- 10 December 2009
- 7:12am
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Other
Is British food the world’s worst?
Robert ReidLonely Planet author
The stuff we do when traveling — like go to museums, walk through markets, see statues, walk up mountains – is what I call the ‘space between meals.’ For many travelers (if you consider the almost embarrassing devotion to food seen on TV travel shows or travel mags these days), it’s the dining experience that anchors our day on the road. We plan travel around the meals. Or for the meals. And often our eating experiences are the most memorable of a trip.
Flickr Photo: jaakko.hakulinen
Sometimes the food we find traveling is plain weird. Cambodian menus include spiders, Vietnamese ones cats, Chinese go for pig faces, Oaxacans crickets – and Colombians put cheese in their hot chocolate. It’s all fair game, whether you eat or not.
But what’s the worst?
It seems an easy, and over-shot, target but a recent Lonely Planet staff poll has ignored the site’s recent praise and deemed that the world’s worst food is from Britain.
By a landslide.
A few weeks ago, a food poll sent around the LP offices in Melbourne, Oakland, London and the one-guy office in New York, and only one office didn’t care enough about its food scene to vote for it.
Can you guess which? (Hint: Not Oakland.)
The final poll put New York City/Singapore tied atop the list for best dining experiences, followed by Rome/Paris tied at second, then a predictable three-way tie of Oakland/Melbourne/San Francisco.
What does it say that the London office didn’t think to vote for itself?
Perhaps that even in Britain, the stand-by specialties of eel pie, spotted dick, haggis, crappit head, Scottish eggs (as seen on The Office) toad in the hole are still awaiting their renaissance?
I think I can wait.
Keith eats a Scottish egg
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The ‘best’ British regional food is bravely featured in LP’s ’1000 Ultimate Travel Experiences’ book.
It seems churlish not to note that the author of the above piece is an American. And what a wonderful country America is. But America’s sole contribution to the world of food is to decide that quantity beats quality. If your plate covers the table it must be good, right? In fact, I struggled to think of one distinctively American dish worth celebrating. Oh wait: KFC’s pretty popular.
But on to a more dignified discussion on the merits of British food.
Unassuming, sensible, and inspiring deep devotion: British food shares characteristics with the people who lovingly prepare it.
I don’t even need to defend British food. I will simply list some dishes and test reactions.
* A full English breakfast at the Wolesley in London. The French, I hear, do not even LIKE breakfast!
* Fresh-fried fish & chips on a beach in west Wales
* Cream tea at a cosy Cornish cafe
* Haggis, neeps & tatties on the Caledonian Sleeper overnight train to Fort William
* Roast Beef and trimmings with a pint of real ale in a country pub with a roaring fire
This is simply some of the greatest food in the world. And that’s before we’ve even discussed the wave of British chefs who have so comprehensively stolen New York and Paris’s culinary crown that bon viveurs only head to one place for gastronomic excitement, and that’s the city with red buses and black taxis.
I can only imagine my colleagues in Lonely Planet’s London office were off sampling some of the fresh produce sold in places like Borough and Broadway Markets, or enjoying the excellent real ale and salt beef sandwiches sold at the Wenlock Arms a stone’s throw from the office.
All that said, I cannot specifically defend Scotch (not Scottish) Eggs. But Keith (above) is representative of British diners – mostly men – in liking at least three of these bad boys a day.
And to correct another misconception by certain travel writers who have NOT SAMPLED the fare they are condemning, the pies served in Pie, Mash and Eel shops are not Eel Pies. They are meat pies and the eel comes served on the side. Said eel is not even jellied unless you get take away.
Rule Britannia: you’d rather eat our food than yours. Go on, admit it.
I am furious about this!!!! I work in the London office and I firmly believe that London has the best food in the world, our restuarnts are second to none and most of these make modern British food. We are world famous for our Chefs and yes we used to have a bad reputation, but that is thoroughly dead now that we have the lieks of Marco, jamie and Gordon.
But my point is I did vote and I voted for London!!!
