^

Oddly enough, I've never heard it referred to as a bum bag. Although it'd be funny to hear it called that! We've always called it a "belt bag" :)

Oh, I just want to cook for you all! The idea that British food is bland just makes me want to cry! Bad British food is bland, but the good stuff is wonderfully flavourful, delicately seasoned, and often lets the main part speak for itself instead of drowning it in artificial seasonings!

I nominate the following as examples of Great British cooking:

An organic, free range, roasted chicken, its skin a delicious golden colour, scented with rosemary or lemon, served with crisp roast potatoes, and peas picked from the garden mere minutes before cooking.

A Shepherd's Pie, made with fresh British lamb mince. A rich, well seasoned gravy inside, and a scattering of sharp chedder on the outside.

A joint of rare roast beef, served with light and fluffy yorkshire puddings, rich onion gravy and fresh horseradish and buttered parsnips.

A bowl of strawberries picked that afternoon, with thick whipped cream

A rubarb or apple crumble, served with thick Devonshire custard

Pheasant breast, cooked in Somerset cider, with chestnut stuffing and foraged mushrooms

A ploughman's, with sharp Cheddar, Branston Pickle, and a thick hunk of granary bread

A side of poached Scottish salmon, served with minted new potatoes and local asparagus

Venison cassarole, rich with juniper, with savoy cabbage

Toasted crumpets or teacakes with melting butter, served with a pot of strong brewed tea.

These are the things I grew up with, that my mother used to (and still does) cook. As do many of my British friends. This isn't Nigella-inspired cooking, but the way people, certainly in the country, cooked in the 70s, 80s etc.

I will note, Brits seem to eat out less than my American and Canadian friends, and are far more likely to go out for food they can't easily make themselves or cannot make to the same level because of equipment (curry, thai, fish & chips, etc). Pubs never used to be places people went to eat - licencing laws, local council restrictions etc. changed that somewhat, with pubs being able to open longer if they served food. What this meant for lots was a freezer of food to be cooked it some PITA wanted food, to comply with regulations. The 'gastro-pubs' grew later, and some are very good, but it isn't somewhere top of my list by food to go for a meal - it may well be by location though (pub walks ending with Sunday lunch in a country pub are en experience, Labrador on feet, more than a destination for the food itself - and I find the simpler the better, a perfect spot for a ploughmans!)

School food earned Britain a terrible rep as well - meat boiled until grey, vegetables soggy, stodgy puddings etc. Some of those things remain as favourites (roly poly cake with custard would be a personal school throwback!) in older folk, men who went to boarding school especially, and you find them in places that cater to them (especially private clubs). A lot of those things were born from rationing (cheap, stodgy foods made with flour, to fill tummies when meat was scarce or expensive - not all that different from the US biscuits and gravy, pancakes etc). But most British children these days wouldn't know what spotted dick was (other than something hugely comical!) let alone eat it on a regular basis.

I also find that my British friends are more foodie adventerous than many of my North American friends - when we go out here we normally end up in an Italian or Steak restaurant, because so many people won't eat (read, won't try) Indian, Thai, Ethiopian, etc. food, often with the stock excuse 'I don't like spicy'. Now, I think Britain embraces a lot of different cuisines, Indian, especially because of the colonial routes, but also a lot of mainland Europe, French and Italian in particular. Normal supermarkets in the UK carry tons more exotic ingredients than I can find here (I buy several British food magazines, and have huge trouble finding the ingredients without going to speciality stores, I actually whopped a little when I found harrissa paste in a supermarket last week, yet my friends have had it in their Waitrose basket for years!)

May I add Bangers and Mash with onion gravy and Fish,Chips and mushy peas to your list.
If I ever take my wife to America and murder her in a heinous and dastardly fashion either of these and probably both would be my last meal before heading for the electric chair.
I'd die a happy man ( not because I did away with Herself,you understand. )

I did a cooking course when in hinterland China - we were quite a mixed bag, a Scot, an Aussie, a couple of Italians and a Chilean :D The Italian was bemoaning their inability to get many of the ingredients we used - even what I consider day to day things like oyster sauce. Meanwhile, I managed to source everything - even the goje berries and Chinese red dates - although for the latter I did have to go to my Chinese supermarket and not my normal supermarket.

I decided it was because Italian food is so good they don't feel the need to experiment. British food is good, but less of a religion so people were willing to experiment more. And as a result, I can get ingredients relatively easily from all over the world.

(And probably also due to our colonial heritage - bit populations descended from Chinese and Indian/Bangladeshi immigrants means we do have things like Chinese supermarkets catering for specialist foods).

I split my time between London and San Francisco, so I'm truly blessed when it comes to food. In my experience, it's cheaper to get a good meal in a restaurant in the Bay Area than in London (which isn't too surprising as obviously London is a far more expensive city to operate in). But London really scores on the variety of good food available and at the very highest levels. In SF, they do "new American" very well but, with honorable exceptions, the French, Italian, Indian etc. is disappointing or plain wrong and, if you mention Middle Eastern you're liable to be deported (ok, I exaggerate).

