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The English Attitude To Food & Drink
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
What does everyone think of the English (or British) attitude to Food & Drink.
I think on my travels that in every other country I've been to (e.g. Spain, France, Italy, Africa, India, Canada, etc) Food is the main thing (and the main reason for friends and family to get together) and drink is simply what accompanies the food and helps wash it down.
But in the UK I think drink seems to be the main thing and food is a kebab on the way home.
May have asked this question before but recently a friend of mine took over an "English" restaurant that was going bust and made it into a Japanese one and the same place with the same decor is doing 10 times better.
The government is trying to cure Britain's bing drink culture, but wouldn't one of the best ways to be to improve British food so it's more appealing then a pint of beer?
Ask me to name 10 British dishes and I'd be hard pressed, but 10 different kinds of Ales, and beers is easy. Even the recent Jamie Oliver campaign is running into problems to get better food into schools with parents being reported to be giving their kids more packed lunches with unhealthy foods and even handing them hamburger inbetween he bars of the school gates.
Even when I go to the supermarket I have to read the ingredients labels to see what's in it and we have all sorts of rubbish from lard in a chicken or beef dish to the remains of crushed beetles in our smarties simply to make the red ones as the beetle eat red berries and it's an easy way to get at the food colouring.
http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/bugjuice.htm
And of course we saw what happens when farmers took shortcuts in beef production and started Mad Cow disease (i.e. feeding them animal remains instead of keeping them veggies as nature intended.).
Is the cure for bing drinking culture to make food better and end the UK's questionable attitude to the quality of our food and what goes into it?
I think on my travels that in every other country I've been to (e.g. Spain, France, Italy, Africa, India, Canada, etc) Food is the main thing (and the main reason for friends and family to get together) and drink is simply what accompanies the food and helps wash it down.
But in the UK I think drink seems to be the main thing and food is a kebab on the way home.
May have asked this question before but recently a friend of mine took over an "English" restaurant that was going bust and made it into a Japanese one and the same place with the same decor is doing 10 times better.
The government is trying to cure Britain's bing drink culture, but wouldn't one of the best ways to be to improve British food so it's more appealing then a pint of beer?
Ask me to name 10 British dishes and I'd be hard pressed, but 10 different kinds of Ales, and beers is easy. Even the recent Jamie Oliver campaign is running into problems to get better food into schools with parents being reported to be giving their kids more packed lunches with unhealthy foods and even handing them hamburger inbetween he bars of the school gates.
Even when I go to the supermarket I have to read the ingredients labels to see what's in it and we have all sorts of rubbish from lard in a chicken or beef dish to the remains of crushed beetles in our smarties simply to make the red ones as the beetle eat red berries and it's an easy way to get at the food colouring.
http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/bugjuice.htm
And of course we saw what happens when farmers took shortcuts in beef production and started Mad Cow disease (i.e. feeding them animal remains instead of keeping them veggies as nature intended.).
Is the cure for bing drinking culture to make food better and end the UK's questionable attitude to the quality of our food and what goes into it?
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Britains problem is drink, a drink should accompany a delicious meal, not a drink should be had, get smashed nab a kebab on the way home then puke it all up.
Foreigners take much greater pride in making an outstanding meal, perhaps serve it with a small glass of wine or similar. Where do you see people in GB doing so ? Not saying that NO WHERE in GB does that, prove me wrong.
Yet again though, were the government to try to improve Food over Drink it would be too little too late.
My attitude is there is nothing better than sitting down with the family, having a get together over a gorgeous home cooked meal, i don't care what drink we have with it, nor do they, it's all about the meal. I speak from personal experience, read what i wrote above regarding relatives.
I watch them cook and see just how much pride they take in the meals they make, if you are not happy with a meal, they feel they have made it wrong and go out of their way to fix it. That's how food should be seen.
Look at Gordon Ramsays attempt to get everyone to eat a sunday roast more often. Even he is trying to point out this fact that no one bothers anymore with food.