Danielle
Ahem – American foods (and drinks) worth celebrating:
- Deep-dish pizza
- Root beer
- Bourbon
- Barbecue
- The pecan
- The badly misnamed Jerusalem artichoke
- Soft-serve ice cream
- The Icee (and later copycat the Slurpee)
- Wild rice
- The breakfast burrito
- The concord grape
- Gumbo
- The boysenberry
- The oyster po’ boy
- The Dungeness crab
- Grits
- New Mexican sopaipillas
- Malted milk (this one’s tricky, Horlick was British, but started his company in Wisconsin)
- Cioppino
- The Martini
- The Muffuletta sandwich
- Eggs Benedict
I love English food and the comments are making me hungry, but the topic reminds me of the European definition of heaven and hell:
In Heaven,
All the policemen are British,
all the chefs are French,
all the auto mechanics are German,
all the lovers are Italian, and
everything is run by the Swiss.
In Hell,
all the chefs are British,
all the auto mechanics are French,
all the policemen are German,
all the lovers are Swiss, and
everything is run by the Italians!
I had the pleasure of a year-and-a-half of London life a few years ago. Certainly British breakfasts rank high worldwide, otherwise I tended to go with curries, Vietnamese noodles, Afghan, self-made sandwiches.
I had some jellied eel my last day. Good thing it wasn’t my first.
Is Robert Reid lonely planet’s worst author? It seems easy, and over-shot, but using a youtube clip of Keith from the office, eating a scotch egg to support ones argument does seem to be rather lazy journalism. With regards to his next article. I think I can wait.
Not by a long shot!
For my money, and I’ve traveled the world over, Argentina has the WORST food on all levels. The hype about the beef is over rated as is the hype about the wine. The beef isn’t bad but I’ve had MUCH better steaks in great steakhouses in Spain and America and I’ve had wines that meet or exceed the standards here for the price in every country I’ve ever visited. The food is dull, of poor quality, greasy, flavorless, without color and without creativity. It’s unhealthy and it’s basically just gross. Living here the last 2 years we’ve developed a whole new standard for rating food: Great, Good, Mediocre, Good for Argentina, Bad, and worst of all Bad even for Argentina. Yes,
I’ve been to England and it can be a bit boring but there are also some incredibly good fresh flavorful fast food options in England and the breakfasts can’t be beat, in addition to some truly remarkable gourmet restaurants. Pub food can be wonderful too.
I would like to say, that I find it offensive that almost every travel website has a standard cultural rule that American Bashing is a socially acceptable past time (Tom Hall). The question was about British food. It wasn’t stated that Americans, due to our overall shittiness and worthlessness, aren’t allowed to participate. I love food. I cook. I eat. I don’t overeat. I am thin. I am healthy. I eat with people from all over the world, none of whom seem to find me and my dinner company offensive. Some of the finest 5 star restaurants on this big lonely planet are in the United States and in recent years some of the newer styles of gourmet food have come from America. Blended food styles are very American. The global raw food gourmet movement started in and is being nurtured in America. The blends of different food styles and cultures in my country have meant that Americans have access to great, flavorful and even more a great variety of foods. It does make us selective and we can be food snobs, but hey, food is the only part of travel that literally becomes a part your body and you carry it home with you in your blood stream. Most of the traveling Americans I know don’t eat junk food. If every time a British person asked a question about something everyone talked about how ugly all of your teeth are wouldn’t you be offended? Push off jerk….
In defence of Tom’s comments, I don’t think he was bad-mouthing the US, or its citizens, for a moment(let’s not call the United States of America ‘America’ – that tends to rankle, quite rightly, the other 550m + residents of Americas north, central and south…).
The US is indeed a wonderful country. Its affiliation with the obese is a fact we’re fast catching up in the rest of the developed world – they just got there first, like with a lot of other things.
Like the US with its close ties to Mexico, one of the greatest things about British food is its diversity – from curry as the national dish, to a plethora of foods from Asia, Europe and Africa.
The (rather embarrassing) fact that garlic in cooking only really reached us around twenty years ago lies in a past of post-war rationing. But we embrace that, being the self-deprecating, dentally poor chaps that we are.
I’d like not to dwell too much on ‘celebrity’ chefs of this world and more on the likelihood of entering any establishment and having a good feed. This has come on leaps and bounds in the last decade or so and having more top-rated restaurants now in London than Paris or NYC is something we’re quite proud of.
That said, if I had the choice of rocking up to someone’s house in France or the UK on the off-chance of a good feed, I know where I’d bet my pickled egg on.
