'British food is great, it just doesn't photograph well' - my british fiance, after our first visit to england, where I was suprised how great everything tasted
There's a brilliant clip of John Cena trying beans on toast, where he mocks it's appearance, and then is pleasantly surprised afterwards lol. I love that clip. I think it encapsulates British cuisine to a t.
I just had to go watch it, and it's fantastic. I especially enjoyed his attempt to eat Marmite, which he did not embrace as readily, and quite right too.
Americans usually eat beans in some kind of soup or in a salt and water suspension when plain. The entire reason we’re often repulsed by the way the British use beans is because the Heinz Beans aren’t readily available and are very similar in appearance to the American baked beans in a brown sugar sauce that usually doesn’t go well with savory/starchy foods. The way you use Heinz beans is closer to the way we’d use chili with beans.
As a Brit I love beans on toast, but it’s on the same level of a peanut butter sandwich. What we love about it is it’s cheap, quick, easy, healthy and tastes pretty good. It’s not fancy food, it’s something you eat to fill yourself up when you CBA.
There's a youtube clip where Aaron Paul tries a Greg's Sausage Roll and complains about how it stinks of fat and looks unappetising for five minutes. Then he tries it and is genuinely to shocked to react for a moment, just wide eyed wonderment.
Beans on toast is often served with cheese on top. It's tomato carbs, cheese and protein (beans) oh what a suprise its quite tasty... Its also the equivalent of something you chuck together raiding your home for a qucik cheap lunch, not an actual recipe.
French cuisine has an identical colour palette and yet it's considered high cuisine.
Genuinely the nonsense about British food comes from two things - American G.I. experiences during wartime Britain, and the fact that the Brits are much more tolerant of mediocre food than the French or Italians are.
Much of Scandinavia and the Netherlands is arguably worse in terms of cuisine, yet they get nowhere near the level of flak as Britain does.
Much of Scandinavia and the Netherlands is arguably worse in terms of cuisine, yet they get nowhere near the level of flak as Britain does.
Honestly, yeah. You can get great food almost where ever you go of course but considering the prices, at least if you compare London to Stockholm, you'll get better food for cheaper in London. You don't get to be such a huge logistics hub without having good ingredients for good prices.
There are places in London with more normal UK prices [albeit, still above average] they're just nowhere near the train stations - station-weighting covers a significantly larger region in London than most other cities.
I dunno man I live in London and even in my wildest Zone 1 dealings I was never as shocked at the price of beer until I got a half pint in Oslo in 2023
The reason a lot of the traditional food in Scandinavia is "bad" is historical. Lots of poor farmers living in the cold harsh north where during the like 7 colder months everything had to be preserved and harsh, so taste didn't even come second, surviving was always nr 1-5 in order of importance.
Growing up in an average Swedish household in the '00 we eat great tasty food with a lot of traditional meals that with todays ingredients taste awesome.
You don't need to justify to me, I've had Scandinavian food and enjoyed it fine. I also am Dutch and live in the Netherlands, so the potshot I took at NL is entirely warranted.
My point is that by comparison, those nations get far less flak regarding their food.
True, as a Swede I hear more complaints about British cuisine than I do about Swedish or other nordic countries cuisine. Iceland gets a bad rep because of the rotten shark meat but I've seen some food vloggers go there and have some great food too.
Growing up we ate a variety of foods. Sometimes less fast foody fast food like hotdogs and fries with ketchup and mustard. Other times it was baked salmon in a cream sauce with potatoes. Potatoes are featured far and wide in our cuisine, either boiled, mashed or oven baked.
The French food I’ve tasted has been quite mid to me. Well cooked but not a huge amount of deviation in flavour. I have eaten French food in france and at French restaurants (not cafe rouge).
It’s nice but that’s all it is. I didn’t have a flavour explosion like the first time I tried a bibimbap. I think the French attitude goes a long way in why their food is considered so good.
There's a lot of French cuisine & British dishes that are nearly identical with slight differences and different names tbh. It's very true that we're a lot less precious about food than other cultures, but I think that leads to a very innovative food culture (even if some of those delicious innovations will have Italians swearing at us)
Every time I go to Sweden I get served something new and completely heinous food-wise. Last time it was a steamed bit of cod that tasted mildly like chlorine, with a very watery, oniony, cheesy, feet-smelling yellow sauce and little bits of boiled egg white on top. When I asked one of my Swedish companions what on earth this dish was, they replied that it didn't really have a name, but they ate it a lot as a kid!
