I’ve been reading a couple of local blogs today, A Brooklyn Life and Mona’s Apple, they both discuss food and they’ve inspired me to share my own opinions.
In this order these are the best foods in the world. No discussion or debate is necessary—I speak objectively.
1. Indian
2. Korean
3. English
1.
Indian Food is the best food because it has the most flavor and the flavor is the nicest. People used to kill each other for those spices. Enough said. I don’t go for subtlety with food. I’ve had delicately flavored elaborate gourmet dishes, and they have always been disappointing.
2.
Korean food tastes almost as good as Indian food but it is much, much healthier. I am constantly amazed that there are no good Korean restaurants in our part of Brooklyn (Park Slope). The closest place we’ve found is a hole in the wall outside the entrance of the Pratt campus. This ‘restaurant’ is miles better than any Thai, Chinese or Japanese rubbish anyplace around here. If I were only allowed to eat one kind of food for the rest of my life, I’d choose Korean.
3.
And I know my third choice is controversial so I’ll argue my case. Only last week a food snob colleague informed me: “I’m sorry, English food is really bad.”
Bitch.
I’ve encountered this attitude everywhere I’ve ever been. In Granada, in Spain (the worst food I’ve had in my life), my students loved telling me how crap English food was. I’d smile and say, “Yes, we have a bad reputation, but things aren’t what they were.” Now I believe that things were never that bad. People who say English food is bad are usually repeating what they heard someone else say or admitting they went to the wrong place to eat in England.
I don’t care about 100 euro saucy meals in chic Parisian restaurants; I’m never going to eat one, they are irrelevant to me. I don’t care about a great American sandwich with 3 inches of fake turkey inside it on my choice of one out of a hundred breads. I literally can’t eat the thing; it won’t fit in my mouth. I like 1 slice of real meat on two slices of fresh brown bread. Brown bread that lasts 3 days after the day it was purchased; not 30.
As I may have mentioned before (once or twice), I HATE cheese, so goodbye Italy, Switzerland, Germany etc. You had your chance but you’ve ruined it by covering all your food in fetid gunk.
Chips are 1000% better than fries. Meat pies are tastier than fruit pies. In England mashed potato is made out of potato, not white dust. Our sausages are the envy of the world and are integral to the finest breakfast in the world. Our biscuits, cakes and deserts are absolutely the best in the world. We plundered the furthest reaches of the globe refining our tastes for centuries and we know what we like.
Have you tried an American cup of tea?
Even in the smallest, plebbiest of towns in England the supermarkets have the widest selection I’ve seen anywhere in the world. The quality is also consistently better than stores over here.
To get the kind of meal you can buy cheaply in a good English pub would bankrupt you here, and wouldn’t even be an option in most countries.
Even our cheese is good (apparently).
English food comforts you and fills you up like no other, and isn’t that what food is for?
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YOU MUST BE JOKING, MAN!
I agree! All the foody snobs who’ve told me that English food is terrible have never eaten in the UK, or if they have it’s been in an airport. Stilton is the King of cheeses. A good, wholewheat loaf from Tesco is better than any bread you can get in here in the States, and it costs a third of the price. An English breakfast (with a good mug of builder’s tea) is a thing of beauty, and a roast dinner with Yorkshire puddings is a joy. Puddings generally (desserts to the Americans) are the best in the world. Also, eating out in the UK is an exciting experience (and this is a feature we share with the US) because we’re not snobby about our food (unlike the French, for example) and are willing to eat food from anywhere else in the world. London almost matches New York for the international variation of it’s restaurants.
And don’t get me started about black pudding…
I can’t agree more. I am a Londoner living in North Carolina and have done for 10 years now. People who complain about ‘English’ food have either not eaten it or had a bad meal - like you can’t get that anywhere in the world.
Now - let’s get to the real point: what are people calling English food? Do they mean any food prepared and served in that country, or do they mean the traditional fare of steak and kidney pie, toad in the hole etc?
Because if we go with the former they would be SOOOOOOOO wrong to say English food is bad. To me when I think of the food I eat back home, it is a fusion of many cultures’ foods, and really the curry is now the official Great British food! Are a billion or so Indians eating crap food - I think not!
Now, if we talk of traditional English fare, again it is all a matter of taste. Some people don’t like to prepare food with lots of salt, and salt is what brings out the taste of it. I think that used to be a downfall of English meals that no longer is true.
It is my belief that 95% of the people who moan that English food is awful have never even eaten food in England anyway - it’s one of those things that people say, like the Scots are cheap or the French don’t wash - tarring a broad brush over a nation because of a random incident or unpleasant meeting with someone of that nationality.
I live in Charlotte, NC and I have to say that US Southern food has to be the worst. Southerners take perfectly good, nutritious vegetables and boil them or fry them into oblivion - completely nullifying any goodness God gave them. There is nothing but sugar and fat in the food so it’s no wonder most of the people here are obese. Shops here are so far behind the UK in the ranges of food that are available - trying to get good international food at the supermarket here is a laugh - and bread - give me a break! No one here knows what a crust is - baguettes are not soft!!!!!!
OK, so I am starting to rant a little.
I am not so defensive of English food because I can trace my heritage back to Saxon Kings or anything - indeed I am a child of immigrants to the UK. All I know is that saying English/British food is bad is a very broad statement that can, in fact, be applied to any country because all people are ethnocentric in their cores - the unfamiliar takes time to assimilate. To the very restricted mind and palette of the average American, great food just is not appreciated because Americans are very stuck in their ways, and so very far from Cosmopolitan in nature.
And yes, American tea is awful. Liptons does not even class as tea on the Great British Tea Scale.
Hurrah! I completely agree! As yet another Brit in Park Slope where we are supposedly surrounded by a plethora of gourmet food stores, I still miss Tesco.
Oh for a decent loaf of bread! Either it’s the 30 day kind you mention, or it’s ‘artisan’ which means it’s so hard you risk losing several teeth biting into it. Why is it IMPOSSIBLE to buy good bread over here? Did the recipie get lost on the trip over the Atlantic? If someone was to steal the Tesco bread baking cookbook and open a bakery over here they’d make a killing!
Then there’s the deserts. Have you noticed how ‘American’ deserts tasted better back in the UK? The cookies, the cakes, the brownies etc, all tasted like they’d just been baked using real ingredients, not just a bunch of chemicals and a Hershey Bar.
AND, there’s Indian Food, the most British of British cuisines. Maybe it’s the lack of competition but Indian food here is just not that great. I have found a couple of lunch places in Manhattan that are OK but in terms of delivery in Park Slope, I’m yet to find anything that comes close to the most average of average Indian takeaways in the UK.
A colleague recently (very seriously) told me that English Food is terrible because we still have a rationing mentality held over from the war. Silly me. I didn’t realize ‘good food’ simply consisted of portion sizes big enough to feed a family of 5 for a week. The same colleague, when I was ordering an Indian Takeaway at lunchtime asked ‘Ooh, Indian Food! I may order some too! Can I get some Hummus?’
I rest my case.
I completely agree. I have lived in the UK and agree with everyone above (except the guy that said you were kidding). I, too, am a HUGE fan of Korean (soondoobu jigae is my favorite). I miss the UK so much; I would love to live there. Anyone giving out Visas?