The number one stereotype you hear stateside about England is that the food is rubbish. It’s a never-ending and tired joke consisting of how awful British food is and how bland they are and how they only eat burnt sausages, potatoes, and flavorless beer. Hell, I think half the reason the Great British Bake Off was produced was just to give people a reason to shut up about the food. Despite their efforts, it persists.
Even I fell for it a bit. It got to the point where I was a little worried about finding good meals outside of London when I traveled to the island in 2018. As it turns out this is largely because I’m an idiot. The food is amazing. They have mastered something that I have not found anywhere else in my travels, something that I would call “casual food.” I’ll define that later, but along with shattering the “warm beer” stereotype I found running about the country was very culinarily enlightening.
First off, just like every other culture on earth, they have adopted flavors and recipes from around the globe. It makes sense. England is literally known for colonizing the world. That grand reach had to have contaminated the local cuisine somewhat, and nowhere does that show more than in the “National Dish of London.” Surprise, it’s an Indian dish invented in Scotland called Chicken Tikka Masala.
The staple of every Indian Buffet is in fact the creation of the Scots, adopted by the English, and served in all manner of interesting ways including wrapped in dough and fried, as a salad, or in a rice and cucumber wrap. All ways I enjoyed it during my time in London and the surrounding cities, and all excellent.
Why The Misconception Then?
The entire idea that the British eat terrible food is a bit of a strange one in retrospect. They are a modern nation that has people from all over the world living there. It really does not stand to reason that because of some unknown force they hate good food. Millions of people travel to and from the islands every year, it’s not like they are isolated to the point where no one knows any better.
Yet if I do web search right now for the worst food on earth, they rank near the top. People use the same terms in the reviews: Bland, colorless, processed, expensive, poor quality, bad ingredients. I have a theory about that though, and my theory is the reviewers are heavily influenced by confirmation bias. Let me explain.
I did a lot of research into this. I was legitimately curious about why people think British food is awful, and four main reasons kept cropping up.
One, they have a lack of variety.
Two, they don’t have good agriculture.
Three, they hate spices.
Four, they have no restaurants.
Some of these things may have been true 30 years ago when a lot of current travelers were forming their opinions of the world, but it certainly isn’t true now. Modern shipping means that nowhere on earth doesn’t have access to fresh ingredients, and as is evidenced by the love of Indian Food they certainly are not afraid of spices.
When it comes to restaurants I’m not even sure that was ever something they lacked. I think that a lot of average travelers were expecting American style fast food and sit down places, not the pub-style experience common in most English towns. I never had trouble finding a place to buy prepared food, and I never had an issue with variety between places.
However if you thumb through a few travel guides, likely written by those aforementioned travelers who formed their view of the world 30 years ago, you will find pages devoted to the idea that the only thing anybody eats on the Islands is Fish, Chips, Bread and Sausages. Even the recommended foods tend to be combinations of those things, a pasty is just sausages and chips baked into bread, a tea cake is just sweetened bread, and a meat pie is just a pasty prepared differently.
That creates a strange kind of feedback where because travelers go to London and expect fish and chips and sausages, the touristy cafes and pubs all serve fish, chips, and sausages. That’s where that confirmation bias comes in. First, you read about how all they eat is meat pies. Then you fly there and visit a pub near the airport and they serve you a meat pie. Bias confirmed.
I saw this first hand. I did something that you should never do, I went to the most touristy tourist pub in London. It’s called The Sherlock Holmes. They laid it on thick, waitresses wore victorian gowns and served pints of dark ale in a smoking parlor that was converted into a bar and then converted into a sit-down restaurant. The menu had bangers and mash as the permanent special and fish and chips as the daily special that never changes, and if this was my only experience in London I would absolutely believe the tabloids.
Unfortunately for a lot of people that will be their experience. Even with the large group I traveled with there were people who believed the bad food stereotype and believed in going to the “safe” places to eat. Those people will go back home and tell everyone that asks that the stories are true, that in Britain they only eat potatoes and fish and it’s not very good.
The minute you get out of the tourist traps, though, the culinary world opens up.
More Than Four Foods
Let me get this out of the way first. They do eat a lot of bread, things baked in bread, fish and sausages. Lots of it is absolutely delicious and cheap. I love pasties, I don’t understand why people could complain about them. They are literally an extra portable sandwich with unlimited variety for filling. Curry filled, cheese and spinach filled, steak filled, it was almost hard not to have one every day just to try them all.
The food is so much more than that though. I had the best Indian food I have ever had underneath a wine garden in central London. I had braised pork belly on a bed of tomato puree in Portsmouth. I had a fantastic Thai curry wrap in Winchester. I had sweets I can’t pronounce with tea and a nearly overwhelming variety of beer.
Cold beer, although the warm beer thing is a little easier to explain. In the United States, we tend to think of a cold, refreshing beer that is extra carbonated and usually on the lighter side. English beer, on the other hand, is darker, less carbonated, and does tend to be served a bit warmer than the nearly frozen beer in US bars.
What the beer absolutely isn’t, however, is bland. Every place we went had at least a few different styles on tap, as well as at least one cider and one cask beer. Cask beer is definitely where people get their idea about English beer. It’s served flat and at a bit below room temperature because it comes straight from the cask. That is absolutely fantastic if you love beer, but I can see how it would be a very unfortunate shock if you just wanted a Bud Lite.
So What Do I Mean By “Casual Food?”
Simply put, the food you can get in England is never trying to be something it’s not. It’s never trying to be fancy. There was never a time I felt like the food was overly pretentious or had an unwarranted arrogance. Even in the higher end restaurants I visited the food felt down to earth, like it was made by people and meant to be enjoyed by people at a leisurely pace. It was meant to be enjoyed with a beer and as more of a compliment to the experience rather than the focus.
A pasty is meant to be grabbed and eaten, you’ll never find it on a silver platter. A meat pie will never look stunning (or if it does, you’re probably in the wrong place.) Fish and chips isn’t meant to be lovingly crafted and shaped into a beautiful presentation, it’s meant to be torn apart by hands not otherwise occupied by beer.
You see, in England, casual has a connotation that it doesn’t have in the US. It means rough, or unrefined, or unskilled. Made by the common man. Tikka Masala is Indian curry as re-imagined by everyday folk. Bangers and Mash are something you eat after a hard day of working on the field and don’t have time to pretty it up. It’s honest.
Maybe that is what people don’t like. They don’t like that their fried fish doesn’t look like the neat square from McDonald’s that they are used to. They don’t like that the beer is just beer from a barrel, no long filtration or processing involved. At this point, I can only speculate. In my opinion, the food was awesome. I loved the simplicity and honesty of the food and the atmosphere of casual dining I was able to experience in most eateries.
If you want to buck the stereotype and experience the great food as well, all you have to do is get out of the tourist mentality. Go eat street food, duck into the casual bakeries and hole in the wall pubs. Try the Indian food. Seriously, if you do nothing else, try the Indian food. The whole Gandhi thing was over the occupation of India by the English, they learned a few things. That way you can come back home and join me in rolling your eyes every time you hear somebody make a joke about the food in England.
