oxford marmalade, nor several other kinds of jam (marrow jam and bramble jelly, for instance), nor sausages of quite the same kind as ours.

Then there are the English cheeses. There are not many of them but I fancy Stilton is the best cheese of its type in the world, with Wensleydale not far behind. English apples are also outstandingly good, particularly the Cox’s Orange Pippin.

And finally, I would like to put in a word for English bread. All the bread is good, from the enormous Jewish loaves flavoured with caraway seeds to the Russian rye bread which is the colour of black treacle. Still, if there is anything quite as good as the soft part of the crust from an English cottage loaf (how soon shall we be seeing cottage loaves again?) I do not know of it.

No doubt some of the things I have named above could be obtained in continental Europe, just as it is possible in London to obtain vodka or bird’s nest soup. But they are all native to our shores, and over huge areas they are literally unheard of.

South of, say, Brussels, I do not imagine that you would succeed in getting hold of a suet pudding. In French there is not even a word that exactly translates ‘suet’. The French, also, never use mint in cookery and do not use black currants except as a basis of a drink.

It will be seen that we have no cause to be ashamed of our cookery, so far as originality goes or so far as the ingredients go. And yet it must be admitted that there is a serious snag from the foreign visitor’s point of view. This is, that you practically don’t find good English cooking outside a private house. If you want, say, a good, rich slice of Yorkshire pudding you are more likely to get it in the poorest English home than in a restaurant, which is where the visitor necessarily eats most of his meals.

It is a fact that restaurants which are distinctively English and which also sell good food are very hard to find. Pubs, as a rule, sell no food at all, other than potato crisps and tasteless sandwiches. The expensive restaurants and hotels almost all imitate French cookery and write their menus in French, while if you want a good cheap meal you gravitate naturally towards a Greek, Italian or Chinese restaurant. We are not likely to succeed in attracting tourists while England is thought of as a country of bad food and unintelligible by-laws. At present one cannot do much about it, but sooner or later rationing will come to an end, and then will be the moment for our national cookery to revive. It is not a law of nature that every restaurant in England should be either foreign or bad, and the first step towards an improvement will be a less long-suffering attitude in the British public itself.

Currently I am preserving and pickling like billy-o. I should have access to a great quantity of apples for making chutneys next week.

Rick Stein goes around cooking amazing looking cassoulets and whatnot but then says his favourite dish is battered fish n' chips, the menk!

I often wonder how popular the 'English breakfast' i.e. big greasy fry-up really is with foreign visitors.

D: Full English Breakfast, Most fast food, poor quality processed food, dodgy versions and poor attempts at above list. Breads and patisserie generally not up to standard on continent, though getting better.

OTM re pork pies too. The ones starry and others got from the great British beer festival tasted superb and quite different to typical shop ones.

Also fruit pudding (white pudding with candied fruit in)is a bizarre but tasty scottish breakfast delicacy.

I find it highly amusing how popular crumble has become in France.

haven't had a pasty (West Cornwall co. or otherwise) for ages now, missing them (much better than patties imo)

Yes, it's because we've all got bad teeth.

This bread mushiness thing is nonsense, I've never had a problem finding nice bread in the UK.

Haha what is a bit of fun in the UK for Americans, going off subject for a second, is getting things that are readily available in the US but are completely different in the UK. Ex: sushi, ketchup, Coca-cola (for the record our sushi restaurants beat yours but your ketchup and coke is 10x more palatable)

This bread mushiness thing is nonsense, I've never had a problem finding nice bread in the UK.

while its getting better in the UK, bread quality runs like this:

FRENCH BREAD>UK BREAD>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>US BREAD

Haha what is a bit of fun in the UK for Americans, going off subject for a second, is getting things that are readily available in the US but are completely different in the UK. Ex: sushi, ketchup, Coca-cola (for the record our sushi restaurants beat yours but your ketchup and coke is 10x more palatable)

my friend aaron from LA cannot stand british coca-cola (and is a straight-edge musician often touring the UK), though to be honest most convenience stores now sell coke that's bottled all over the place (cheaply imported i guess). there was a time i could tell the difference between coke bottled in the uk and in eire.

The lardy cake turned out amazing, regardless.

And yeah, the things that contain copious amounts of high fructose corn syrup in the US tend not to in other countries, leading to a pretty noticable difference in taste.

you're right, of course - i've had some delicious sourdough in the states before. but the difference is you can find ace bread in UK supermarkets, which i haven't seen in the US supermarkets i've been to (but the last i visited tbh would be austin 2004). american bread i've eaten from supermarkets has been insanely nasty, airy, weirdly-textured stuff.

my point for myself was maybe i failed to sufficiently appreciate the flavors of what i was eating because i was first experiencing it through a less-familiar textural lens. (and i shouldn't have passed up the epicerie at orrery.)

http://www.blackfriarsbakery.co.uk/product_pics%5CFlapjacks.jpg

Not to be confused with the US pancake style flapjacks.

bah xpost

xpost Ally, they sort of look like that, but they're way better. More cakey.

Haha, that's the problem with flapjacks, you think "ooh, healthy oaty goodness!" and forget there's like 1000 calories in a bar. Think about it, they weigh about 500g each.

Read it here.

i remember no bread from my one trip to Berlin. only sausage. plenty, plenty sausage.

I think the joy of British food is that there are still distinct regional identities e.g. ask for Stargazey Pie outside Cornwall you'll get blank looks. Bath Chaps, Pan Haggerty, Pond Pudding etc. Some British foodies get all weepy eyed over the distinct cuisines of other countries (well you simply can't compare Calabria to any other region etc yawn) and forget that we have our own.