Vive la difference!
Two things to add;
1. WHERE ‘BRITISH FOOD’ CAME FROM: Everyone’s right! What’s classed as ‘British food’ is pretty grim. BUT, check your history! The ‘traditional’ dishes which have survived the centuries are all WORKING CLASS dishes. (For non-Brits, ‘working class’ is not a derogatory comment, but a fixed part of our society with a separate diet, culture, value-system etc, and damned proud of it!). Somewhere along the line, our upper-class recipes have been LOST. There was a restaurant, called Valeries in London, which specialised in them and delighted to tell customers the history of each dish. It was amazing…as was the food. But it shut down. So, what you are judging is ‘Traditional British Working-Class Food’. Predictably, the poorer part of society, like anywhere else, often had to be creative with the waste parts of the animals, and these dishes are what history has left us. For further explanation, one must look at the evolution of our culture. Our working-classes used to make up 80% of our society, just 100 years ago, with less than 20% making up the landed upper-classes who owned the land and employed the working classes. The last century has seen the virtual disappearance of the upper-classes and a significant migration of the working-classes to the new majority we know of as the middle-classes. Hence the present-day glorification and evolution of the British working-class food. Perhaps it’s because of the lack of home-grown dishes that British chefs concentrate upon dishes from around the world, in a way other chef’s do not. Perhaps, also, British society as a whole should rediscover the entire range of its culinary history. Because Queen Elizabeth I certainly wasn’t tucking into bangers and mash and Winkles every day, any more than she was downing Pizza with a good limoncello.
2. BEST FOOD IN WORLD IS…: The exception to the comments about food IN BRITAIN must be London. I’m an avid traveler (75 countries and counting!) and London is – without doubt – THE centre of the world for food. Paris Restaurants are French. Tokyo are Japanese/Chinese. New York is laregly American (and some expat Italian, Spanish, South American). BUT London is GLOBAL with huge representation of restaurants from all over Earth. Anything you want, is there in abundance. Quite simply, London is a world kitchen encouraged – undoubted – by the lack of traditional British food which has survived the centuries.
Best wishes to my fellow Lonely Planeters!
Mark (and Konn the Frog)
http://www.konnthefrog.com
Well, I’m from Brazil – no need to tell we have great food all over the country, São Paulo only has food from virtually all parts of the world – and I lived on the road with my wife for the last year. Our gap year stated with 4 months in the US, south to north, coast to coast we discovered great food everywhere. Then we headed for two months in Japan and found more great food – minimalist portions compared to US though. Singapore was the next stop and the food is simply amazing and the variety is flabbergasting. From there we spent the rest of our trip in Europe, heading to the UK. I’ve been to the UK many times, but this time food was amazing everywhere. You could even buy fresh quality food on markets – something that was a bit daunting 15 years ago. It was a delightful surprise.
After spending more time in Paris, Budapest, Rome, Amsterdam, Athens we had absolutely no complaints about finding quality local dishes and ingredients.
As for Argentina I beg to differ. They do have great food, heavily influenced by italian and spanish cuisine but as anywhere in the world, local dishes can be overrated, expensive and bad executed in specific places. Like Brazil, they have a unique barbecue style.
Great debate, I’m enjoying reading everyone’s comments. Just to clarify, I was contrasting British food with American food, in a tongue-in-cheek response to an American writer’s piece. I am an enormous fan of the USA and, dare I say it, many of the dishes listed by Mr Murdoch. I went to Philadelphia mainly to eat cheesesteaks and was not disappointed.
Mark Hiley, can I suggest a visit to Rules in Covent Garden for top-notch upper-class British food?
I don’t quite think British food is the worst but it’s certainly some of the most boring. I regularly spend time in the Far East and everytime I travel there and come back here, I get this impression that people here don’t care about food.
Take for example Ramsay and his recent episode with frozen pre-prepared food and consider how much he charges, ridiculous! When I went to Taiwan earlier this year we had a five course meal in one restaurant where they brought live king crab to our table to see if we approved it. This was at a fraction of the cost of a meal in our so called British top chef’s restaurants. The food was sublime btw.
Comments about London being centre of the world for food, rubbish. It’s absolutely impossible to get decent Japanese/Chinese/Taiwanese food. New York, no problem at all, very authentic.
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