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So the bit about UK food being attrocious is unfortunately true from my limited experience but the country itself has a lot of beauty, I think, as long as you l

So the bit about UK food being attrocious is unfortunately true from my limited experience but the country itself has a lot of beauty, I think, as long as you look in the roght places.

cjs_ac 2y ago
There's this quote from Andy Warhol that I think has great explanatory power: > What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it. The UK has the exact opposite of this. Everything that's for sale here is finely graded according to the buyer's budget and taste. Where someone chooses to do something as innocuous as their grocery shopping in the UK says an awful lot about them. If you visit the UK without an awareness of all these little class indicators, you'll probably find yourself frequenting establishments that target the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, because discretion is highly valued by those at the top. There is truly excellent food to be had here - British cheeses win more international awards than French ones, for example - but if you don't know where to find the good stuff, you'll end up getting the slop the lower orders have to put up with.
- oblio 2y ago
  > The UK has the exact opposite of this. Everything that's for sale here is finely graded according to the buyer's budget and taste. Where someone chooses to do something as innocuous as their grocery shopping in the UK says an awful lot about them. Just sayin', I went shopping in... Denver? Let's just say that there was a mall with a bunch of shops and further down the street another bunch of shops. The public at Nordstrom was wildly different than at the Gap which was also different than the one at Ross. Similar story for stuff like Walmart versus Whole Foods. The US has a lot of social stratification, too. They just like to ignore those parts, especially in their advertising.
  - cjs_ac 2y ago
    In Watching the English, Kate Fox gives a thorough explanation of how much she can pin down someone's social class by what they buy at Marks and Spencers (which is a department store that's branched out into groceries). I forget the exact details, but I think it was that doing a full food shop there made you upper-middle class, buying some food items there made you middle-middle class, and buying food items for special occasions there made you lower-middle class. Buying clothes from M&S makes you middle-middle class, and buying homewares makes you lower-middle class. The upper class don't shop at M&S at all, and the working class only buy clothes or homewares from there if they want something special. (I think - it was a while ago that I read it.) And that's just one shop. Everywhere does social stratification, but nowhere does it like Britain.
    - thruway516 2y ago
      India would like to have a word with you.
    - ss64 2y ago
      'Watching the English' is nearly 40 years old now and a lot of things have changed. M&S is no longer hugely more expensive than other stores, for food I think Waitrose has taken its place. Also this article is veering into the idea that class is all about money, which may work in the US but is far from being true in the UK.
      - jvvw 2y ago
        There is an updated version by the way. Don't know if that bit has been updated. I still think doing your whole food shop at M&S is 'higher class' than doing it at Waitrose, but it's weird because of the M&S Simply Food shops which are more geared I think to somebody in a city buying a day or two's food. And you are right, class is much much more complicated than just money :-)
  - DoughnutHole 2y ago
    Honestly the focus on financial stratification here highlights the differences between what class means in the UK and the US. In the US class distinction is (almost) entirely down to money. If you’re rich you can buy nicer things than someone poorer and so you can be immediately sorted into a higher social class. In the UK just because you’re rich that doesn’t make you upper class. British society is riddled with subtle dress coding, language, and social cues designed to trip people up and differentiate the nouveau riche from the real old money aristocracy.
gkwelding 2y ago
Can confirm, as a Brit, our food is utterly shocking.
- omnicognate 2y ago