Ya the entire "British food is terrible" stereotype happened because of the after effects of living with rationing and post war scarcity. You had an entire generation just learn to deal with surviving with barely anything to cook with and the children who had their formative years during that too.
There was an entire practice that was well known where British women would dress up for off duty American G.I.s. They would invite them to spend time with them just so they could have the little bit of extra food the soldiers gave them. Material shortages were to where they had to get creative to make themselves look presentable. For example, you had a bunch of women painting on fake stockings on their legs from home-made recipes on the of chance they got an extra can of ____.
Remember how in the "Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" Edmund was completely transfixed by being able to eat Turkish Delights? A child living through that. The original James Bond books had a scene where special attention mentioning that he just had extra butter waiting on ice for him to use.
I'm Dutch, Hagelslag is lovely but it's no excuse for the various crimes committed in Dutch kitchens. Food is fuel in the Netherlands, it's not a requirement that it be good.
Ossenworst is awesome, and I can't get it in the US because we don't trust our beef like that, so at least you have that going for you. Poffertjes are amazing too. But I see your point in general.
I'd say Dutch and English is mainly comparable. Both countries had food so bland they essentially had worldwide spice empires.
I would say that English food in general tends to be a bit more fuel-like. Take the English breakfast. That's essentially engineered for people who have to dig 2 miles of canal before noon...
British food bad is a meme from WW2 where GIs were stationed in England, and everything that wasn't a boiled potato was rationed. It hasn't been true since at least the 80s.
Stargazy pie, it's a traditional Cornish dish, mostly only eaten on a specific festival day in one village. It's a bit unfair to call it 'British food' as 99% of the country had nothing to do with it.
Fish pie is more, chunks of cooked fish and seafood in a white sauce (often with white wine or vermouth, and herbs like dill) under mashed potato as a crust, which is then baked and finished with melted cheese. It's proper stick-to-your-ribs winter food, warms you all the way down.
Mushy peas aren’t made from fresh peas, they’re made of stewed marrow fat peas that have been dried. So the mushy peas are dyed, otherwise they would be the colour of sludge.
There’s also the problem that a lot of traditional British food is just what Americans would call regular food. Items like apple pies and ham sandwiches are traditional British foods!
Even this is a bonkers argument. Sometimes you see people going 'look at this delicious Brtish food' and some smartass will be like 'uH lOoK bEIge MeAT aND bRowN sAUce'
Like dude have you seen a lot of Indian food? Delicious af, but a lot of it is also beige meat in brown sauce, who tf cares what colour it is, long as it tastes good.
This is the first part of it and the second is something I've come to conclude after a lot of time thinking about it: British food is absolutely fine, British food culture is what's off. There's a lot of people here who like... kinda don't want to bother with trying foods of a higher quality or that are a bit different from what they know, for a variety of reasons. I legit think a lot of it is just (and I'm barely exaggerating) generational trauma from rationing during and after the war.
I agree, I dont know why every pic someone takes of british food looks like somebody shat diahhrea in a bowl with sprinkle cheese and took a flash photo of it under their bed.
This is a direct product of being in northernish Europe where traditionally we get long winters (which mean longer dark days) and we don’t grow super colourful fruits and veg.
Spoken like someone that hasn't had any well made British food.
Mac and cheese is British, can't think of anyone that doesn't like that!
Chicken tikka masala is British, it's really only angry Indians that disagree. If an food created by immigrants couldn't be included the US would be pretty fucked lol
Steak and ale pie, Cullen skink (best soup known to man with a name that sounds bad apparently), Sunday roast, fry up, balmoral chicken, sticky toffee etc
I love fish, just not that one. And I don't like sticky toffee pudding because it ranks at the bottom compared to sweets and deserts I have had elsewhere...
It is really that simple... engish food is ok at its best... just terrible most days and extremely unappealing.
1.6k
u/Dispenser-JaketheDog 22d ago
'British food is great, it just doesn't photograph well' - my british fiance, after our first visit to england, where I was suprised how great everything tasted