There were many places on this trip that I was excited to visit for essentially little more than the chance to eat my way through them. It will probably not surprise many of you that England was not originally on that list.
It is now. England may traditionally be the laughing stock of the culinary world, but if our meals during our latest visit are anything to go by, Blighty’s days as a gastronomical whipping boy are well and truly over.
Don’t believe me? Take a gander at the (mostly) delicious dishes we tucked into during our time in the city:
Marmite
Wasting no time, we kicked off our week in London by sampling Marmite, England’s most divisive condiment. Essentially left over beer dregs, it probably says everything about the country’s colorful food history that this spread is not only considered a foodstuff, but is also an acceptable form of vitamins.
Regardless, we gave it a try, since it could hardly be any worse than durian… or could it?
We let our dear friend Maddy doctor up our toast with but the barest scraping of Marmite, since she assured us that the most common ingestion error was a too liberal slathering of the stuff. I think that I ultimately liked it better than Tony did (also true for Durian), but we both said we mostly just found Marmite to be quite salty and I can’t say we really saw the appeal. I will allow that I could see potentially using it as a spread on a sandwich and in combination with many other ingredients, but much as I wouldn’t sit down and simply eat toast spread with ketchup, mustard, or mayo, I think we can also add Marmite to that list. I suppose I just prefer my toast fixings to be of the sweet variety. Oh well, more for Kat’s monster cat, Boots!
Fish & Chips
Perhaps England’s most famous and most beloved edible export, no visit to the UK would be complete without a hearty (an exceedingly unhealthy) portion of fish & chips.
After two years of trying dubious iterations of the dish here and there around Asia and going completely without the seven years prior to that (since Nashville—much to its detriment—does not do fish & chips, unless you consider fried catfish and fries an acceptable substitute, which it clearly is not…) I was so ready to dig into a deep-fried bomb of artery-clogging goodness. To that end, I did a fair bit of research into some of London’s best chippies that were still reasonably priced (Have I mentioned that London is pricey?) and wound up settling on Masters Super Fish, which is just down the road from Waterloo station.
A purported favorite with London cabbies, we had been forewarned that portions were huge and service was decidedly surly. We were not disappointed on either count. The walls are sea foam green, your waitress will roll her eyes when you ask for water, but the servings were massive (I know the photo makes them seem reasonable, but they really weren’t) and the food was good. Maddy assured us that Masters should be awarded full points for authenticity as it was “very English”. The only anomaly was that in addition to bread and gherkins accompanying our fish suppers, a plate of steamed prawns was also presented, which we were warned was strange and untraditional.
For £8 per person for a fried cod fish dinner, we rolled out of Masters Super Fish stuffed to the gills (hardy har har) with just a whiff of greasiness about us. All in all, a success!
A Full English
Breakfast is not just the most important meal of the day, it might just also be my favorite. “Breakfast for dinner” is a frequent occurrence in our household so great is our collective love for breakfast foods, so I don’t say this lightly when I say that for all its food-related stumbles over the years, a Full English might just be the very best breakfast on the face of the planet.
I mean, look at what you get! Toast, eggs, sausage, bacon (which is generally more like ham; the British refer to what we North American’s call bacon as “streaky bacon”), roasted tomatoes and mushrooms, baked beans… This is the ultimate savory breakfast and veritable heaven/heart attack on a plate.
That said, I only have two regrets about the Full English we experienced in London:
- The place we went to didn’t offer black pudding as part of their breakfast sets, which would have really made the meal full-on traditional;
- We only had this type of breakfast ONCE during our entire visit. Then again, our cholesterol levels likely thank us for this decision…
You can pretty much find Full English breakfasts all over London. We wound up popping into a place that we stumbled upon immediately after exiting a Leicester Square Tube station in SoHo where you could have breakfast for fairly cheap: our two breakfasts (one veggie) came to £9.70, which—given the location—isn’t too shabby. You can, of course, pay a lot more for a Full English, but I would say if you’re able to find it for less than £6 in London, you are doing well.
[Editor’s Note: Some serious Google sleuthing on Tony’s part has revealed we ate at Café Aroma Coffee Bar, located at 22 Cranbourn St. where a Full English can be had for £4.95. Don’t say we never did anything for you!]
