However, if you visit this fine emerald isle, you will find the US has no monopoly on bland, mildly sweet food. (To be fair, we _do_ have some pretty great cheese)
I recently visited Dublin for the first time, and picked an Indian restaurant based on Yelp ratings/reviews. I've never eaten worse Indian food than I did that day.
I don't believe that the restaurant operators are unable to make OK food. They were Indian themselves. Perhaps they had to change their flavours to adapt to local palates, and their ingredients due to economic pressure?
I find the same thing happening with Mexican food with regards to dulled flavours.
Well, apart from whisky, nobody ever considered Ireland a place for good food. For UK of course it's even worse, they're actively known for the bad taste and cuisine.
As someone from the UK I take offense at that, sure we might not be on the same level as Italy or France (but really, who is?) but we have some great traditional food. Pies of all kinds, fish 'n' chips, traditional sausages, good old roast dinners, chicken tikka masala and of course the healthiest breakfast in the world. Tasty stuff. And lets not forget our mayonnaise and ketchup beats all others, hands down.
I think I blame the British connection for some of the issues with American food: overly sweet, fish without bones, little seafood, etc.
I had been foolishly looking forward to a meal of fried potatoes, olive oil, Parmesan, salt, and lightly seared diced garlic, with perhaps a bit of parsley (or, dare I dream, cilantro/coriander). I thought it might bring back memories of nights spent at Giants games
What I got was chips with a gigantic blob of sightly garlic-scented mayonnaise plopped on top of it. Disappointing, to say the least.
To be fair, there is some fantastic food, but you have to look for it. Dublin has some surprisingly good burritos, for instance. I think the issue comes from the fact that inexpensive street food in places like Italy is phenomenal, but in Ireland and the UK tends to be mediocre.
That's hardly what one means when talking about a good national cuisine though... The UK also has excellent Indian restaurants, but that's again something else.
That's your first mistake. You can get all that, but it's not exactly English. You'd have better luck with getting all that on roast potatoes to be honest.
> I think the issue comes from the fact that inexpensive street food in places like Italy is phenomenal, but in Ireland and the UK tends to be mediocre.
I agree, but then again we don't really have a street food culture like those places. London has got pretty into the street food idea, and there are tonnes of really nice food markets springing up everywhere. Pretty damn expensive, but nice once in a while.
For what it's worth, I've gotten really in to cooking since living here. I make my own Doro Wat and tequila lime chicken in particular.
In general, foods here don't usually have a lot of nuanced flavours. There are exceptions, and I love a hearty uncomplicated meal as much as the next person, but I do miss it. Admittedly I may have been spoiled when I was in CA, where I lived (San Diego and SF) both seem to have pretty great food.
Sort of makes my point. None of these have anybody (of statistically significant percentage) outside the UK salivating, or have ever created something like a "British restaurant" to be found abroad (like there are French or Italian restaurants everywhere).
And even the best of this list was invented by taking from a foreign (the Bangladeshi) cuisine tradition.
>and of course the healthiest breakfast in the world
Bacon, sausages, eggs, and beans? I think nutritionists can point to at least 20 other candidate countries for that title...
Have you ever tried a traditional English pie? I'm a bit biased obviously, but as an anecdote my Italian co-worker who moved here recently absolutely loves them (and I can't help but say 'who ate all the pies, guido?' to him). They don't have that kind of pastry in their cuisine at all and he can't get enough of them. It's a national cuisine, just because not a huge number of people outside the UK eat it doesn't make it bad in any way.
> or have ever created something like a "British restaurant" to be found abroad
You're right, cuisine isn't our major cultural export (I'd say that's TV) but it's hard to find authentic national food outside of the respective nation. Most Italians would cry at the sight of most of the "Italian food" served at "Italian restaurants", just because it's not a label you can stick on your restaurant doesn't mean it's bad...
> Bacon, sausages, eggs, and beans? I think nutritionists can point to at least 20 other candidate countries for that title...
You forgot the hash browns, black pudding and toast, all in huge quantities. Also that went way over your head, it's possibly the most unhealthy breakfast in the world when done right.
Certainly there are great foods to be had, but on the whole it seems it's not the UK's strong suit.
Well, Italians have pastry in their cuisine — but they boil it and call it pasta grin
Pork Pies are pies as well I guess, but they are a different beast and as nice (no gravy, solid filling) unless you get an amazing melton mowbray one.
Probably cultural products more generally, including books and music.
It's not usual to see a pie with meat in Italy, usually its filling it's all vegetables/eggs, seldom some ham. There are plenty though.
Nope, nothing like that, I think. English pies use thicker pastry, are filled with gravy and never anything green. Something like this[1] gives you an idea. Perhaps it's the sort of equivalent, but the Italian I work with says there is nothing like them that he's ever had in Italy.
1. http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3148692/dads-beef-mushroo...
