Favorite British Dishes?

Naiwen

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Beans on toasts for breakfast, mushy peas with chips, Lancashire hotpot, bangers and mash with mushy peas and chips, toad in a pole, Yorkshire pudding, Sunday roasts, fish and chips or curry sauce or chili or cheese dip or sour cream and onion or a tartar sauce and mayo with malt vinegar, fishcakes and chips, seafood cakes and chips, steak and chips with BBQ or ketchup sauce and full English breakfast are my personal favorites to name just a few. Just about any main dish with chips and malt vinegar for me personally . What about you?
 

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Never cared for mushy peas.

Curry isn't technically a British dish - more associated with India but in the UK quite a few 'Indian" restaurants are run by Bangladeshi staff - but is so common in the UK it kinda-sorta-is. I love a good curry. Apparently a curry with a sauce that's mostly red is prepared by Indians, whereas if it's prepared by Bangladeshis it tends to be more yellow because they use more turmeric in their recipes. Truth be told I like both.

Fish and chips, Yorkshire puddings (some places sell giant Yorkshire puddings filled with something), steak and kidney pies, Bakewell tarts, chocolate digestive biscuits, Hobnobs, the list goes on. And on..... and on..... :)

For anyone wondering, toad in the hole (not in the pole!) is sausages in batter. It's good.
 

Naiwen

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Never cared for mushy peas.

Curry isn't technically a British dish - more associated with India but in the UK quite a few 'Indian" restaurants are run by Bangladeshi staff - but is so common in the UK it kinda-sorta-is. I love a good curry. Apparently a curry with a sauce that's mostly red is prepared by Indians, whereas if it's prepared by Bangladeshis it tends to be more yellow because they use more turmeric in their recipes. Truth be told I like both.

Fish and chips, Yorkshire puddings (some places sell giant Yorkshire puddings filled with something), steak and kidney pies, Bakewell tarts, chocolate digestive biscuits, Hobnobs, the list goes on. And on..... and on..... :)

For anyone wondering, toad in the hole (not in the pole!) is sausages in batter. It's good.
Oops sorry mate.
 

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Not a huge fan of British food even though I love my British friends and family.

One thing that I did like when we were with friends is that they make sandwiches by buttering up the bread before they put the lunchmeat on. It actually tasted good!
 

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Steak and kidney pie.
 

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Not a huge fan of British food even though I love my British friends and family.

One thing that I did like when we were with friends is that they make sandwiches by buttering up the bread before they put the lunchmeat on. It actually tasted good!

What British food did you have? I've known a few visitors from abroad describe it as bland and insipid although a lot of the time it seems places catering to larger groups play it safe by serving up stuff that won't offend anybody's palate, and the inevitable result is that dishes are perhaps best described as "uninspiring".
 

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What British food did you have? I've known a few visitors from abroad describe it as bland and insipid although a lot of the time it seems places catering to larger groups play it safe by serving up stuff that won't offend anybody's palate, and the inevitable result is that dishes are perhaps best described as "uninspiring".

I'm not sure if I remember all the things I've had in the past. We have a restaurant that offers British fare not very far from us and my husband liked it but I didn't really care for anything we've gotten.
 

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I'm not sure if I remember all the things I've had in the past. We have a restaurant that offers British fare not very far from us and my husband liked it but I didn't really care for anything we've gotten.

Is it run by actual British people, or is it an American interpretation of British dishes?

The reason I ask is that the difference I've seen between ethnic restaurants run by members of that ethnicity, and similar restaurants run by people who might have a little bit of that ethnicity in them, can be quite substantial. I'm thinking specifically of comparing authentic Chinese restaurants in the UK with one place I found in the US run by people who looked American and spoke American but had a slight Oriental tinge to their skin. The UK restaurant was really good, the US restaurant was OK but didn't feel like I was getting anything I couldn't get from the Oriental section in any reasonable grocery store.
 

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Not a huge fan of British food even though I love my British friends and family.

One thing that I did like when we were with friends is that they make sandwiches by buttering up the bread before they put the lunchmeat on. It actually tasted good!


England is not known for particularly good native crusine. Not even by the British. But just as in the USA, they embrace foods from all over the world, there is a very international aspect to their food. They love pizza and KFC and hamburgers and chinese food and anything Italian... lots of Indian restaurants, too.... even a few African places; about the only thing I didn't see in England was Mexican food, but I'll bet it's there.


My wife is of Scottish heritage. Her family makes meat pies (an English thing too) but that's pretty much the only British thing they eat. My mother-in-law makes a couple of Indian dishes, however.



.
 

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England is not known for particularly good native crusine. Not even by the British. But just as in the USA, they embrace foods from all over the world, there is a very international aspect to their food. They love pizza and KFC and hamburgers and chinese food and anything Italian... lots of Indian restaurants, too.... even a few African places; about the only thing I didn't see in England was Mexican food, but I'll bet it's there.


My wife is of Scottish heritage. Her family makes meat pies (an English thing too) but that's pretty much the only British thing they eat. My mother-in-law makes a couple of Indian dishes, however.
.

We used to have a really good comedy called Goodness Gracious Me. It was written by a group of Asian comics, lampooning the saying (goodness gracious me) that for a time was widely associated with the Asian community. Among their sketches was a group of Indian teenagers "going out for an English" where they asked the waiter about the blandest item on the menu and then all ordered it.

You'd be hard pressed to find anywhere even in a small town that didn't have Indian food on offer. In the larger cities you'll find an increasing range of international cuisine and, as you might expect for major cities, London and Birmingham have very large multiracial/multicultural populations and restaurants to go with it. I used to live near a Mexican restaurant but if I recall the couple who ran it were from South America rather than Mexico.

I wouldn't say we are known for our food but knowing the tendency to avoid serving groups of tourists things that might offend their palates it's easy to see why groups of tourists come away thinking our food is insipid. Even if you just take something like bangers and mash, or lamb chops, or fish and chips, and cook them properly you end up with something that is pretty good.
 

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Fish and chips, cobblers (all sorts), cottage pie and Yorkshire pudding. Trifle is good too and I've had Beef Wellington once and thought it was good.
 
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