So. Many. Sandwiches.
After two years largely eschewing sandwiches (save for our time in Vietnam where you would be mad to pass up a banh mi!), we were excited to eat our weight in sandwiches once we hit England. Which is fortunate, because it turns out sandwiches are one of the cheapest things to eat in London.
I have already told you about the best sandwich ever, but there were many other excellent sandwiches to be eaten in London. Our first day in the city, we went for lunch at Café in the Crypt at St Martin in the Fields, one of London’s most notable cheap eats. We had a salt beef sandwich, which was pretty tasty, albeit largely reminiscent of corned beef (and not as good as Montreal’s smoked meat!).
As far as meals in London go, Café in the Crypt is fairly kind on your wallet, but not really all that cheap (we decided to split the sandwich to make it a bit more affordable). Instead, we found ourselves turning to the local supermarket chain Sainsbury’s to sate all of our lunchtime sandwich needs: For £3 (~$4.80US), you can get a sandwich, a drink, and a small snack (packet of crisps, fruit salad, yogurt). As far as deals go, this one is tough to beat, although all of the supermarkets and even some of the pharmacies (like Boots) offer some variation on this. On previous visits to England, deals like this tended to be limited to the “triangle sandwiches” (ones made on sliced bread), but it seems the lunchtime crowd has gotten more ambitious as now it encompasses wraps and even baguette sandwiches too.
I maintain that these lunch deals are a great way to delve into English flavors, since we enjoyed combos that you definitely won’t find back home like chicken & stuffing, cheese and pickle (not actually pickle as we know it but a brown spiced condiment that features many different veggies), Ploughman’s platter (featuring cheddar cheese and some veggies), and southern fried chicken. Ok, that last one you can definitely get back home, but it turned out to be Tony’s favorite because it was marginally spicy. And let’s not forget the crazy snacks, like “prawn cocktail” crisps or “Wotsits” washed down with a bottle of Ribena!
Anyway, we quite happily ate loads of sandwiches for relatively little. When the weather was nice, they were perfect for lunches in the park and they are truly one of the best ways to eat fairly well while sticking to a budget in London.
A Proper High Tea
Speaking of sandwiches, they also featured when we went out for a proper English tea. Although no means cheap, when I asked Tony what he considered to be an unmissable English food experience, this was what he picked. Perhaps even more shockingly, I ferreted out a place that offers “lads tea”, serving up things like mini shepherd’s pies and the like, but Tony wanted to go the traditional route of dainty finger sandwiches and sweets instead.
So, off to the Radisson Blu Edwardian on Bloomsbury Street we went with Maddy and Kat in tow. Although the setting was a bit more modern than we were anticipating, the food was staunchly English. Our first course featured crustless sandwiches filled with things like egg mayonnaise, ham and butter, smoked salmon, and cucumber.
Second course was all about scones, clotted cream and jam. By which I mean, it was all about the clotted cream! Be still my heart! (Literally.)
To wrap things up, we indulged in the decadent top tier of fruit tarts, lemon sponge cake, chocolate brownies, and berry compote. The lemon sponge was regrettably dry, but we were quite honestly so stuffed by this point that we didn’t really mind leaving it unfinished.
Tea at the Radisson Blu Edwardian on Bloomsbury Street set us back £19.95 per person. A pricy indulgence, but decent value for money given the spread you are served. It also has the bonus of being just a few blocks down from the British Museum, which is completely free.
Traditional Cornish Pasties
Our friend Maddy was very keen that we try pasties while we were in town, but was adamant that the only decent ones we could have in London would be made by her own hand, since they are native to Cornwall, the area of England where she grew up and where her family has been making them for decades.
Pasties are, in essence, hand-held meat pies along the lines of a samosa or—dare I say it!—a hot pocket. They are made with a purposefully thick crust (which takes some real skill to properly weave!) which was used by miners as a handle for the pasty and is generally discarded.
The ingredients that go into the traditional version are very basic: ground beef, onion, potatoes, and some salt and pepper. Maddy was very clear that this is all that should be included in a pasty—anything else would be sacrilege. (Apparently her husband, Simon, is known to put curry powder in his pasties, but one look from Maddy made it clear that this was an unsanctioned deviation.)