  As another brit, I have better food available to me than I've encountered anywhere else, having travelled plenty in Europe, USA and Asia.
- foldr 2y ago
  Depends greatly on where you are. London is great for food. I can see how someone from say, France or Spain, would find the average standard of food in the UK as a whole to be pretty bad. However, when this kind of critique comes from the other side of the pond I am a bit baffled, as food quality also tends to decline precipitously outside of major cities in the US (with exceptions, obviously).
wezdog1 2y ago
Such an overused stereotype
dansitu 2y ago
Not sure where you've been eating, but even Birmingham—my unfashionable British hometown—has nine Michelin star restaurants within a short drive. I grew up in the UK but I've lived for 15 years all over the US, and it's always confused me that Americans are convinced that British food is bad. On a whole, British supermarkets have far better produce, in both quality and diversity. UK restaurants run the gamut from cutting edge fine dining and wonderful traditional food to home-grown variants of immigrant cuisine. It's a great place to eat. My home town is legendary for Indian restaurants—to the extent that Birmingham-style Balti curries have made their way back to India. Before you claim that this is Indian food, not British, can you name an American dish that wasn't developed by immigrants? Home cooking is far more popular in the UK than the US: anecdotally, most British people cook most meals at home, while few of my American friends know how to boil an egg and rely almost entirely on take-out. British celebrity chefs and cooking shows are famous worldwide. It's odd to claim that British food sucks while binge-watching our prime-time baking show! I love America and a lot of things are better over here, but food—unfortunately for me—is not one of them.
- lukas099 2y ago
  I think the trope is that British cuisine, that is, dishes that are uniquely British, are bad. Not that there isn’t good food there. Being a rich country, an empire, and part of Europe means you can have many, many different cuisines there though, and like you said many are very good.
  - foldr 2y ago
    Requiring something to be "uniquely British" to count as British cuisine seems like a pretty high bar. Are burgers and apple pie "uniquely American"? Not sure – and who even cares?
    - oblio 2y ago
      > apple pie "uniquely American" My Romanian grandma, born in the 1920s, that never traveled more than 100km from her birthplace and never saw even the Black Sea, would beg to differ :-p
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
I don't agree; find better places to eat. I for one loved the steak & kidney pie with a guiness I had after hiking a mountain. Don't take sad Wetherspoons food as an indicator of British food.
- lukas099 2y ago
  Surely you realize that kidney pie sounds utterly revolting to those of us who haven’t acquired the taste.
  - foldr 2y ago
    This is like concluding that Japanese food is terrible because the idea of eating raw fish grosses you out. (Also, it's "steak and kidney pie" as a unit, not a steak accompanied by a "kidney pie".)
    - HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
      Yeah, but a kidney is a piss filter. Eat it raw or cook it how you like, but it's still a piss filter.
      - foldr 2y ago
        Sure, not everyone likes kidneys, but they're part of many cuisines. It's not like using kidneys in certain recipes is something unique to the UK.
    - lukas099 2y ago
      Of course if you like something you like it. Just so happens that kidneys are not one of the most universally liked ingredients is all I’m saying
      - foldr 2y ago
        Sure but as I said, there’s nothing particularly British about using kidneys as ingredients. You wouldn’t conclude that French cuisine is unappetizing because some French dishes include them.
HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
OTOH the national dish is Chicken Tikka Masala. Still, can't beat a good British fried breakfast.
- b800h 2y ago
  That's out of date. It was popular for a while. According to YouGov it's Fish and Chips again now. Which was based on something Jewish (and fairly different) but I think we can claim it now. I do love a chippy tea.
andrewaylett 2y ago
The UK excels at nicking bits of culture from other places, making them our own, but passing them off to the world as authentically foreign.

