British food is bad?

Question

Where has this rumour came from? Why do people say our food is so bad? I'd personnaly prefer to dine in an English resturant than a McDonalds and I'd prefer to eat a traditional English fish and chips than some French frog's legs anyday.

Can anyone explain?

One Simpsons quote comes to mind (set in Victorian England, when Wiggums eating 'Eel pie', which I never knew we all apparently ate.)
"Hah, we British sure eat crap!"

Answer 1

How can anyone say British food is crap especially when nothing beats the traditional Sunday roast dinner. The roast is the meal of the week where families get to gether, friends get to gether and its part of our tradition.

Roast meat, yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, fresh veg, horseradish sauce, mint jelly and gravy. Followed by Jam rolly polly or spotted dick and custard Yummmeh.and our roast is adaptable too because you can have it as bland or spiced up as much as you want.

I love our food and as we have such a huge variety especially of healthy food as well, it shouldnt be knocked.

British food RoCkS

Try pie and mash with liquer

Answer 2

What's the question? To dine in an English restaurant is one thing and you'll probably get a good meal for a good amount of money. Fish and chips are great if you're visiting the UK, but you wouldn't want to eat them every day?
The great British breakfast is OK when you're on holiday and take breakfast at about 9.30 a.m., but it's not for every day.
MacDonald's is disgusting and most French restaurants don't offer frogs legs.
Let's put it this way: There's nothing wrong with traditional British food when it's well cooked, but travelling through the UK and stopping off to eat at random, you're more likely to get something not terribly appetising dished up than in France, Spain , Germany or Italy.

Answer 3

I believe the sterotype comes from the fact that in the UK they simply do not have the availablility of some of the fresh fruits and vegetables available elsewhere, and the price is so horrendous when these foods are available that many can not afford to indulge. However, the root vegetables flourish in the UK.
US Meat tastes very different than British meat - they use a lot more hormones in the US and feed the animals different food, which leads to a different taste. When I lived in the UK I missed American bacon every day - after about 5 years I stopped missing it so much. When I returned to the US, I missed British bacon every single day! What you love is sometimes what you can't have! The UK, like everywhere else, has great and poor restaurants, great shops and bad ones, and good chefs and people who can't boil an egg.

Answer 4

As an ex-pat Englishman with a considerable interest in food, allow me to explain...

The British adopted rationing during WWII (eating a lot of cabbage and making "ice cream" out of chilled mashed swedes, or "rutabagas"). After the war was over, the British KEPT EATING THIS WAY for ten years or more!!!! For no good reason other than habit. And the effect, though diluted, lingers on...

If there is anything that characterizes "Britishness" it is 'consistency'...the reason the British do anything the way they they do it, if there is one, is that they have "always done it like that"...

I think maybe we used up all our "adventurousness" while building the "Empire", and now the folks of Old Blighty are too tired & too lazy to try anything new.


(And I hate to tell you, but battered fish served with "French Fries" is not a "British" dish", although the British consumed an astonishing 300 million servings of fish and chips in 1995, "chips" were probably invented in Belgium, and battered fried fish was almost certainly invented by the French!)

Answer 5

I hate it when people say the British have bad food - some of the worst food i've ever eaten was in France - but I digress.
From Country to country, we eat what we either produce or can procure wild.
We USED to be a dairy producing country, so we had a lot of cattle/milk and milk based foods using butter cheese etc. Deer were wild and so were boar, and stuff that we would refer to as offal was food of the poor - the entrails of a deer were called 'umbles' that's where we get the phrase 'eating humble pie' from.
A lot of people are surprised to find out things like oysters were once food of the poor, they were cheap and plentiful. Pastry was the original tin foil, a paste made from flour and water used to protect the food from the embers of the open fire.
We have some of the best dishes in the world, we don't need olive oil/garlic/and loads of different spices to make our food taste great - curry was invented to cover the taste of rotting meat! There's nothing like a plate of crispy golden chips with salt and vinegar if you're hungry, or cutting into some marvelous golden pastry to find what treasure is underneath - orchard fresh apples or juicy chunks of steak and onion dripping in a rich gravy - yummy!!!

Answer 6

Some British food is nice - such as your example of bread and butter pudding - that is seriously yummy! And you cannot beat a really good roast beef dinner with Yorkshire puds. However, some is pretty bad. Such as haggis. I like haggis, if it is a nice one, but really, the contents? Yuk! Turnips? I once knew someone from New Zealand and they were amazed we ate them - they feed them to cattle. Don't get me started on porridge oats! (I know I have gone on about mostly Scottish things, I'm from Scotland!). However, no doubt other countries have thier dishes which don't seem all that palateable to us Brits. Many countries do have thier version of porridge, for instance, others eat things like tripe. All these are alongside the more 'nicer' dishes. And plenty countries have food that are just as calorie-filled and hearty as some British dishes. However, on the grand scheme of things, I would often rather eat food from any other country apart from British!

Answer 7

When I feel ill or not particularly happy, I like to eat what I had as a wee lad. Chicken noodle soup, salad with what we call "French Dressing," French Fries which the French call "pommes frites." Even hot dogs and hamburgers and chili.

In the Central African Republic, people eat a dish of cassava or manioc called "boule de manioc" once or twice a day. Some Scandinavian people eat huge amounts of potatoes, while the French like wine and beer sauces, and everyone knows what Italians like.

In Puerto Rico, my wife's family eats beans and rice every day and use some types of spices like culantro which I don't like very much.

The point of all this is that everyone has different tastes in food defined by what they ate mostly while growing up. I am part English, and I hate coffee but love tea. Does my ancestry have something to do with that? I doubt it.

So, enjoy eating whatever you like, and who cares what anyone else thinks?

Answer 8

Most traditional Northern European food is bad compared to that of warmer Mediterranean countries. Less ingredients have been available. The fact that you even mention McDonalds, fish and chips and frogs legs shows your total ignorance.

Anyway you should be a Vegetarian and stop eating all that deseased animal crap..

Answer 9

Simple old English saying. The French live to eat, but the English eat to live. Why spend hours making fancy meals then sitting down for another couple of hours to eat it . Just put some good wholesome food together, cook it ,sit down eat it then go out and enjoy yourself.

Answer 10

British food is REALLY NICE. I am Mexican (living in Mexico) and was in Europe like 5 years ago and from the very best of Europe was British food. I personally like hamburgers (not Mc Donalds of course, I would prefer starve)
It is a bad rumor, maybe someone went to UK and tasted a bad food and generalized about it