Meat-free travel: vegetarian hits and misses

Ivor #4 and8, on British food.
While in big cities you can get anything you want, in smaller ones like Aylesbury, where I used to go and visit several times, there were three Indian restaurants in a row, on High Street, and other three or four varieties of Indian in other parts of the town.
There I witnessed also two or three attempts at opening new businesses with Italian or other modern cuisine, all of them unsuccessful and out of business within six months. Then there's pub food and kebabs.

Aylesbury is part of England but it doesn't make up all of it, it's only 33 miles from London which equates to around 1/2 hour traveling at 60 mph on the m'way.

Ivor,
I could say "a town" in England. Aylesbury was the one where I spent more time than elsewhere. I could say the same about St Alban or Exmouth.

Fieldgate

Not quite. Argentina can be a challenge with omnipresent parillas. But, it can also be the opposite.
Among some indegenous people living in rural Bolivia or Peru, meat is a special treat. They'll have their own chickens and a pig, but they'll slaughter the animal only for a very special occasion. They'll have a meat dish twice a year as only. All the other days they live on mainly potato and quinoa.
There are places where meat is a luxury and the concept of voluntary vegetarianism would be beyond people's comprehension.

Precisely what I was saying. This is in fact how most of the world lived before the industrial revolution, mass production, supermarkets, mass advertising and fast food reared their ugly heads. Its our heritage and its how most of the famous dishes came about that we take for granted and eat everyday now. Eating meat everyday was unheard of unless you were rich or part of the ruling classes. The practice of killing animals only for special occasions or when it was no longer productive was also common in most of the world. Nothing much to do with vegetarianism but more to do with common sense, wealth and sustainability.

Fieldgate, it was just a bald statement about the comments being just 'Plain silly', please excuse me i did not wish to infer they were yours.

I could say "a town" in England. Aylesbury was the one where I spent more time than elsewhere. I could say the same about St Alban or Exmouth.

And I could say I went to Stockholm and Malmo and all they had were open sandwiches but that would be silly because I had curry amongst other things.

Ivor,
I find the situation in Sweden similar to that in the UK. If you travel outside the big cities that are very few in this vast and scarcely populated country, all you'll find will be one or two restaurants where they serve steak with bearnaise sauce, plus a couple of pizzerias and kebabs.

It's different though in one respect only. No other cuisine has taken over the restaurant market in such degree as Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi have done in the UK, where curries have become British national food.

where curries have become British national food.

It's true to say there is at least one curry house on most main roads and also that curries are popular but saying it's a British national food is going a step too far unless of course you were culinary challenged or pissed at the weekend or both.

Ivor,
I wouldn't mind calling curries "very popular food in Britain", instead of "national", but if they have become more popular than fish and chips, bangers and mash, meat pies or Cornish pasties, at the same time being the food that is available in every corner of the whole country, wouldn't you agree that it has become British national food?

After all, Swedish national dish that you referred to, the meatballs, aren't a local invention either. They were brought to Sweden from Ottoman Empire, in 18th century, by king Charles XII, along with coffee and dolmas.

Like I said England isn't made up of Aylesbury, you'll find lots of places in England / Britain where curry houses are few and far between, now don't get me wrong I'm not contradicting myself "It's true to say there is at least one curry house on main roads" but not all as some parts of Cheshire in particularly don't have them or any other other type of foreign eatery unless they except curry housesare approved by the local bigwigs. But who says that curry houses have become more popular than chip shops? in the majority of areas in England / Britain you will find a chip shop (with the exception of parts of Cheshire where they don't even have street lights because people hang around them).

In larger supermarkets of England / Britain you may find a counter serving takeaway curry next to the pork pies meat pies sausage rolls and cold cuts all of which sell equally well if not more than curry, maybe curry seems like the national national food in the eye of a foreigner and besides 80% of all curry houses serve premade cobbled together freezer to microwave muck resembling nothing of what the original dish was / is.

I had some takeaway menu shoved through my letter box the other, the restaurant was in Earlsfield, it had amongst other strange stuff chicken tikka vindaloo... now who tf as heard of chicken tikka vindaloo!!!!!!! what kind of self respecting Indian restaurateur would even try to fool the public with that? the rest of the menu was equally bad with an array of fish prawn crab lamb and chicken served with irrelevant gravies.

In larger supermarkets of England / Britain you may find a counter serving takeaway curry next to the pork pies meat pies sausage rolls and cold cuts

Here, it's take out Chinese food, plus sushi. (We do "take out" not "takeaway.") No meat pies. Supermarket delis have things like fried chicken, meat loaf, tamales, enchiladas, lasagna, bake-at-home pizzas, sandwiches made to order, and all sorts of salads.