This is the thing though, apart from English Sunday Roast, Yorkshire pudding (which was just a way to fool people and their stomachs that getting a ultra thin slice of beef was a good meal) and fish & chips, egg & chips, sausages and chips what is English food anyway?
This is what I asked my friend who took over the English Restaurant that was going bust and he said I have no idea what English food was... but whatever it was it seems no one was interested in it.
This country has a long beer and ale culture with hundreds of choices, but I just can't imagine what people ate before the supermarkets came along with prepackaged food.
I plan events from time to time and the biggest problem I always have is the food, most places don't even want to sell you the food because they make so much more money off the drinks and it's so easy for them .. turn a cap, pull a pint and hey presto instant profit .. but try and cook something nice and that's just too much hassle for them.
fish and chips
scampi and chips
steak and kidney pudding
meat and potato pie
bangers and mash
toad in the hole
gammon, egg and chips
beef roast
lamb roast
chicken and chips
sheperds pie
cottage pie
fish pie
corned beef hash
cheese and onion pie
hot pot
here in manchester english pub restaurants are still really popular in the city centre and the suburbs. i've just been to a really nice chop house and had:
rammakin dish of sauteed mushrooms, lardons, cream, spinach, 2 eggs and soldier toast. then for main i had a beef and yorkshire pud roast. 3 huge thick slices of beef (pink). so delicious but i barely touched it because i was too full from the starter
If you can't name 10 British dishes then you are being incredibly lazy, really. You can only name foreign foods easier because they are different to the norm.
The food industry in this country is growing, go to any rural pub and they will serve excellent food because they don't make money from the beer alone. City centre pubs are different, but why would a pub go to the time and effort to serve food when there are a thousand restaurants nearby?
As for the alleged binge-drinking, to say that it isn't the same in the rest of the world is idiotic. Go to the Hofbrauhaus and tell me that the Germans don't drink socially to excess.
And this is in the wrong forum really.
As for most pubs the food they serve substandard. Wetherspoons, Yeate's, O'neils etc are all not much better than mcdonalds. The empahsis is all on profit making and quick serving times. £3.99 for a burger and a pint, lets face it most people still just want the pint then pick at the burger.
Good English food is hard to come by unless its home cooked or at pubs miles away from anywhere
Well you'd hardly expect large pub chains to serve quality would you? You pay for what you get. There are plenty of pubs that do serve good scran though. They're not as rare as you make out.
too right, there supplying for what the common man wants, and it works well in Britain. Therefore suggesting the British attitude to food and drink is some what different from our European friends.
Aren't you rude ...
And for your information I specifically named the places I've traveled to in my original post to make it clear based on my own experiences of what I've seen and invited further discussion, so don't act an arse and get all rude and start calling people stupid, you tell people you want to be a lawyer or God know's what so act like a professional ...
I was keeping it simple but if you insist .. Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Egypt.
You're being well out of order making personal attacks on people - and what some dinky little rural pubs does aint going to make a huge difference in a huge place like London with over 8 Milion people.
And if you'd even bothered to read the orignal posting it wasn't taking just about pubs, it was talking about meals prepared at home, families coming together over a good meal, etc.. but all you seem to see is the word Pub ... great lawyer you'll make indeed if you only see a tiny bit of what was written and yes the places the Original Poster has been to was given in advance, so your German example shouldn't have been so rudely worded. The Original Poster didn't make a total blanket statement - you were invited to discuss the topic not attack someone's observations.
If your experience from going to a place in Germany is different then just say so, tell people what you saw and experience .. but don't be so rude about it... you come off like a right thug the way you write.
Man, you must really have a thin hide if you think that was a personal attack
Which means that there are 56m people outside of London. Believe us, the world doesn't end when you get to the M25.
Perhaps you've never been abroad and seen that the culture of eating out is different in that families often do that - especially on a Sunday.
I must say there aren't enough traditional english restaurants around where I live, it's usually the same menu, straight from the freezer processed foods. It really angers me.