I'm in the U.S., so the search results might be affected by my location.
edit: I tried on google.co.uk and I get more results similar to what you suggested.
So, it's definitely affected. :)
I will also add that traditional British ales played a pretty huge role in fueling the underpinnings of the American homebrewing / craft brewing movements. Of course, us Americans transformed it entirely in a different direction from the British CAMRA "real ale" world. :) But some of the most popular American craft brew style clearly have clear British lineage: IPAs / pale ales, porters, and stouts.
British-style pubs that serve those exact dishes are very popular in Canada.
These are the best places to go in England IMO. Avoid any chain pubs at all costs, the smaller local ones serve the best food in the countryside hands down.
As for whether its true, that's a much harder sell. I can buy that Britain has quite a bit of bad food; 'British' mass-market food can be a bit shoddy, since it tends to be traditional dishes like fish'n'chips and pies that respond terribly to low-quality ingredients and lengthy storage. The restaurant stuff is much better, but it can certainly seem rich and heavy to those unfamiliar (partly because it's special-occasion food being served every night).
But to sincerely claim that the Brits don't have good food is a bit absurd. It seems to be born of either ignorance or ahistoricism. People know "fatty pies", but not cullen skink or any of the other more specialized delicacies, and they seem to have gotten their sense of what's available in around 1945, which was understandably not a high point in British cuisine.
That's a myth that's refusing to die, it's not true at all.
I haven't stayed in a single hotel anywhere that doesn't serve English Breakfast. And I'm sure a lot of people are enjoying a Sunday Roast or a Chicken Tikka Masala every now and again.
But of course, I know there are a lot of ignorant people in the world, which is why I admit the myth persists.
That's not British though, it's Indian.
Chicken tikka masala is chicken tikka, chunks of chicken marinated in spices and yogurt, that is then baked in a tandoor oven
Those don't sound like British words... let's follow the links:
Chicken tikka is a chicken dish originating in South Asia.
A masala is any of the many spice mixes used in Indian cuisine. The name comes from the Hindi word for spice.
The tandoor is used for cooking in Southern, Central and Western Asia.
Did you mean British commonwealth, or British isles?
"...The historians of ethnic food Peter and Colleen Grove discuss various origin-claims of chicken tikka masala, concluding that the dish "was most certainly invented in Britain, probably by a Bangladeshi chef".[14] They suggest that "the shape of things to come may have been a recipe for Shahi Chicken Masala in Mrs Balbir Singh’s Indian Cookery published in 1961".[14]..."
Nobody is disputing the Asian influence on British cuisine. And nobody is disputing whether or not tikka masala is British.
Ever eaten pot roast? That's British food. Ever eaten a roast potato? That's British food. Ever eaten cheese, mushrooms, roast beef or rabbit? Those are all British foods.
British food, properly done (i.e., not the result of WWII rationing or Victorian institutionalisation) is savoury and earthy: roasts, onions, cheeses, mushrooms, potatoes, carrots, turnips. It is hearty and filling, and goes well with the native ale. It's delicious.
Don't knock what you haven't had.
Second, my point is not that I had some pot roast or fish and chips that were "bad" -- as in bad cooking (although you get that too a lot). My point was that even cooked the best way, they are nothing to write home about compared to other national cuisines and their dishes.
Then you're talking about food which:
- Is a very small proportion of all food consumed in the UK
- Is the food least likely to be affected by TTIP (as it's traditional, many/all of the ingredients are readily available and don't need to be imported)
So, regardless of how you or I feel about traditional British cuisine, it has little to do with the comment to which you replied (which commented on the potential impact of TTIP).
Only by people who've no idea what they're talking about. British food got a bad reputation due to, I think, three factors: first, it's the native cuisine of the English-speaking world (which means both that people don't notice it and that there are a lot of cheap, poorly-executed examples to hand); second, rationing during and after the Second World War badly hurt both availability of ingredients and folks' taste for ingredients; third, Victorian-era institutions were terribly efficient at churning out 'scientific,' 'cutting-edge' food-like substances which were almost but not quite entirely unlike the real article.
Native English, Welsh, Scottish & Irish cuisines are all delicious.
Anybody that cares for it the way people globally care about French, Italian, Chinese, Thai, Mexican, Japanese, even German etc food?
One can find more Korean BBQ joints than British restaurants the world over...
Let's put it this way: some countries have more interesting (to the world) cuisines than others. Not every national cuisine is of the same caliber.
As I understand, there was a long down period essentially as a side effect of the way industrialization played out in Britain, but that's turned around recently internally and there is growing international acceptance of the British cuisines among people who are into food.
It hasn't reached the same kind of popular currency as some other cuisines, globally, but I'd not be strongly inclined to think that's due to inherent quality factors, rather than awareness.
*and oysters, but one can't really take credit for the ocean currents.