For what it's worth, I live Ireland and moved here after 30 years in the US. I agree that the TTIP is a terrible idea (and feels a bit like imperialism chasing after me as I exit). Food on the continent is a sheer delight for the senses.
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'm ethnically Indian, and grew up in London. So I'm used to having good Indian food both at home and in restaurants.
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?
Friend of my girlfriend used to own a Chinese restaurant in Canada and said that he had to have alternative recipes for the locals because they didn't like the traditional flavors. It's a shame though, I've had his food cooked in a more "traditional" sense and it was bursting with flavors. I sort of always assumed is how it goes in North America.
I had a friend who was French and ran a French bistro in Galway. He said his Irish customers didn't really appreciate good food and were more into cheap booze and chips so maybe they cater to their market. That said there are some very good restaurants here.
I think there is some adjustment happening, and I've never had great Indian food here. It's certainly not as large a part of the cuisine as it is in London.
I find the same thing happening with Mexican food with regards to dulled flavours.
I recently moved from Utah to Wisconsin, and the drop in quality of Mexican food is astounding. Even the gringo-ified chains in the western United States are better.
There's plenty of cheap crap food in Europe, but at least it's labeled as such. Pretending something is something it isn't, is lying to the customer. It should be illegal.
>However, if you visit this fine emerald isle, you will find the US has no monopoly on bland, mildly sweet food.
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.
> 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.
>Pies of all kinds, fish 'n' chips, traditional sausages, good old roast dinners, chicken tikka masala
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...
> None of these have anybody (of statistically significant percentage) outside the UK salivating
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.
You know, I just realized that I really miss pasties after a night out when I don't have them around. And let's not forget that English cheese can be spectacular!
Certainly there are great foods to be had, but on the whole it seems it's not the UK's strong suit.
> Wouldn't an English pie be similar to something like "torta pasqualina"?
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.
Yeah I think that's google trickery. How strange though, I would have thought the search "traditional English pie" shouldn't/wouldn't be affected by the location.
Steak and Ale, Steak and Kidney, Chicken and Mushroom, Pheasant and other game (that's not as common though). If you want a great one then make sure it's from a small, non-chain pub somewhere in the countryside for the full English experience.
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.
Maybe not restaurants per se, but there's quite a few British pubs around here that do serve some variety of British cuisine (usually fish n chips / pot pies / etc.)
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.
> 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).
British-style pubs that serve those exact dishes are very popular in Canada.
I mean, I don't think there's room to argue the "actively known for" claim. British food is absolutely known for being bland, fatty, and overcooked (at least in America); it's even the punchline in that "in hell the cooks are British" joke.
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.
In 2000 I spent a couple of weeks in the Shrewsbury area, and most lunches were had at small, out of the way village pubs. The food was surprisingly good, both traditional and continental. Not just surprisingly good for England, but for anywhere in such venues. The only bad experience was our first shot at getting fish & chips, which were rubbish. Second try at a different place fixed that.
> and most lunches were had at small, out of the way village pubs
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.
I remember ordering garlic chips for the first time after moving from CA.
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 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.
I know it was my mistake, and I don't even mean it as a complaint but rather as an observation.
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.
>To be fair, there is some fantastic food, but you have to look for it. Dublin has some surprisingly good burritos, for instance.
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.
Were we limiting this to national cuisines? What is that, even? When people ask about my favourite American (they mean US but that's another conversation) food I typically answer Mexican or Ethiopian, because those are some of the best foods I've had in the US.
True enough — but it explains where British food got its bad reputation from. As it happens, real British food is delicious: savoury, flavourful and just generally wonderful.
You're quite out of date. The food in the UK has changed beyond recognition in the last 10-15 years. It's still possible (but increasingly rare) to find bad food but in any decent-sized city there are many great places to eat. London in particular has some of the best food in the world.
> Where in the world do they care for British cuisine?
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.
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.
"...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]..."
From earlier in the same section: "The origin of the dish is disputed. One explanation is that it originated in an Indian restaurant in the United Kingdom,[3][7] but probably from the British Bangladeshi community which ran most Indian restaurants in Britain.[7] Rahul Verma, a Delhi expert on street food, offered a different explanation, speculating in 2009 that the dish may have originated—probably by accident with subsequent improvisations—in the Punjab and Uttar Pradesh during the last 50 years.[1]"
Its an adaptation of Indian cooking to British tastes developed fairly recently historically (different stories point to different origins either in Britain or in India during the British Raj or within a couple decades of its end.)
> For UK of course it's even worse, they're actively known for the bad taste and cuisine.
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?
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.
First of all, not talking about Indian, Chinese or whatever restaurants in the UK. Talking solely about the British cooking tradition.
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.
"Talking solely about the British cooking tradition."
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).
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)