British food haters = ill informed.

this isn't true everywhere in the world?

i admit that i am scared of words like treacle and suet and "marrow jam". reminds me of that famous brit offal dude with the famous restaurant. the whole pig dude.

(Bit surprised that Orwell says back there that if you want a good cheap meal you'd go to a Greek or Chinese restaurant; I'd been led to believe you just didn't find such things until at least the 70s. Maybe you only did in London.)

things that are readily available in the US but are completely different in the UK

Saw a webpage recently that was some American kid going "holy crap WTF look at all the weird shit the Brits eat! Here is the British food I have been eating on my holiday" and it was, like, "Coke! In funny-shaped metric bottles! Salt and vinegar crisps, gross! [picture of a tin of Pringles] Curry sauce?! [picture of McDonalds sauce sachets]". Still not sure whether it was a joke.

The Royal Oak in Borough is good for pies as I think I mentioned up thread and i really like the square pie company chain doing take away boxes of pie, peas and mash.

My minging flatmate once bought some, and left half a loaf mouldering in a cupboard - the mould infected the wrapper too, crawled through the wrapper, and spread itself over the inside of her cupboard.

Scottish things and people that I like

It is horrible. My husband loves it and keeps buying it. It doesn't even fit in a toaster!

ALDOTM!

(it's the second of two google results for piece'n'mince)

k-OTM.

There are some brilliant places to eat in Glasgow, but I've found that if a restaurant has a Reputation or chic interior design, it's best avoided.

Ad-Lib's grey prawns and badly-spelled menu to thread!

this isn't true everywhere in the world?

That was my point, hence the Calabria dig. We get weepy eyed about cuisine de terroir, or difference in ham cures from one italian region to the next and yet forget our own.

those restaurants don't all serve British cuisine

The english language evolves constantly, taking on flavours from other cultures, why not the cuisine? An excellent point is made upthread about curry. Also, some of the restaurants listed serve french in the classical style, a style that was developed in part by imported British cooks. There was enormous crossover in the middle ages when the nation-state concepts of modern day "Britain" and "France" were significantly more ambiguous.

OTM! Thank God I'm going back up to Scotland next week! Bring it on!!!

The major chain grocer in Chicago (Jewel) has a multi-ethnic aisle that includes a British section. I wanted to try Spotted Dick, but it was unreasonably expensive, so I picked up another tasty-looking item, a can--I mean tin--of Heinz Curry Beans.

They.

Were.

VILE.

All I can taste now is cloves.

Should have gotten the Kit-Kat Chunky. I hear British mass market chocolate is way better than ours, even items of the same name.

Or maybe I should have shelled out for the Spotted Dick??

search:

full engish brek
yorkshire pudding
marmite
clapshot
bubble+sqk

I must ask that someone defend those indefensible beans.

I don't think that it's disputed that London has some of the best restaurants in the world, but those restaurants don't all serve British cuisine.

OTM. Plus whoever said restaurants in London were prohibitively expensive: wtf? You can eat at a top quality restaurant for around £50 ($100 ish) per head, so ok, not the kind of thing you can afford to do every night, but not what I'd called prohibitive either.

Heinz Curry Beans are pretty good.

Basically, the British tastes said the overly sweet US versions of baked beans should have half as much sugar so there was more tang of the tomato in the sauce. Heinz started mass-marketing this flavour in the UK in the 60s, prior to that baked beans had mainly been available as an 'exotic import' in posh food shops. Beans on toast rapidly became a fairly staple meal in poorer homes, as it was cheap and quick, and eaten extensively by students.

Curry Powder (as a generic garam masala mix) was developed during the days of the Raj for people who wanted to take the flavour of Indian food back to Britain, and reflects a general taste rather than a specific curry. As the boom in Indian food in Britain spread in the 60s, several big manufacturers started producing curry powder and it made its way into an awful lot of homes. And certainly some of them might have been having beans more than once a week, so might have added something like curry powder into one of those times to taste something different (I certainly remember my dad making his own curried beans by this method in the 70s). The mass-produced ones have a more standardised taste, and not really enough curry powder, but they're OK.

(some of the detail here, such as Fortnum & Masons being the first to import baked beans is from Wikipedia)

As to the chocolate, I guess it will depend on your tastes. I find mass-market American chocolate like gargling with vegetable oil (and I note the big manufacturers are trying to get to exactly that stage, with cocoa butter completely removed in favour of vegetable oil), and British mass-market chocolate pretty good, but then I like Curry Beans so YMMV.

Was the spotted dick Heinz in a tin too? If you wanted to try that kind of thing I'd go for something freshly made. It's nice when it's warm and the blends of spices are just right, otherwise it's just stodge. Haven't tried the Heinz one but I have eaten their treacle sponge and sticky toffee pudding tins, which were horribly sweet, synthetic, dry and heavy as lead. If you are going to get any tinned steam pudding you'll probably want some custard or some vanilla icecream to make your way through the sponge parts.

Those curry beans are just baked beans with mild curry powder tipped into the tomato sauce, right? Kind of disgusting on first mouthful but after a few more it becomes somehow charming in its bright orange E-numbers+turmeric rush, like currywurst. I'd take a currywurst, pommes und mayo over curried baked beans any day though. So the chocolate sounds like the best bet, as I would definitely agree that massmarket UK chocolate is a great deal nicer than anything American I've tried, but maybe that's just my British tastes.