Maddy was disappointed with how her pasties turned out, but served with a side of Branston pickle, we clearly liked them well enough as we devoured them without taking the time to take a picture of the finished product. So, here is a picture of me eating a lamb samosa instead, which I bought at a Tube station and was not at all sketchy.
Pub Grub (+ All The Beer/Ale/Cider)
Last, but certainly not least, what would a visit to England be without ample time spent down at the pub drinking many many pints, but also eating too? All of our English friends were curious as to what the North American equivalent of heading to the pub was, and we had no easy answer for this. While we certainly have our own tradition of hitting up happy hours or heading out to bars or clubs, none of these things quite cover the social meeting ground that the English pub offers and I don’t believe we tend to frequent any of those places with the same regularity that Brits do their local pubs (at least none of our friends do).
The public house is a beautiful thing, and some of them are quite literally so, housed in gorgeous old buildings that I’m sure have more than their fair share of wild stories. One evening Kat & Alex invited us to tag along to their local pub, the Warrington Hotel, for a drink… which quickly devolved into several drinks and some massive platters of food. As you might imagine, pub food tends to be on the heavier side, all the better to soak up irresponsible levels of alcohol. (Seriously, I think my liver has just now mended itself following our time in London…)
It took a real team effort, but together we managed to demolish several “snack’ platters laden with: baked camembert, chips (in the British meaning of the word), deep fried sausage, Scotch egg (i.e., an egg covered in sausage meat that is then breaded and deep fried), meat pie, sausages covered in a mustard glaze, and the dubiously named “scampi” whose initial origins no one could properly identify (the closest we could get was “some kind of fish… maybe multiple fish…”). It was serious meat overload and it was glorious.
Slightly better was when we went out to a pub in Richmond with Maddy & Simon (it was raining so what else were we to do?) where the platter we ordered featured chorizo & salami, cheese, mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, and toast fingers. More reminiscent of an antipasti platter, we could almost trick ourselves into believing we had made the healthy choice. Now, if only there hadn’t been quite so much beer involved…
Shocking though it may be, the truth of the matter is that we ate incredibly well in London. Indeed, even after having made our way through culinary powerhouse destinations like France and Italy, when I think back on our time in Europe, I consistently rank London as one of our best weeks when it came to stuffing our faces. When it came to good food and good friends, London delivered on all fronts, so much so that only the words of Oliver Twist can truly capture what that week was like:
“Please, sir, I want some more!”
Now it’s your turn: If you’ve ever been to London, were you pleasantly surprised by the food you encountered? If not, what is your favorite unexpected food destination? Which of these dishes would you most like try? If you are familiar with English food, what did we miss and should we make sure we try on our next visit?
omgsh I have so many opinions on this! First the snack platters look so freakin good.. and second I think sandwiches are what I miss most in India. I love a cold cut sandwich! Next topic… english breakfast. it is not that good! lol streaky bacon for the win & english ham is just not up to par. My bf (english) and I argue over bacon at the supermarket weekly. I really also hate marmite… it’s also really messy in the jar (or i have a messy boyfriend) and my cupbaords and handles are always covered in that stuff! it is so salty and unpleasant.
Well, I would say that English bacon is better than what Americans call “Canadian bacon”, which is generally just miserable limp slices of ham! 🙂 Here in Canada, we actually have a type of bacon known as peameal bacon (or back bacon) which is more along the lines of British bacon and I loved that growing up, so perhaps my commonwealth upbringing simply primed me to enjoy English bacon. I do love the standard bacon you get over here too, but I guess all I’m saying is I enjoy both for different things… both are excellent on sandwiches…
I would love to plow through some fish and chips in London. It sounds so perfect. That English breakfast…. is not quite so tempting. I miss sandwiches like crazy in China! I’ve never really though of London as much of a foodie destination but it definitely seems like you guys did not suffer. So much deliciousness
We missed sandwiches for the first six months of our trip or so… then in month eight, we went to Vietnam and were able to make up for the sandwich deficit we had been experiencing! One nice thing about visiting London is that you really can get just about anything you might desire when it comes to food, and based on our experiences, it all seems to be of decent quality these days. I still love eating my way through Asia, but for variety and western foods, London is an excellent food destination!
