British Cuisine: London 2023

     British cuisine has been, and is,  the butt of jokes for at least my entire life. I mean, haggis, beans for breakfast, boiled puddings, eel pie, jellied eel, steak and kidney pies, fish and chips, everything and chips, smelly cheeses, scotch eggs?  The standard line was everything boiled and nothing seasoned.

    Well, things have changed, and things have remained the same. We saw it first-hand on our recent trip to London, our first in decades.  London is one of the greatest international cities in the world, and waves of immigrants from every corner of the former British Empire and beyond have changed British cuisine in the past couple of decades. London restaurants and chefs are considered among the best in the world.  For its first-ever World All-Star Chef competition series, the popular TV show "Top Chef" chose London as its arena earlier this year.  British cuisine has adapted (and not adapted) and been fused with other cuisines, and other ethnic cuisines can be found on every urban neighborhood.  Indian cuisine has practically become the standard British cuisine, with "curry shops" and Indian restaurants everywhere you turn, sometimes next to each other.

    On our trip, we sampled a lot and found bad, good, and great, instead of "the good, the bad, and the ugly."

    The British

     Peckish after our overnight flight, we decided to have a meal at Victoria Station, on our way from the airport to our flat.  We went to a chain restaurant, Wetherspoons, and we ordered traditional English breakfasts, beans and toast, and full (kind of) English. Beans and toast was exactly as promised. My English breakfast consisted of beans, tomato, potato triangles, hard rubber fried eggs, toast, and sausage.  There was no black pudding (blood sausage), but I was perfectly fine with that.  In a word:  gross. The beans were terrible. The sausage was weird, tasteless and a consistency inside reminiscent of pate, mousse, or cat food.  The potatoes and toast were edible.  Not a winning introduction.

    Fortunately, other British fare was much better.  The British Museum offers a really tasty fish & chips, complete with mushy peas.  Its British cheese plate was less successful, meager and bland, except for the blue cheese which was strong and bitter.  We enjoyed much better cheese and meat plates at The Admiralty Pub at Trafalgar Square and at a cheese shop as part of our Camden Market Food Tour.  On Sunday, we were in Windsor, and we had to have a traditional Sunday Roast dinner.  A Sunday Roast is offered at pubs and restaurants across the country, and generally it consists of roast pork, chicken, or beef, roast vegetables, peas, and Yorkshire pudding (a baked pudding/roll).  The Sunday Roast was very successful, but it would have been better if the meat had seen a little salt. 

    We opted not to do a full tea on our trip.  Instead, we just enjoyed an "afternoon cream tea," consisting of tea, scones, clotted cream, and jam.  It was delicious.

 

Fusion

    Following World War II and the dismantling of the British Empire, the UK began absorbing many immigrants from around the world, and each group has contributed greatly to British culture and cuisine.  One can see various examples of fusion of British foods with foreign ingredients and cooking styles.  On our first day, we had a Japanese fried chicken loaded fries dish at the Famous Three Kings Pub near our flat in West Kensington. On our Camden Market Food Tour, we learned that birria tacos (slow cooked beef, pork, or goat tacos served with a jus for dipping) have become a popular breakfast dish in some quarters, and we had a Yorkshire pudding burrito (roast beef, mashed potatoes, and peas, wrapped in a Yorkshire pudding)

Ethnic Options

    Various ethnic restaurants are everywhere. Chinatown, surrounded by Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Soho, and the West End, looked to be almost nothing but restaurants.  Although we didn't partake this time, the food looked great as we walked by.  We had the best Indian food, and one of the best meals of our lives, at the Dishoom in Covent Garden (There are several locations.).  Within 300 feet of our flat in West Kensington, we had our choice of two Italian restaurants, a Lebanese restaurant, a Thai Restaurant, a Japanese bakery, 4 coffee and pastry shops,  three markets, and a British pub.  The food at every one that we sampled was great.  

    London truly is one of the world's great food cities.