And I'd say UK restaurant meals were expensive (can't remember the last time I had a restaurant meal that was less than £35-£45 per head, even the lacklustre chain restaurants charge in that region now) considering in the US and a lot of other European countries you could get a good meal out for half that, or at least when I've been abroad I've found that to be the case.

mention of Porters restaurant upthread. never been but looked them up the other day and found a couple of sites with wall to wall scathing reviews. Browns fared much better however.

i've not tried Heinz curry beans but their normal ones are fin - even better if you add in some Reggae Reggae sauce.

i think you mean 'deck', bro.

I've been to Porters, it was shit.

Ha, I was going to say "oh, I have been there once, to meet a friend who likes it so much that he's tried everything on the menu, and thought it was pretty good" and now I see that the mention upthread was me. Well. I will google myself some scathing reviews out of interest, but I'd still happily go back.

I took the missus there on her first visit to the UK cos she wanted to try some British food. I had a steak & ale pie, which TBH wasn't bad, but not really any better than a steak & ale pie at a Wetherspoon/Hogshead/etc, can't remember what she had but she didn't like it and the service was bloody awful.

Baked beans in general = indefensible. Curry variant even more so.

I bought the book on a whim in a remainder shop (might have been to read on the trip to Brighton?) and found it exceptionally MEH. Almost every recipe started "I used to love it when nanny made..." and it read like an advertising blurb for the restaurant which seems to mainly cater for tourist looking for the 'authetic' British experience (see their website, with packages that can be arranged with the bix box offices to tie in with the London Eye, the Tower, Madame Tussauds, Greenwich or a West End show - currently Blood Brothers or Chicago).

sausage in mug of baked beans = easily defensible

Sorry, that was a Porters-related xpost, not about the baked beans book. Which might well be as good as the Spam and Marmite ones, and is available from 1p on Amazon.

The Marmite one is shite - I was given it as a birthday present by somebody who saw it and thought "This is perfect for Lucy!" She wrote as much on the inside cover too.

Best UK food stuffs:

Cream tea (Ed/Tracer Hand division)
Donner meat and chips (ghetto division)

I never took the plunge with the Marmite one but the Spam one is OK for a deliberately branded item.

Eton Mess fucking rules. The only thing other than sexually attractive posh girls in ballgowns that makes me wish I'd had a public school education.

You forgot the shower rape.

Projecting, much?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally-Anne_test

Cream tea (Ed/Tracer Hand division)

^ jesus christ you have some weird issues

Donner meat and chips (ghetto division)

^ jesus christ you have some diet issues

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/FindingAids/dynaweb/calher/breen/figures/I0018235A.jpg

haha, 'Donner' meat

The curry beans tasted nothing like any curry I have ever tasted. They tasted like navy beans, tomato sauce, sugar, and cloves. Actually, they tasted like cloves with the other ingredients added as an afterthought.

I like Marmite, and I thought about buying a little jar of it, but I wasn't sure if I loved it that much.

And a huge xp--yes, the Spotted Dick was in a can. Which is why I wasn't paying $4.50 for it.

don't buy those pudding-in-a-can things

haha, 'Donner' meat

I'd have put the scare wuotes around 'meat'

$4.50 for spotted dick is a bit of a gip given that it is meant to be a poor man's cheap pudding. Try this one:

http://www.nakedwhiz.com/spotdick.htm

I often think Fanny is over-rated.

I think Fanny can be relied upon for dick, though.

You're probably right, although Johnny is probably required just to make sure.

http://www.justhungry.com/images/fof_johnnyfanny.jpg

What do the English call English muffins?

guess

English muffins -- what do the English call them?

Marmite is the only thing I have purchased in the British aisle in Jewel. It was pretty expensive but well worth it. What's pretty stupid is that I hadn't had Marmite in years, and may well not have it again for years, but that one week I needed it really badly.

I'm not sure there's anything else that's all that different these days - I get my loose-leaf tea sent over from England, but could certainly get decent stuff here, and I don't eat much by way of chocolate bars, except plain dark chocolate that's just as available in the US.

Oh, wait a minute, I just remembered the nightmare that was shopping for the ingredients for Christmas pudding and mince pies. I never did find currants, for example (!).

yeah the US doesn't do sultanas either

The sultana grape is cultivated in the United States under the name Thompson Seedless, named after William Thompson, a viticulturist who was an early grower in California and is sometimes credited with the variety's introduction.[3][4] According to the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, the two names are synonymous.[5] Virtually all of California raisin production (approximately 97% in 2000) and roughly one-third of California's total grape area is of this variety, making it the single most widely-planted variety.[6][4]

Not all speakers of English in Anglo America make clear distinctions between different types of dried grapes (raisins, sultanas, currants), and golden-coloured raisins made from other grape varieties may be marketed as sultanas. In addition, virtually all California raisins are produced from the Thompson Seedless grape, even those which, because of different drying processes, are not golden like the traditional sultana raisin. The term sultana is not commonly used to refer to any type of raisin in American English; as most American raisins are from sultana grapes, they are called simply raisins or golden raisins, according to colour. The latter, which at least in colour resemble the traditional sultana raisin, are artificially dried and sulfured, in distinction to "natural" raisins.[7] All non-organic sultana grapes in California and elsewhere are treated with the plant hormone gibberellin.

Hey! I'm eating currants RIGHT NOW!

Which I purchased from Jewel in your hood, Toby.