I do love me some fish and chips. I have to disagree on the full English breakfast, though. We had it multiple times in Australia and I just don’t get it. It’s fine, but I guess since I’m not much of a breakfast person to begin with, it really didn’t do it for me. My cousin’s husband, who is British, and I disagree heartily on the baked beans. Funny since I generally like beans with everything. Otherwise, it all looks great!
I wonder if you are not a breakfast person because you have a tenuous relationship with eggs? We’ve met a few people who claim to be indifferent to breakfast (which I admit, I totally don’t get), and without fail, all of these people have said that they don’t really like eggs. So until someone says otherwise, I’m going to say that this is the critical factor!
That used to be the problem, but now I love eggs. In fact, I have a whole “Put an egg on it” theory when something is lacking. 🙂 Unless it’s Mexican breakfast, it just doesn’t call my name. It’s always been that way. Oh well!
Mexican breakfasts are delicious, so I can’t fault you for that preference. I do still love me a Full English, but would not turn my nose up at some chilaquiles or huevos rancheros either…
I may be biased, but I think the UK has the best food in the world. You may find individual dishes of a higher quality in other countries, but no where else can you find such a wide range of different dishes from across the world. Home cooking in the UK is generally terrible, but restaurants are wonderful! I’m a big fan of marmite too!
I think that when it comes to variety, London certainly delivers in an impressive way, although I’m not sure how well London reflects the UK as a whole (though I do know you guys love your Indian food!). I would say that when it comes to diversity, there are parts of the States and parts of Canada (like Toronto!) that might be able to best somewhere like London, but it would be a “pipped at the post” time competition.
Why do you think home cooking is so abysmal in the UK if the restaurants are so good? I will say that I think poor cooks are found the world over (though there seem to be fewer of them in Asia…), but it does seem like British cooks could use some love!
London is more diverse than the rest of the UK, but you’ll find a surprising range of food in the rest of the country too. You’re right about the Indian food though. You’ll find amazing Indian (and Chinese) food in every town in the UK.
Home cooking seems to be getting worse all the time. There are a wide range of reasons, but the biggest is probably lack of time. Most people work and convenience food makes it too easy for them to take short cuts. People aren’t taught to cook at school and we are now getting generations where their parents didn’t cook either so they can’t be taught at home. Very few people my age really know how to cook. It is so sad.
Interesting analysis, Jackie! I would wager that home cooks are becoming less capable in many western countries due to the prevalence of prepared and processed foods. I do think that there is something of a revolution in the States (and perhaps here in Canada to) with a portion of the population becoming more invested in homecooked foods and making things from scratch, so I don’t think we’re losing our home cooks to such a degree here. Also, I know I’m biased, but many of our friends are fairly good home cooks, even if they do rely on the occasional bottled sauce and the like, but I think they tend to try to develop these skills and improve as best they can.
Whenever I think of British food I always think of my good friend’s high school trip to England where she was so disgusted by the beans on toast and boiled fish and potatoes that she ate nothing but candy bars for a week. But I have been reading so much about London’s food scene lately and clearly things have changed. I have to say posts like this really pique my interest, especially because I am a lover of all things sandwich related! Oh, and breakfast for dinner is a common occurrence in my house too 🙂
True story: when my friend L’Ell and I traveled through the UK for three weeks back in 2005, although we didn’t find the food bad, we did find it so repetitive that after a while, we would have been happy if we never saw another deep fried food item again in our lives, and would have killed for any green vegetable. I think English cooking has come a ways since then, but I also think that it’s true that Brits do also eat a fair bit of crap. Their stance on veggies is a bit dreadful (apparently ketchup counts as one of your daily servings of fruits & veg) and I think many people do still eat poorly, but it’s actually not too hard to find yummy, healthy food these days, which is great. And English standard dishes, when prepared well, are really pretty tasty!
