As a counterpoint to this thread, I am proud to say that I love British food. I encourage the sharing of favourite British foods here. I’ll go first. I love :
Yorkshire pudding with beef gravy
Good strong malty tea (esp. St. Michael’s Kenyan breakfast)
Penguin biscuits
Walker’s salt and vinegar crisps
Parma violets
Well prepared fish and chips with malt vinegar
Sticky toffee pudding
Bread pudding with custard sauce
And tons of other stuff. Come on, everyone, admit your love for (unfairly) maligned British food. It’s not shameful, see, I went first…
Ooh, and bangers and mash with onion gravy, as long as the sausages are good (and not those horrid gristly things you get in most pubs), and the mash is homemade (and not instant).
I always have to take pickled onions and Branston Pickle to my exhusband when I visit him in Amsterdam. Luckily, none of the jars have broken in my suitcase yet!
Cream tea
Cottage pie
Yorkshire pudding
Roasts … beef, pork chicken (without all the fat taken off as in US)
Curry (ok, not ‘British’ but you can’t get one in Tulsa)
Crumpets, scones, muffins
Fish and chips in American pubs means fish and french fries. While I’ve avoided french fries with hamburgers for years, I’ve found that they’re OK with vinegar instead of ketchup.
I love all the food in this thread. When I teach EFL I often dedicate a class to food and attempt to persuade the students how delicious it is. It is - you just have to eat at the right places, like with any cuisine (my place is always good for British food).
I’ll add pies and pasties to the list. I’m not fond of steak and kidney, but a lovely hot chicken pie with thick pastry is fabulous with boiled potatoes, gravy and the usual veg. Proper Cornish pastries are delicious and convenient.
Also cheeese - mature cheddar, Red Leicester, Stilton, yum yum yum.
However, Krisfer, I have no idea what you mean by ‘stewed tomatoes for breakfast.’ Do you mean the tomatoes you have with a fry-up?
SciFiSam I am not sure what exactly y’all mean by a fry up…
But when I was at Cambridge in 89, they would serve tomatoes that had been cooked for breakfast. After a short time that was ALL my ulcer would let me eat first thing in the day!
A fry up = bacon, eggs, sausage, black pudding (for the purists, but not for me, bleurgh), bread, tomatoes, mushrooms, all fried, often with baked beans on the side. The tomatos in this case are either large fresh tomatoes, fried, or tinned tomatoes, fried. Basically take out what you have in your fridge, and fry it. Perhaps your stewed tomatoes were fried tinned tomatoes, but they’re not usually served on their own.
Perhaps they were but my bud who hails from Bristol knew what I was talking about…
And maybe I am not being clear enough myself: the kitchen at Cambridge also served eggs, bacon( LOVE your bacon!) and toast as well as tomatoes and maybe something else… But the eggs were fried in way to much butter for my poor little ulcer and while I love your bacon my tummy is at mixed minds about it. So after about 2 weeks I was just having tomatoes, toast and cold cereal for breakfast.
Ah, fond memories of Molly Malone’s in LA and Ye Olde King’s Head Pub in Santa Monica. Fish & chips (with malt vinegar of course) and a few pints of Guinness on tap, no more food needed for the following three days.