They are dried, don't know if that's what you were looking for.

I'm going to be in England in early December and I reserved a table for two at Fat Duck (Note: I'm not loaded lol--I'm an American writer, doy--I've just been dilligently saving my money for savory deliciousness).

Thing is, my GF isn't convinced it's such a good idea. If she flakes, is there an english ilXor who would be interested in being my dinner buddy? Maybe someone who also has trouble convincing his/her friends to make the trek to/spend money at places like this? It'll be fun! Send me a PM.

In light of the turn this thread took, I would like to point out that mass-produced items sold by the processed foods industry do not constitute "cooking", English or otherwise. Cooking is done in a kitchen, using identifiable ingredients. It does not consist of opening a can or removing a wrapper.

As noted many times already, good English cooks excel at savory pies and puddings, roasts, and various sweets. They seem to have no feel for vegetables whatever, unless you count potatos and even then not so much.

Are characteristic English soups any good?

Hmmm, I would say mostly no. The only soups of I can think of that people might call 'English' are either meaty (game soup, yuk, or the usually horrible Brown Windsor soup, basically beef stock with bits of beef floating in it) or half-English, like Mulligatawny (which can be delicious). And then there's completely not English soups like Scotch Broth (veg and meat) or that other Scottish favourite Cock-a-leekie (which can be quite nice).

I'm not sure I agree with you on your other points - I think good English cooks have quite a feel for veggies these days, I can't remember the last time I went to a decent restaurant and had bad veg, although tbf this was once commonplace.

And Whiney - if your GF is crazy enough not to want to go to the Fat Duck - I'm there!

(ps. does she not want to go because she thinks it'll be all clouds of fluff and bits of wood, because you can eat sort of 'normal' food there too...)

Dunno about British cuisine, but hot damn there are a whole lot of fantastic Indian restaurants over there. Also Weetabix - There is no American equivalent of this delicious (and convenient!) breakfast treat.

As Wheetabix is to Frosted Flakes, so I Love Books is to I Love Everything.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/7652487.stm

You can buy Weetabix in the US, though. I think Whole Foods has it - certainly some supermarket chain round here does, anyway.

Fat Duck was so, so good last time I went there. Jealous.

I bought Weetabix in Canada once but it was ludicrously expensive

I saw Weetabix in Cost Plus last week (while buying McVitie's digestive biscuits and Hobnobs), but didn't notice the price.

And Whiney - if your GF is crazy enough not to want to go to the Fat Duck - I'm there!

(ps. does she not want to go because she thinks it'll be all clouds of fluff and bits of wood, because you can eat sort of 'normal' food there too...)

She's mad picky. She's vegetarian but has a list of vegetables she doesn't like a mile long. They told me they could make her a veg version of the tasting menu, but she's also not a glutton like me and doesn't know if she can handle a bazillion courses. Plus we're only in London two days and I don't want to drag her some place she's not pumped about.

So, seriously, if you're into the idea, drop me a sitemail. Since you'd be doing me (and her) a HUGE favor, I'd only expect you to bring the £££s for your wood-and-fluff tasting menu order (they seem adamant that everyone at the table order it) order and whatever drinks you want. I'll be a good host and pay our tip, I'll cover our train/taxi ride to come from London (is that where you're at?), and buy you a celebratory beverage if applicable.

Then we can post about what we ate!

That pork pie news linked to above is excellent. WRT English soups: pea and ham is a bit of a classic.

There is that, but generally Scottish soups >>> English soups by a large margin.

Potato Pete makes a good soup

Ah, but like Hitler, he has eyes everywhere.

I've got this book: The Taste of Britain, which is awesome. 450 pages of every british food you can think of, arranged by region - not really recipes as such, just a piece on the history of the dish and the techniques used to make it, and sometimes tips on where to get the choicest cuts. And not just proper foods like scratchings, black pudding and gingerbread - Tizer, Vimto and 'Tally's' Ice-Cream get just as much attention

I've got this book...
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/518Q5Y0QQJL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
...which sounds suspiciously similar, i.e. Vimto, Tizer, etc. It's an excellent inventory of British food, paid for by the EU, perhaps unsurprisingly.

Not a lot about soups though!

I've been meaning to check that out, but the price tag is a bit off putting. Well worth getting is 'In Search of Food: Traditional Eating and Drinking in Britain' by Richard and David Mabey, it's about 30 years old but much of the stuff they were covering was already just about extinct, wiped away by the then growing supermarket culture.

This is a good cook book on British food as well.

Definitely, and actually cookable, which is always a bonus.
Gary Rhodes 'New British Classics' is really good too but has a picture of him on the front so I won't link to it.

You can pick up Jane Grigson's guide to British cookery (which has info and recipes and is very good [although naturally a bit out of date now being well over 20 years old]) for a penny on Amazon, bargain!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/03/06/britain.restaurant.blumenthal.sick/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Just weeks after I ate there too. Guess I'm stickin to the $5 footlongs.

I think the appearance of Ann Coulter in the ad next to that article is more frightening.

I can't help thinking that there's an element of misremembering/hysteria creeping in to this story. How was your meal anyway?

yeah it's all over the papers here. how was yr meal whiney?

Two of my friends ate there a couple of weeks ago and went down with something very nasty shortly afterwards. I don't know what misremembering/hysteria you could be talking about. Maybe a few people are jumping on the bandwagon but there's definitely something pretty grim in that kitchen.

What's really weird is they haven't worked out what it could be yet.

time jumping sickness obviously

Those of you looking for Heston food can go to the Little Chef he took over instead.

