what are bangers?
Well, someone has to say it.
I like Taco Bell. I eat there all the time. In fact, judging from this thread, I appear to be single-handedly keeping the entire chain afloat.
Sausages.
Haj
I’ll let you into a secret. Brits don’t either. Well, not that often.
The best way of describing it is that you have to imagine our pubs as our restaurants. They all sell food, but as they are also drinking establishments they are often discounted as restaurants. The thing is, almost every major city in the western world is going to have British-style pubs selling British-style food, but we have sneaked them in by not calling them restaurants and no-one seems to have noticed.
I get it a lot here in Sweden, people putting down British food. Here it is even weirder, as I find Swedish food to be some of the blandest I have ever found, but each to their own. Anyway, I can think of precisely one place in the UK that I could go to find Swedish food (The Nordic Bar in London) whereas I know of many places where I can get British food in Sweden. I regularly see Swedes eating it yet I really don’t think they realise that they are eating British food. Go figure.
Getting back on topic, where I was at the University of Birmingham (UK) between 1992 and 1997 for a coupel of those years they definitely had a Taco Bell in the the Guild of Students. Chilli Cheese Fries were the thing to eat after a few beers.
I like it too, LN. I wish they had Taco Bells in Ireland.
Part of the problem is that it would be very difficuly to accurately define ‘British food’ (as opposed to ‘Food in Britain’, which is a different thing), as there is(and long has been) such a diversity of imported culture and ideas that a great deal of ‘fusion’ has occurred.
Sure, ‘Bangers & Mash’ is a stereotypical ‘British’ food, but in a decent restaurant, you’re more likely to be offered something like Butterflied venison sausages on Spring onion and artichoke mash with roast tomato salsa, or sticky glazed wild boar sausages with potato rosti and spiced apricots - i.e. a variant incorporating ideas and ingredients from other styles and cultures of cooking.
I’m always a little wary of any establishment that is more concerned with national identity than it is with the quality of its food.
Okay, let’s clear this up. The reason that you don’t find British restaurants anywhere (apart from the aforementioned pubs) is that, due to the incredible fertility of British soil, traditionally British cooks have worked with meat, vegetables etc. that already taste good without needing to be spiced to death to conceal their true flavour (or lack thereof). Therefore, because it is uneconomical to keep a vast range of fresh ingredients in stock, it is very difficult for a restaurant to make good British food without it being incredibly expensive, so a "McRoastBeef would not really be possible. All the popular foods that have gone international seem to have originally been invented by peasants with very little to eat, which makes them also a very good business proposition - simple to make from cheap ingredients - which keeps the profit margins high. Some examples: Pizza - Italian cheese on toast, Chili - “Hey, amigo, what’ll we do with all these beeeeans?” etc. etc… If you go into the kitchen of an Indian restaurant you’ll see max. four or five huge pans constantly on the boil, from which they make the hundred or so different dishes on the menu. (I love Indian food, by the way).
And another thing, I have actually met Americans who don’t know - or believe - that people eat, for example, fried blood (another English treat known as black pudding), so I would say that anyone who hasn’t learnt to appreciate steak and kidney pie (one of the most delicious things on this planet) either has the taste buds of a three-year-old and eats only pancakes with maple syrup, or hasn’t tried it yet.
Anyone interested in British food should obtain a copy of Delia Smith’s cookery book (probably even available to Yanks via Amazon), because real British food is home-cooked. Or go to Britain and find a pub that serves good, traditional food. You’ll be in for a pleasant surprise.
P.S. Don’t bother trying to find a British pub outside of Britain. There is no such thing.
A word of warning though - avoid places where the first three items on the menu are Scampi, Lasagne and ‘steak and ale pie’ - this is not the good traditional food that trabi describes.
As pointed out previously, Taco Bell, is not Mexican food. It is not even food. It is a munchies canceling substance. And as such it is the most effective thing you can get at 4am within 5 minutes. If all the pot and alchohol suddenly dissappered both Taco Bell, and White Castle would immediatly go out of business, but until then they serve a vital function.
As for British food my opinion changed when I saw a FoodTV show on Henry VIII and the Tudors. Henry was the Hugh Hefner of meat lovers. They were showing all these beautiful spit roasted and basted meats that made my saliva glands erect. And no crappy vegetables to get in the way 
Sounds like Doner kebabs are the British functional equivalent then - available late at night and not something most people would consume if sober.
I always thought that we were very lucky in the UK in NOT being overly precious about our national cuisine, such as it is, as it allows for an incredibly inclusive attitude to other culture’s foods, esp. the mighty curry. French and Italian food is superb, but if you go there it’s relatively hard to hunt out other forms of food (or so my brother - not an ideal source I’ll admit - informed me) than their own.
Oh, and all the most gross sounding British food - steak & kidney pie, haggis, black pudding etc. - is, weirdly enough, the tastiest.
I just wanted to chime in and say that the first Taco Bell in Asia is opening in Shanghai next week. I’ll be there.
Mexican or Tex-Mex places are pretty rare here, and quality and authenticity varies. There used to be a few Chi-Chis around, but I haven’t seen one in ages. These guys do reasonable Tex-Mex in London.
I dunno, trabi, Ye Olde King’s Head is run by British ex-pats and the serving staff are from the UK. The pub part is pretty small, but it’s like the pubs I’ve been in in London (although noisier).
I usually go to the restaurant part (and we’ve had a couple of Dopefests there), and they have the best fish’n’ships I’ve ever eaten. Their bangers are just as good. Unfortunately they’ve dropped the faggots (liver meatballs with gravy)'n’peas, which were tasty.
Looks like they’ve dropped the black pudding from the “king size” breakfast, but I did have it there. It was good, but the breakfast already had entirely too much food so it was a bit superfluous.
I’ve had the steak and kidney pie, but I prefer the bangers or fish.
I’ve always thought it would be fun to open a California-Mexican restaurant in London. Are avocados easy to get there?
I ate at this place http://www.fiestamehicana.co.uk only last week, not only was the Mexican food excellent, but they had about 50 bottles of tequila, and a wide range of Spanish/Mexican beers… Also, the ceiling was covered in sombreros, and I’m positive that’s what restauraunts are like in Mexico. Well worth eating in if you do go to York.
Oh, and avocados are very readily available all over the UK.
Mmm… Guacamole…
Excellent! I’ll be in York early next month, and looking for places to eat. Ta!
It seems there might be something to the tried and failed theory. In my own town (suburban NYC area) we haven’t ever had one because of strict local zoning codes. Perhaps someone in the London government was frightened by a 7 Layer Burrito as a child and intends to keep that city free of them. Why assume it has anything to do with demographics or marketing when a sinister conspiracy can be dreamt up?
I should mention that there are Chi-Chi’s restaurants in London, and can personally report that they’re even worse than their US counterparts. Who the hell waters down salsa? That’s just sad.
There used to be Chili’s as well, but they seem to have gone. Now if only TGI Fridays would follow them…
When I moved from Northern England to Arizona as a student, I found that a lot of Mexican food in the US performs the same function as Indian food in the UK.
Spicy, different, similar menus at all establishments, available cheap and late when drunk or pricier and more formal when sober and looking for better quality. Available as takeout.
The two shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, of course, but when you examine the breakdown of immigrants in the US (more mexican) and the UK (more indian) it makes sense for the non chain restaurants at least.
I’m a big fan of food in general, including british food. Not a big fan of a lot of what passes for cheese and bread in the US. You do know who invented the sandwich don’t you?
Disclaimer - of course now I live in Philly where a combination of not so good cheese, meat and bread turns into something wonderful.