Following up to Don Gray
But if you don't eat out, how do you know we compare well? Or perhaps that's not what your saying? I think cooking in UK is coming on fast, but think back to the days of the Lyons Corner House and recommendations to cook green veg for half an hour, dubious pies and 60% reclaimed meat sausages with mash from an ice cream scoop. Keg beer. Look at what we are feeding our kids at school! When we took some Spanish friends to Charlotte Street to try some good modern european cooking we pbutted a trad place doing meat and two veg type stuff. They insisted on eating there and couldn't stop laughing, they werent being nasty but couldn't believe how unimaginative trad english food was. It was that sort of plain food, overcooked, that gained us the international reputation as having the worst food in the world. We are moving forward now and shouldnt throw out the baby with the bathwater, but to see the english food tradition of the last century as being a good one is like english football when they first played the Hungarians(?) and were shocked to lose to mere foreigners or those that used to say we have the best health service-justice-whatever system in the world without really knowing if we do. The cheap travel that started in the 60s showed us what was out there and we haven't looked back, but note what % of restaurants here are "british", most prefer to eat french, italian, spanish, indian, chinese and those with no love of food wallow in disgusting McDogburgers and other culibusiness abominations.
cook book addicts do not read 38Don't give yourself airs. You're talking B*******. Good English beer survives because a minority of English boozers are still prepared to search it out, taste, recognise and appreciate a...
We are now in a position that the rest of the world still thinks UK food a joke, but fortunately that view is now out of date and one or two, like US Gourmet magazine are actually saying London top restaurants are the worlds cutting edge, (along with Spain). If we carry on the way we are going and it filters down to the grbutt roots we may well overtake the complacent French one day. But there's no room for complacency here, we watch loads of cooking TV but cook less and less meals and we still do not have the love of food in the general population that typifies France, Spain and Italy.
Heres the test: stop at three random eateries in France, Spain, Italy and UK. See which country gives the most poor experiences, see which are cooking local dishes (that have often conquered the world) well. -- Mike Reid