How was your meal anyway?

I mean easily the best or second best meal of my life, obviously. Not getting sick helped. the bacon and egg ice cream is 1000 times better than it sounds. Half the joy is on the presentation, when you're invited to see something or smell something or read something with your course. The best was "Sounds Of The Sea," where they brought out a little conch shell with an ipod mini inside, and you listen to lapping waves while you eat mollusks and sea weed and mystery foam.

they don't tell you what any of the stuff on the Sea course is until afterwards, so you just listen to the seagulls and imagine walking on the beach, picking up random shit and eating it like a caveman.

when this is all over with, i'm betting 50:1 that something on the Sounds Of The Sea course is what's making people sick. Some weird clam or something.

Really enjoyed him on the telly the other night, except for the really annoying selection of guests.

I missed the Victorian Ejaculating Cake!

it didn't miss me :(
victorian bucake

They need to send Gordon Ramsay in there to clean that shit up ASAP.

What's really weird is they haven't worked out what it could be yet.

Erm, well, yeah precisely. It seems to be a bit odd that people who hadn't said anything until now are suddenly piping up. "Oh, yeah I was sick after being there" when asked by someone. And at the height of the vomiting big season too.

Vomiting bug.

conversely no-one has died from eating at Little Chef since the revamp. really makes you think.

i'm betting 50:1 that something on the Sounds Of The Sea course is what's making people sick. Some weird clam or something.

This seems to have been ruled out.

The entire menu was tested but all results proved negative. Final tests are being carried out to see if an airborne virus caused the sickness.

Isn't Blumenthal just a media-friendly Ferran Adrià aping baw?

No.

Despite this being reported on Tuesday the news is still being reported as "food poisoning". There's a certain amount of schadenfreude in much of the reporting.

"Essence of polonium"

i can see how a virus could spread in there: it's VERY tight quarters and people are coming from all over Britain to congregate in a little room and eat snailz

Fat Duck re-opening tomorrow.
no evidence has been found during the 15-day inquiry that could link the illness to food poisoning.

Those of you looking for Heston food can go to the Little Chef he took over instead.

is that still running? that TV show was some of the most excruciating/fascinating TV on Channel 4 of late.

I think the Popham branch is still using the Blumenthal menu and according to the Little Chef facebook page "the trial is being reviewed and we're looking forward to our next meetings with Heston.".

had my first steak & kidney pie on monday. will be eating the second shortly (like 15 minutes.)
also, cornish pasties.

Blimey, my leaping to the defence of the Fat Duck upthread is weird and harsh on people who were very obviously ill. It's not like I had a stake in the place. Incidentally I don't think much of his steak and kidney pies, or indeed most of Waitrose range.

I mean Heston Blumenthal's range, not Waitrose as a whole, obv.

Does anyone know of a good history book focusing on British food, rather than a cookbook?

Waitrose are really crap at soup. Never had a nice one from there.

Does anyone know of a good history book focusing on British food, rather than a cookbook?

― textbook blows on the head (dowd), Thursday, 23 June 2011 10:27 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I refer you in part to my earlier answer.
British Food: Classic or Dud (S&D too)
It's got a lot of history in it but it's not a history book.

The classic history is probably Dorothy Hartley's 'Food in England' from the 50s. Taste by Kate Colquhoun is a very readable more up-to-date version.

Thanks, Ned, for responding. I read 'Traditional Foods of Britain', but it wasn't quite what I was looking for. And as a Scot I'm more interested in Britain than England. I'll ask around anyway. Thanks again.

http://i.imgur.com/yr8p7NE.jpg

that's obv fake, broccoli isn't traditional wtf

Looks like a core sample.

Like when scientists go to the Antarctic and drill through the ice.

Should be fired into space along with an mp3 of Hey Jude to represent humankind to the cosmos tbh.

The English, imo, tend to excel in breakfast. They are often adequate in most other categories, but have few outstanding non-breakfast dishes and the majority of those are desserts.

You've obviously never had slowly cooked oxtail and Guinness stew with herby suet DUMPLINGS!.

Why the hell did my iPhone do that to the word DUMPLINGS!.

Ok, ilXor does it to the word DUMPLINGS!.

I am now craving Sticky Toffee Pudding thanks to this thread, ya bastards.

http://i.imgur.com/95qUFmF.jpg

Those particular ones are awful, like chewing on a bicycle inner tube.

the frozen quorn ones are far nicer

http://home.bt.com/images/tesco-doughnuts-136390147564303901-140514144519.jpg

http://cdn.foodbeast.com/content/uploads/2014/11/Weirdoughs.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/BPpf3WO.gif

imagine dayo's face when he sees what passes for chinese food here!

The mighty Vesta Chow Mein!
http://images2.mysupermarket.co.uk/ProductsDetailed/82/024782.jpg?v=7

imagine dayo's face when he sees what passes for chinese food here!

― And the cry rang out all o'er the town / Good Heavens! Tay is down (imago), Sunday, May 29, 2016 10:57 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

as long as its made by a chinese person ill be ok

http://www.potnoodle.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2014/09/STANDARD-POTS-Chinese.jpg

I'm pretty sure that even if I hired a Chinese person to pour the boiling water into a Chinese Chow Mein Pot Noodle, it'd be as far away from Chinese cuisine as the Home Counties are anyway.

http://www.debenhams.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/prod_10701_10001_311100572999_-1
The ideal gift for any Pot Noodle enthusiast, this set includes their Chinese chow mein flavour. Tasty and perfect at home or work, pour into the mug and enjoy with the spinning fork.