I miss Marmite SO MUCH and I’d do anything to have a huge jar right now, not to eat all in one go obviously. Usually Italians don’t like the taste of this awesome salty spread but I’m simply in love with it, in fact when I took Marmite home and made friends and family try it, everybody had the same reaction, they would rather eat plain bread instead. I’m craving for some now, it’s been too long since my last Marmite toast and I still cannot find it here in Berlin, still looking though 🙂
Having seen what most Italians eat for breakfast (cookies & coffee!), I guess I’m not surprised that Marmite hasn’t made it over to that part of the world. I guess I personally feel like you could just put soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce on a piece of bread and essentially achieve the same effect, but I am no Marmite expert, that is for sure! 🙂 If we had known we were going to meet up with you guys in Rome, we absolutely would have picked you up a bottle before leaving London! Did Dale bring back a jar after he visited England to get dental work done?
This post combined two of my favorite things: London and food. This might actually be the perfect post. Ever. That high tea looks amazing!!! Who ever said good food could not be had in London?
The high tea was SO good; definitely a sweet treat. I wish other places would come around to clotted cream—I’ve found it a few times outside of the UK, but it is always SO expensive.
I think the people who say that there’s no good food to be had in London are clearly people who have not traveled there! There are so many good options, I’m sad to say that we only ate a fraction of what we wanted to!
I’m so glad you wrote this, the UK has an unfairly bad reputation for food when I have yet to find a country other than Italy that offers such nice dishes. We miss so many of the things on this list like pasties and proper fish and chips and the pub – we haven’t been anywhere that has such a great pub culture as the UK. We also travel everywhere with a jar of Marmite too! One thing, you mention in the comments that Brits eat a lot of crap but actually (maybe this is because I lived in London) most people I knew ate quite healthily, shopping for organic fruit and veg at farmer’s markets for example; I also know a lot of vegetarians and vegans who eat well in England. London is certainly the easiest place to eat for me, speaking as a vegetarian.I actually watched a Channel 4 documentary about the world’s healthiest diet over the summer and America and Australia came way below the UK, although the UK was nowhere near as healthy as other European countries 🙂
Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that places like Canada/U.S./Australia do any better than the UK when it comes to amount of crap people tend to eat—I think all of these countries have a problem with junky fast food consumption, I think it just masquerades under different guises. I mean, things like “chip butties” personally horrify me, but then, poutine—while delicious—is certainly not any healthier. People can eat like garbage anywhere, so it’s not something that is localized to the UK. Just that England historically isn’t know for good food, and while I would say that is unfair based on what we sampled, it is true that as easy as it is to eat tasty foods, it is also easy to eat things that are really bad for you and there are still certain English foods that perhaps aren’t so desirable (I know they are falling out of favor, but: jellied eels!).
Also, I will say that—for whatever reason—most of the finicky/fussy eaters who prefer fairly bland/staid food tend to be Brits! I’m not sure why this is given the diversity of foods available, and that is no means a scientific study (just my own personal observations), but it is what we have noted on our travels.
No worries, I didn’t think you were trying to make out that the UK was much more unhealthy than the US etc 🙂 I was just surprised because I feel it’s so easy to eat healthily in the UK (or at least it is for us) and London is so veggie-friendly.
I definitely agree, people can eat healthily or badly wherever they are and there’s junk food available in so many places. For us, we find we’re healthiest if we have a kitchen to cook in regardless of where we are in the world so that we can cook our own meals. Although we are having more success finding veggie dishes here in Vietnam now we do still find Asian food quite greasy and meaty (even if dishes don’t have meat directly in them, a lot of the time they’ve been cooked alongside meat or have loads of fish oil in them) but luckily we have a kitchen in our apartment 🙂
Interesting that you’ve found other Brits who are fussy/prefer bland food like me, maybe it’s something to do with the fact that we don’t traditionally use a lot of spices in our dishes (although I’m sure many Brits do when they’re cooking for themselves)? I’m with you on the jellied eels, definitely wouldn’t try them!
High tea followed by fish and chips for me please! Yummmm!
An excellent choice, Tim. Though if you could actually manage to get all of that down, we would be seriously impressed!
