While British food gets a bad rap, it’s not all that terrible. Pub food is inconsistent, and in one place I had what was by far the most overcooked hamburger I’ve ever eaten. They serve chips (French fries) with almost everything here, and I’m no big fan of that. If you like sausages, this is the place to get them.
Let’s talk about cheese. The Brits love their cheese. Actually, the Brits love their cheddar cheese. In a typical market, I’ll get all excited because the cheese section will have 50 different cheeses to choose from, until I realize that 45 of them are varieties of cheddar. Now, I like cheddar cheese, but would it be asking too much for some havarti or double-cream? Forget about Monterey Jack, or, dare I say it, American Cheese (the latter is, like a former roommate, fondly remembered but not truly missed).
One of the more bizarre taste preferences here is for meat-flavored potato chips (crisps). Popular flavours include beef, ham, chicken, and prawn. I have tried the ham, the beef, and the chicken, and they just taste weird. I won’t even think about trying the prawn-flavored crisps.
And then there’s the pizza. If you think of the flatbread pizza that you can get as an appetizer in many American restaurants as “pizza” then you will like it here. If you enjoy a thick, chewy crust with mountains of mozzarella and cheddar cheese, gobs of tomato sauce, and heaps of toppings, you will not like the pizza here. I think you can guess where my preferences lie.
I do like the pastys (pronounce the “a” as in “last”), which is sort of like a large empanada. It’s a half-moon shaped pot pie that you hold in your hands. The curved part has an extra bit of crust sticking out (think of the fringe on a ravioli), and the story behind this is that pastys were popular food for tin miners, and they could hold the pasty by the extra crust with their dirty hands and not worry about eating the gunk on their hands.
Europeans in general don’t eat a lot of corn. It’s considered feed for livestock. So, one of my favourite breakfast foods, corn muffins, aren’t sold here. The first time I went to a cafe and asked if they had corn muffins, the guy behind the counter looked at me as if I had asked for a gunpowder muffin. I really miss corn muffins, and can’t even find cornmeal in the market.
Random food translations:
- Rocket = arugula
- Gammon = ham
- Chilli (two ls) = red peppers, usually diced and with a binding agent like olive oil
- Bacon = thin slice of fried ham
- Crispy bacon = what we in America call bacon
- Courgette = zucchini
- Bap = hamburger bun
- Butty = a sandwich, with lots of butter on the bread
- Jacket potato = baked potato