As to fresh ingredients, the quality and range of fruit and vegetable is to die for in the Bay Area, but the meat is bland and tasteless and they simply don't have game. Whereas in London, it's simple to obtain the most wonderful properly hung meat and game.

I also travel a fair amount to France and Italy. France was the center of my first food passions, but I find it to be a shadow of its former self. So often now, the food in France is derivative and boring. How many times can I really face canned Haricots Verts? The most exciting restaurants in Paris nowadays have foreign cuisine, but at the same time foreign cuisine has not been fully embraced. Yes food in France is uniformly good, but it's not excellent.

As to Italy, you can have the most wonderful cheap meals. But if you're there for more than a week, the variety starts letting the show down. I find that I start getting bored of the same essential dishes day in, day out and crave even a hamburger.

So many of the posts above are quite extraordinary and don't seem to reflect reality at all. But then so many of my British friends look askance at the time I spend in the US, wondering why I haven't starved to death as American food has the reputation of being the worst in the world....!!

With the exception about the comparisons with The Bay (which I cannot comment on through lack of experience ......) I wholeheartedly agree.

My comments in the thread stemmed from that time when Paris felt like the place in Europe to experience the very best food and when it seemed to me all that changed. So I would regularly travel from London to Paris for a few days to take my wife too some of those top places - normally for their more affordable lunch menus. There was a cross over point - which I think was around 20 years ago when Paris food seemed to start sinking at the same time that London food started to improve and we found ourselves becoming more dissapointed with Paris and more appreciative of London. But the difference then and to an extent now is that you go to Paris to experience French food but London to experience the very best of all cusines.

Where I think some of the posts are confused is that they are confusing the quality of British cuisine compared with other generic cuisines with the entirely different topic of the cuisine served in Britain which due to the cosmopolitan nature of Britain and in particular London we are blessed with some wonderful restaurants most of which are not British cusine based. So the thread is about two different things that have got mixed ie British food and local cuisine and the different topic ie the quality of restaurants in Britiain.

So if you wish to visit a city which offers the full range at it's best then the UK and obviously in particular London is the place to experience the very best of not just British food (which is difficult to focus on because it is so localised as a cusine and isn't just bangers and mash, fish and chips and Le rosbif) but also Italian, Indian, Chinese with all it's regional variations, and of course so-called French etc.

Where France still has the edge is in the smaller local type restaurant. Paris for example through both strict planning and rent controls remains a collection of small localised villages each with it's own butcher, baker and bistro etc. It's still possible to experience really good local French food at that level just below the top showy stuff but at very good prices for a European capital.

No, you'd die unhappy because the Americans would screw up the F&C and mushy peas are just a crime against food outright. :)

A little off-topic with respect to British food (which I happen to like, by the way), there's definitely Middle Eastern food from various countries in and around SF. Just for a start, there are two places within a few blocks of each other on Mission and quite a number of places over here in the Berkeley/Oakland area. They're definitely not the only ones. And, of course, there are many felafel carts scattered around. So mentioning Middle Eastern shouldn't get you odd looks.

One thing to consider is that, for historical and geographic reasons, SF in general focuses on different international cuisines than London does. So while good Indian hasn't been nearly as plentiful in the Bay Area as in London, or in Britain in general--though the influx of South Asians in high tech has led to great improvement--I'd venture that you're not as likely to find, e.g., good Korean, Filipino, or Central American, in London as in the Bay Area. And don't get me started on Mexican food in Britain.

Then again, if we were ranking countries based on their offerings from other nations, Italy would place pretty low on the list!

OK! We'll be around your place about 7 then? There should be about 3000 of us - should we bring a bottle or anything? :D

Do you ever remember the British socialist MP and serial gaffe-maker Peter Mandelson ?
Legend has it that while on the campaign trail one day deep in working class Northern England he chose a photo-op in a fish and chip shop to enhance his right-on credentials.
After ordering fish and chips he pointed to the mushy peas and said " I'll have a portion of the guacamole as well. "

It was a funny story, as you say "legend" but sadly untrue ....


Some other urban political myths .....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...cal-myths.html

:)

I ate quite a bit of great food in the UK, but much of it marked a departure from Britishness. That is most of the finer menus relied heavily on French. Sometimes this reflected on the menu, other times the pretensions of the house. Britain does not want for ingredients. Even in St Andrews, I found items to delight the overwrought tastes unique to 20 year old trust-fund foodies.

Many cooks in the uk simply do not understand their spice cabinets. Germans and Swedes are far more adroit at utilising the herbs/spices of both the Occident and Orient.

The reason why the best French food is in the UK is because many of the best French chef's give up and come to the UK! It is my experience that the French do not like reprinting menus and leave them the same pretty much for ever. It must he a bore if you are an ambitious foody sous chef ...

And my theory regarding under-spicing is the reliance on tourist traffic.

I'll go out on a limb and guess that the fact the Prime Minister tried to ban the kebab is probably quite telling.:D

Buggered that up too I suspect.