I'm pretty sure that even if I hired a Chinese person to pour the boiling water into a Chinese Chow Mein Pot Noodle, it'd be as far away from Chinese cuisine as the Home Counties are anyway.

― get on (down) / to the funky (sound) / of (snoball), Sunday, May 29, 2016 11:06 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

the important thing is that a chinese person is getting paid

And following on from the 'Christmas Tinner' upthread, 'Pot Noeldle':
https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/article-1288339892394-0bd1fbf4000005dc-340645_466x310.jpg
https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/article-1288340004453-0bd1fc66000005dc-635186_466x310.jpg

flashback to the cover of royal trux' sweet sixteen with that last pic

https://theoutline.com/post/8586/why-is-british-food-so-bad

A poor article with a largely unconvincing rationale imo

'Why people think British food is bad' is probably what I really want

British cheeses are excellent on the whole. So are Dutch cheeses, another country the article picks on.

I think British food is better than German food on the whole. Pies are excellent.

Is offal eaten commonly in Britain these days? when French people go to restaurants I find they're much more fond of offal than the impression I'd had, from French/"continental" restaurants elsewhere, before moving here.

was basically onboard with the article until it started with the amateur psychology theory, then quit.

the problem (if it is a problem) is not that "british food is bad" it's that most British people do not really care about / love food the way they care about / love music, tv, films, etc. there was a good bit in kate fox's "watching the english" about us having a concept of "a foodie" which has a hint of moral degeneracy to it, and is an alien concept to other cultures.

xp vast majority of british people won't eat mussels, let alone offal, ime

Jacques Chirac reportedly had this to say about British cuisine whilst dining with Tony Blair: 'La cuisine anglaise, au début, on croit que c’est de la merde et après, on regrette que ça n’en soit pas.' Roughly translated: 'English cuisine: at first you think it's shit then you regret that it isn't.'

"I wish I was eating shit" is this a zing i cannot tell

Basically: 'this is so gross I wish I was eating shit right now'.

Pretty sure the British didn't invent rhubarb or strawberries, as that article claims. Agree that most people in the UK don't really care about food; price, convenience and familiarity are the priorities.
My spurious proof: the prevalence of motorway service stations: few car journeys in the UK last more than a few hours, yet we have loads of these places, all full of people buying bad food.

was in the Co-op this morning and an able bodied and most probably not suffering from financial hardship middle aged English looking man was in the queue in front of me. In his basket he had the Daily Mail, a stack of about 3 or 4 refrigerated readymeals and a bag of frozen chips from what I could see.

highway cuisine in the UK is so so so many leagues behind motorway cuisine in, say, France. like, ridiculously so.

My favorite british foods: scotch eggs, fish and chips, black pudding, marmite. Jelly babies.

I just asked someone to bring me back two big squeezes of marmite from a trip to london. He got one for himself thinking it must be amazing since it was all I asked for. He tried it, was like WTF, and gave it to me. Yah!

and trifle. I will eat the shit out of trifle. I don't understand why that isn't everywhere all the time.

that is an excellent selection imo mb ive no idea what marmite tastes like so reserve judgement

Had a big discussion about Scotch eggs in work today, googled to find out they were invented in Whitby in the late 19th century and are really scotch(ed) eggs.

I have never been to a country where the milk and cream tastes as rich and delicately sweet as it does in the UK.

I was in heaven when i saw black pudding scotch eggs.

I tried to make scotch eggs once when I went to a "stuffed or wrapped meat" potluck party in colorado. The deepfryer couldn't handle it. And I think I overcooked the eggs before packing the sausage around it. But I also brought a pinata that I put slim jims in.

The discussion at work was started by a colleague wanting to know whether it would be OK to eat a scotch egg that was 5 days past its sell-by date. I think it's fair to say she hungry.

Scotch eggs are so foul, they are the balls of corruption with added layers of venality of foul smelling lunchbox snacks!

I like plenty of british food but not scotch eggs or trifle, which has been spoiled for me forever by the soggy biscuit things at the bottom

i once ordered a scotch egg at a pub in ny. They served it already cut up and on a salad.

I just asked someone to bring me back two big squeezes of marmite from a trip to london.

The idea of squeezable Marmite freaks me out, rather. I'm not sure whether my tastebuds have changed or our houses have got warmer, but I'm sure when I was a child, when it came in a jar with an enamel lid, Marmite had a much stronger flavour and was generally STIFFER.

One thing with Marmite in jars is if you get it around the inner rim of the lid, it turns into superglue

otm. the squeeze is so much cleaner to use. and it's a lot lighter to put in luggage. I have had to get one on amazon that comes in a tub? (600g). and those are kind of weird.

I try to stick to glass vessels for these things now tho, to avoid wrath of greta

not that i'm suggesting anyone overseas be denied squeezy imports

actually bought my first ever squeezy marmite yesterday, will report back on the consistency.

i am surprised marmite isn't more prevalent in the US. Especially with more people not eating meat and it having a lot of B12.

yeah, the plastic is bad but at least it weighs less for shipments/carbon footprint. It's the same way with wine bottles. The alternatives to glass suck in a lot of ways but it's better for shipping weight.

you've just got to make sure any small trailing stalagmites of marmite are not dangling off the spoon/knife when you move it away from the jar, it took me a lifetime to learn this skill. But considering I use more in sauces/gravies than on toast these days I'm up for squeezy marmite!