I definitely miss the full English although there is a massive brunch culture in Australia, where I live now, so I can’t complain. Best sandwich in the UK for me is the Pret Christmas Sandwich – roast turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mayonnaise and crunchy onion – alot of people would count down the days until it was Pret Christmas sandwich time again. I think the food from the UK that I miss the most is the pub meals, especially from Gastro pubs. Five star meals for a fraction of the price and always hearty. I was never a big fan of fish and chips in the UK, I don’t like how the skin is left on one side of the fish, NZ and Australia does fish and chips much better.
For what it’s worth, we did not notice any unpalatable fish skin during our F&C meal! It was just lots of crispy batter and moist, flaky fish with every bite.
Oh, I know the Christmas Sandwich of which you speak as there are Pret a Mangers in the States and I obviously would get that sandwich whenever it was on offer. Incidentally, that sandwich is also the reason I love Thanksgiving so much—we always make extra stuffing and a bigger turkey than necessary so that we can have leftover sandwiches for the week that follows!
Steph, once again I’m so far behind with your entries! Doh!!!!
And I’m so glad you wrote this post because it all looks delicious. Even the meat, lol. I always say that, don’t I. haha.
You have to get your butts down to Australia at some point. Because of the obvious English influence on our culture we share a lot of the same foods, but we’ve kind of put our own twist on it. We have a big pub culture too so I think you’d like it. We also eat a lot of fish and chips and of course we have Vegemite instead of Marmite (the two are almost the same). When it comes to any kind of yeast spread less is definitely more!
I’m glad you got to experience high tea too, it’s so English! I’ve had it here, isn’t it lovely? And I know compared to Asia 20 pounds is heaps but that seems like a decent price to me. I’ve seen some posh hotels who advertise their high tea at $120 AUD or more which is like 65 pounds.
One day we will make it to Australia so we can try all of your English-inspired foodstuffs as well! We’ve heard great things about the Melbourne dining scene, and I can’t wait to see for myself how your traditional cuisine is “same same but different”!
We definitely could have spent far more on high tea in London, that is for certain. Many places can also add in a flute of champagne, but that drives the price up. We could have also just got tea with sandwiches for much cheaper, but we wanted a proper tea, and I think we managed to find one that was reasonably priced and still delivered everything we wanted. Definitely a success!
You’ve made me so homesick…for the food.
I hate marmite and I’m firmly in that camp. The best fish and chips I’ve had are in Scotland but I’m always willing to try more. Oh my a full English, what I wouldn’t do. Followed by a high tea. Wow when we eventually get back to the UK, I’m going to eat ALL the food!
Funny that what made me most home sick was the picture of you Steph holding the Ribena and Wotsits, neither of which I really like but they say say home to me.
We heard from a lot of people that many great British foods are much better at other places in the country (or even Scotland for that matter!), but since we were limited to London this time, we did the best we could. I definitely look forward to eating my way through other parts of England & the UK the next time we’re in the area.
Also, I get you on the weirdest foods triggering homesickness—I never ate Cheetos (the American version of Wotsits) prior to our travels, but learned to love and crave them while we were away. So strange!
It makes me so happy to see this, one of my most dreaded conversations when travelling was trying to defend British food! Something people don’t realise is that for such a small country we are very diverse, even in our small town in Yorkshire I have access to cuisine from all over the world 10 minutes from my house. The UK is a melting pot for different cultures and with that comes amazing food!
I have to say, if you ever make further north in the UK, let us know and we’ll take you for fish and chips. A pickle is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen on the side of a plate of fish and chips, you need a pot of mushy peas and a pot of tea – that’s it 😉 P.S that pub grub looks amazing!
We have heard from many people (yourself included!) that fish and chips up in the north of England are some of the best in the world, so we definitely want to put that to the test. Also, we had such an amazing time in London (eating and otherwise) that we are definitely keen to return to your part of the world and see more of England and tour other parts of the UK. I definitely believe that English fare has come along way in the past decade and it really does have a rich array of delicious dishes that—when prepared correctly—definitely don’t deserve the bad rap that seems to persist.
(Also, I can only imagine that defending English food comes second only to talking politics and religion—especially with an American as your traveling companion—in terms of conversations on the road no one wants to have! 😀 )