I went for sunday lunch today and it was served with frozen roast potatoes and Smash for fuck's sake! I'd missed my normal lovely local serving times
That's a nice list and good on ya for posting it but the way I read it it comes into three or four categoires
Pies
Roasts
and Things you eat with Chips
and things like hot pots and caserols
And there is an awful lot of junk in UK food, the BSE cricise shows how poorly we treat the food chain - feeding cows animal animal products was just plain wrong and it came back to haunt us.
I agree that the UK does not have as great a love affair with food as it does with alcoholic drinks, i.e. beers, ales, ciders, sprits, i.e. whisky, scotch, etc.
I'm not saying the UK i a nation of drunks I'm saying the UK drinks industry puts in a lotof thought and care into prodcing high quality product much more so then the food industry and this includes supermarkets, pubs, resturaunts, etc.
Supemarkets will sell you fresh beef, when infact fresh beef isn't that great tasting, for beef to taste it's best it needs to be hung for anything upto 1 month so the meat becomes nice and tender, but the darker colour isn't as appealing to less well educated (in food terms) British public, who think fresh beef is best simply because they know no better.
A few examples.
I think of Indian as spicy and rice dishes.
Italians as pasta, tomatoes and bread.
France as cheese, bread, garlic.
China rice, noodles and stir fry veg/meat with a sauce.
Mexico spicy and rice.
Spanish Paella and cured meat
Englad as you said.
I could say the Italians know no better than pasta or China knows no better than rice.
Just because ours are more stodgier doesn't mean thet aren't lush.
I bet he doesn't talk to people like that face to face and come out with the words you're stupid in the first sentence, so why do it on this medium.
It's nothing to do with thick or thin skin, people should have some manners.
Say what you want to say, but say it in either a nice way or neutral way, there's no need to start calling people stupid.
If he does indeed talk to people like that in real life then can only imagine he's a bit of a Bully / Thug.
Him saying to be honest is not the be all and end all truth it is only his opinion based on his experience - if Kermit's experienec is different then he should give example in a decent manner.
Me personally, I love a good debate and I don't take offence easily, especially if I think I'm in the right.
As I was trying to say it's the fact that the drinks industry seems to take on a high quality stance on it's produce, no one really goes out and promotes their beer as being Exra Value version beer.
But there's plenty of extra value food.
No one goes around saying we grew our barely in radio active soil to make it grow faster to give you cheaper beer, but farmers are happy to give their cows loads of antibiotics and stick them in factory conditions and pump them with hormones to to make them bulk up as well as feed them un-naturel food produces that nature never designed them to eat.
Where as in Japan they even have cows that are massaged to get the cows to relax so they don't produce stress hormones which would toughen the meat.
How does it work well for us?
We have some of the most obese people in Europe we have one of the highest rates of heart diesese inthe entire world.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/health/2000/heart_disease/default.stm
Unlike most of the countries in Europe we're are an island entirely surrounded by water and yet how often do you see non battered or breaded fish on offer that isn't fried in oil? Rather then fish served perhaps in a more healthy way?
somehow i do not see this as being a concern for the food and drink companies.
The fact that we have one of the highest rates of heart disease can only extend my point on Britain having a bad attidue to food and drink
That's EXACTLY what I'm talking about.
What is it about a Pint of Beer that is so appealing compared to any kind of food you may want?
Is it the taste or the fact it makes you drunk?
That wasn't a purely British thing...France had BSE too. The French just did a better job of covering it up.
As for British attitudes towards food and drink; I think binge drinking and eating good quality (but not necessarily always healthy) food are two different things.
At the top end Britain even rivals France, London has some of the best restaurants in the world. For ordinary, everyday food in Britain you have to look for decent stuff; whereas in many European countries good stuff is just the norm.
as for alcohol.. well the french do drink -just not like us. you won't see lairy men and women throwing up on the street thats for sure! all the spanish and germans i met though got drunk just as much as i did.