British Food

One thing that would probably cause a strike in any country is British food, particularly in most company canteens and restaurants, where everything is served with chips or ice-cream. Of course, British food isn’t always as bad as it’s painted by foreigners. (What can people who eat anything that crawls, jumps, swims or flies, possibly know about real food?). While it’s true that British food is often bland, may look terrible and can make you sick, for most people it’s just a matter of getting used to it. (What’s wrong with a diet of brown sauce, chips, biscuits and tea, anyway?). After all, it’s usually necessary to become acclimatised to the food in most foreign countries.

However, it’s difficult not to have some sympathy with foreigners who think that many British ‘restaurants’ should post health warnings and be equipped with an emergency medical centre. (There’s nothing wrong with British food that a good stomach pump cannot cure). It may come as a surprise to many foreigners to learn that British bookshops are bursting with cookery books and they aren’t all written by foreigners. The UK also has many popular television cookery programmes that usually feature eccentric (and excellent) chefs and scrumptious looking food. The British can console themselves with the knowledge that they (or some of them) at least know how to behave at the table, even if they don’t have much idea what to serve on it.

To compensate for their deficiencies in the kitchen, the British are famous for their love of wine (or anything alcoholic) and are among the world’s foremost (self-appointed) experts on the character and qualities of good wine, although they’re often better talkers than drinkers. In the UK, a wine may be described as having intense aromas and flavours of berries, bramble-jelly, morello cherries, peppery spices, mint, toffee and a hint of honey. The secret of dining in the UK is to drink a lot as, when you’re drunk, most food tastes okay. The British even make their own wine; not only home-brewed stuff made from elderberries and other strange fruit, but also real commercially-produced wine made from grapes! Although it isn’t exactly causing panic among continental wine producers, some of it’s quite palatable.