He tried it, was like WTF, and gave it to me. Yah!

i thought everyone liked marmite?

place i was working a couple of years ago had a jar of marmite in the cupboard that went off in 2004.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/YT5kI3zJFmA"; frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

embed fail
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT5kI3zJFmA

xpost. For some unknown reason he thought it was going to be sweet, so I guess it was a bad shock. He is also from ecuador.

I think British food is better than German food on the whole.

My thoughts exactly. Really not saying much.

in fairness to britain, white people food in north america is trash also.

and british food includes british indian cuisine which is great

i wish there were more indian fast food/fast casual places in the US.

yeah, indian food is good here, and people seem permitted to be enthusiastic about it without any stupid hedging filter of health/class/tradition, there might be a good sociological essay in this somewhere.

i like tons of brit food by default bc a lot of it is part of Australian food culture (obv).

gimme all that fried dough & assorted meats encased in pastry *chef’s kiss*

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/jan/23/taking-the-hake-nottingham-chippy-voted-best-in-uk?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

i refuse to believe this chippy is better than my local one that is run by a master chef who used to the personal chef of Prince Andrew... but still lots of the old boys who go in there are always telling him there aren't chippies as good as his even in Scarborough or Whitby .. and that is a big compliment. Well apparently it is though - i've not been to either places in decades!

"The Cod’s Scallops"

wtf - fuck off hipsters!

our two local chippies are awful, not sure if there is a decent one in Cambridge at all, nearest good one I know is in Ely

most chippies are bad ime.

whereas a good chippy is sublime. my favourites I've ever been to are the Anstruther Fish Bar (in Anstruther, Fife, prosaically enough) and Colman's in South Shields are the best i've been to

oof, my posts

There was briefly another good quality one down the road in Savile Town that was set up by someone who had a shop in Hudds with a really good rep as well near the old tech college site. And if you ever went past after Friday mosque there would be queues of people and groups eating outside and it always seemed to be more busy and thriving than all the lousy fast-food fleapit dives offering cheap fried chicken and pizzas. And then someone had the bright idea of buying it up and turning it into another bad fast-food fleapit with hygiene score written on with a sharpie. So yeah good chippies are definitely the exception!

i like tons of brit food by default bc a lot of it is part of Australian food culture (obv).

gimme all that fried dough & assorted meats encased in pastry *chef’s kiss*

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl),

An Australian expat just opened a bar in Tupelo and he has meat pies and rissoles on the menu, looking forward to trying it out.

oooh yum

He found a basement space and called it Downunder, so props there.

my two great chippies of last year were in milford on sea and sheerness. unsurprisingly being by the sea is an advantage

although actually saying that there's an incredible one in hackney central now, with superb vegan options too

yeah being by the sea is only an advantage if they have a clue what they are doing. And loads of by the sea are probably paying sky high rents and pushed to squeeze the business end harder rather than put out quality food.

Most of the chippies I went to in Newquay were shite tbh.

milford on sea one was good because the place is pretty posh (albeit quiet and out of the way), sheerness one was good because it was in a fucking backstreet in a derelict industrial wasteland in one of england's least fashionable towns

both knew what they were doing but maybe the place either has to be eerily picture-perfect or long-destroyed for the magic to take hold

maybe lack of tourism either way is key

although actually saying that there's an incredible one in hackney central now, with superb vegan options too

Where’s the sheerness one?

tbh I haven't had a bad one in Hastings. but while I usually go to one that's near the fishing harbour, no idea if the fish actually come from there or if they just get them from a wholesaler somewhere else

been to that one (I think - bit posh, feels like a gastropub inside) and yes, it was very good

It's been 16 months since I left the UK and I'm over most of my cravings now but occasionally I'll see a picture of a bag of British chippy chips on Instagram or Twitter and I want it so bad I could die. Greasy, soggy, undercooked and soaked in vinegar but amazing.

Sheerness one is on Google Maps as Blue Town Fish Bar but it's actually Bluetown Fish & Chips, on the so-called High Street of Blue Town, which is basically a semi-abandoned dockland area at the tip of the island, not too far from the station. The guy who runs it is...Turkish, I think? Been doing fish and chips in the area for decades apparently. Anyway everything is freshly cooked to order and the chips are amazing. I thoroughly recommend a visit. Check out the ecstatic Google reviews if you're not sure!

Laughing Halibut - that takes me back - think I last went there in my schooldays.

Hackney one is Sutton & Son - v good

Ty, I will check out that one! Wasn’t impressed by Sutton & Sons when I lived in Hackney.

presumably new ownership - it seems very 'recent' idk

sheerness worth a visit regardless - a few v interesting places on the high st

im starvin now ye fuckeds me insides are touchin

I am still very sad I never got to try Guinness Marmite.

I think our best meals on our summer vacation last year were in Newcastle. Considering that any family dining for us has to meet the preferences of A) the sensible pescatarian B) the sausage appetizer with a steak entree hardman C) the eight-year-old young lady who likes some fried things, some green things, and not much else

WRT Australian Food being well grounded in British food, Australia takes the meat pie to new heights. I will rep for the steak pie from the Caltex servo in Penong, SA, (next to the windmill museum) as being one of the best in existence.

My grandma was 100% australian, never been to England & still somehow cooked like a Brit expat every day of her life. Steamed puddings, trifles, kedgereee, every boiled vegetable known to man...

I am still very sad I never got to try Guinness Marmite.
― Yerac, Friday, 24 January 2020 01:09 (twenty hours ago)

It didn't taste different in any way!

I often wonder what the US/whatever tourists in London really think when they have their shite fish and chips in a pub in a bland pub in zone 1. Poor sods. It really is true 90% of fish and chip shops are very ordinary.

Yeah I think they did a champagne Marmite one time and that tasted just like regular Marmite, 😥

Literally the worst thing about Hull is chippies don't do potato scallops

Muswell Hill (of course) has a gourmet fish n' chippy, bit out of the way for the average tourist though

Marmite is still made in Burton-on-Trent, I think, having outlived the brewing industry it is a by-product of there.
Yes, Guinness flavour Marmite was nothing special, but Marmite flavour Guinness is still widely available in corner shops.

There's still a humongous brewery in Burton, one of the multinationals iirc, and yeah they make Marmite there too. We used to go shopping there once a fortnight or so when I was a kid, the whole town stank of yeast

Having just visited there at the weekend I can confirm that Edinburgh still smells of yeast too.

hmmmm... supposedly trying to make homemade marmite is "dangerous and hard to control".

Just found a "recipe" that takes 10 days

I really miss the cheap fishcakes I used to get from the fish and chips shops in Liverpool as a kid.

actually bought my first ever squeezy marmite yesterday, will report back on the consistency.

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, January 23, 2020 9:08 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

My report is that it's just regular marmite. The pot is good though, it dispenses the very thin stream which you need.

Cheesy chips at Cheltenham Town (@CTFCofficial)

💷 £3 pic.twitter.com/B3ACM7OCbP

— Footy Scran (@FootyScran) December 26, 2021

This may be an appropriate thread for me to rediscover the enthusiasm expressed by ILX whenever DUMPLINGS! get mentioned.

Muswell Hill (of course) has a gourmet fish n' chippy, bit out of the way for the average tourist though

assuming it's the same one, somewhat impressed it's still going. there was a fancy fish & chips place there when I lived there 2003-6. I only went there a couple of times because the queues were ludicrous but it was pretty good (and didn't cost a fortune either, 17 years ago anyway)

I had some very bland chips at Whaddon Road in 2003 with no not very melty cheese slices. My most notable memory of the day was the house right next to the football ground with a boarded up window where presumably a league two standard defensive hoof had smashed through it at some point.

Pie, peas, gravy and a sausage roll at Barnoldswick Town (@barlickfc)

💷 £5.50 pic.twitter.com/21EWlCWcH6

— Footy Scran (@FootyScran) December 1, 2022

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/448060749_994431525804505_7365964657292824280_n.jpg?_nc_cat=103&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=M7CaJEw_fUsQ7kNvgEGASVc&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.xx&oh=00_AYAQ5qrUR2SIUABQfAUKMZR4Orr2Ycq3wSck3mJCfoaNMQ&oe=66710D4A

would eat

was talking about old sandwiches last night, my Irish grandad's fave one was the tomato sandwich. When he was dying of cancer and almost gone he requested a tomato sandwich and a double whiskey. A tomato sandwich!

When I first arrived in Sydney Australia, I wandered into a 'deli' place and saw 'asparagus sandwich' on the board... I had very American notions of what a sandwich should be, but what was handed to me was: white bread with margarine and mercilessly boiled stalks of asparagus, probably from a tin.. that was it. I did finish it, but would never order again

the australia/britisher “salad sandwich” is something i miss terribly

and yeah asparagus sandwich is something i DONT miss

i didnt try fresh asparagus til i moved to the US, grew up thinking that i hated it because i had only ever had it from a can ie gross

the australia/britisher “salad sandwich” is something i miss terribly

'Salad roll'? I remember thinking 'who the fuck puts beets on a sandwich?' lol

Mmmm liver sosage

xpost yeah salad roll too!
canned beetroot = classic

I've seen that photo before and can only lament the lack of corned beef

it's just to the left of the ham, 14p

pence then, pounds now probably

wots that milk chocolate bar with the foil wrapping? thought it was a kitkat at first glance.

xp not in Hull

I think that's Cadbuys BAR SIX calzino

I think it says 'Milk Chocolate Wafer Bar' on the spine, does what it says on the tin I guess

Just not getting whether the cheese in the footy cheese and chips being slices is intentional. Thought it tended to be grated for a reason. Blending in with the chips and possibly garlic sauce as you eat it better.
Just seems to be less easy with square slices like.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/36844288@N00/38407126214

getting Nazi vibes tbh

xpost it just says ‘milk chocolate wafer bar’ on the spine so likely a generic knock off? Premium Golden Winder crisps though! I don’t remember pressed veal sandwiches at all shudder

lol this thread is moving fast!

I would eat all these. My depraved soul. Covid did off most of the independent sandwich shops in London. There are a couple left that look like this, one on Eastcheap I think. Corned Beef and tomato for me.

“Footy cheese and chips” not conjuring pleasant images

even choc bar is a knockoff - the absolute chunkiness of it, that's something we've lost

It was Footy Scran cheese and chips and was from 2021.
Not sure if it was being pictured as delightful or a mistake. Seems not to be the best preparation.

Up thread a bit.

cheesy French fry style chips with processed cheese slices is absolutely unforgivable, easily meltable cheddar grated over chunky chips fresh from the fryer is the only acceptable version. last time I had it was at Cambridge Utd, correct kind of cheese but sprinkled lightly over cold French fries, very crap, all the food at Cambridge utd is crap.