So the bit about UK food being attrocious is unfortunately true from my limited experience but the country itself has a lot of beauty, I think, as long as you look in the roght places.

cjs_ac 2y ago

There's this quote from Andy Warhol that I think has great explanatory power: > What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it. The UK has the exact opposite of this. Everything that's for sale here is finely graded according to the buyer's budget and taste. Where someone chooses to do something as innocuous as their grocery shopping in the UK says an awful lot about them. If you visit the UK without an awareness of all these little class indicators, you'll probably find yourself frequenting establishments that target the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, because discretion is highly valued by those at the top. There is truly excellent food to be had here - British cheeses win more international awards than French ones, for example - but if you don't know where to find the good stuff, you'll end up getting the slop the lower orders have to put up with.

oblio 2y ago
> The UK has the exact opposite of this. Everything that's for sale here is finely graded according to the buyer's budget and taste. Where someone chooses to do something as innocuous as their grocery shopping in the UK says an awful lot about them. Just sayin', I went shopping in... Denver? Let's just say that there was a mall with a bunch of shops and further down the street another bunch of shops. The public at Nordstrom was wildly different than at the Gap which was also different than the one at Ross. Similar story for stuff like Walmart versus Whole Foods. The US has a lot of social stratification, too. They just like to ignore those parts, especially in their advertising.
- cjs_ac 2y ago
  In Watching the English, Kate Fox gives a thorough explanation of how much she can pin down someone's social class by what they buy at Marks and Spencers (which is a department store that's branched out into groceries). I forget the exact details, but I think it was that doing a full food shop there made you upper-middle class, buying some food items there made you middle-middle class, and buying food items for special occasions there made you lower-middle class. Buying clothes from M&S makes you middle-middle class, and buying homewares makes you lower-middle class. The upper class don't shop at M&S at all, and the working class only buy clothes or homewares from there if they want something special. (I think - it was a while ago that I read it.) And that's just one shop. Everywhere does social stratification, but nowhere does it like Britain.
  - thruway516 2y ago
    India would like to have a word with you.
  - ss64 2y ago
    'Watching the English' is nearly 40 years old now and a lot of things have changed. M&S is no longer hugely more expensive than other stores, for food I think Waitrose has taken its place. Also this article is veering into the idea that class is all about money, which may work in the US but is far from being true in the UK.
    - jvvw 2y ago
      There is an updated version by the way. Don't know if that bit has been updated. I still think doing your whole food shop at M&S is 'higher class' than doing it at Waitrose, but it's weird because of the M&S Simply Food shops which are more geared I think to somebody in a city buying a day or two's food. And you are right, class is much much more complicated than just money :-)
- DoughnutHole 2y ago
  Honestly the focus on financial stratification here highlights the differences between what class means in the UK and the US. In the US class distinction is (almost) entirely down to money. If you’re rich you can buy nicer things than someone poorer and so you can be immediately sorted into a higher social class. In the UK just because you’re rich that doesn’t make you upper class. British society is riddled with subtle dress coding, language, and social cues designed to trip people up and differentiate the nouveau riche from the real old money aristocracy.

gkwelding 2y ago

Can confirm, as a Brit, our food is utterly shocking.

omnicognate 2y ago
As another brit, I have better food available to me than I've encountered anywhere else, having travelled plenty in Europe, USA and Asia.
foldr 2y ago
Depends greatly on where you are. London is great for food. I can see how someone from say, France or Spain, would find the average standard of food in the UK as a whole to be pretty bad. However, when this kind of critique comes from the other side of the pond I am a bit baffled, as food quality also tends to decline precipitously outside of major cities in the US (with exceptions, obviously).

wezdog1 2y ago

Such an overused stereotype

dansitu 2y ago

Not sure where you've been eating, but even Birmingham—my unfashionable British hometown—has nine Michelin star restaurants within a short drive. I grew up in the UK but I've lived for 15 years all over the US, and it's always confused me that Americans are convinced that British food is bad. On a whole, British supermarkets have far better produce, in both quality and diversity. UK restaurants run the gamut from cutting edge fine dining and wonderful traditional food to home-grown variants of immigrant cuisine. It's a great place to eat. My home town is legendary for Indian restaurants—to the extent that Birmingham-style Balti curries have made their way back to India. Before you claim that this is Indian food, not British, can you name an American dish that wasn't developed by immigrants? Home cooking is far more popular in the UK than the US: anecdotally, most British people cook most meals at home, while few of my American friends know how to boil an egg and rely almost entirely on take-out. British celebrity chefs and cooking shows are famous worldwide. It's odd to claim that British food sucks while binge-watching our prime-time baking show! I love America and a lot of things are better over here, but food—unfortunately for me—is not one of them.

lukas099 2y ago
I think the trope is that British cuisine, that is, dishes that are uniquely British, are bad. Not that there isn’t good food there. Being a rich country, an empire, and part of Europe means you can have many, many different cuisines there though, and like you said many are very good.
- foldr 2y ago
  Requiring something to be "uniquely British" to count as British cuisine seems like a pretty high bar. Are burgers and apple pie "uniquely American"? Not sure – and who even cares?
  - oblio 2y ago
    > apple pie "uniquely American" My Romanian grandma, born in the 1920s, that never traveled more than 100km from her birthplace and never saw even the Black Sea, would beg to differ :-p

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

I don't agree; find better places to eat. I for one loved the steak & kidney pie with a guiness I had after hiking a mountain. Don't take sad Wetherspoons food as an indicator of British food.

lukas099 2y ago
Surely you realize that kidney pie sounds utterly revolting to those of us who haven’t acquired the taste.
- foldr 2y ago
  This is like concluding that Japanese food is terrible because the idea of eating raw fish grosses you out. (Also, it's "steak and kidney pie" as a unit, not a steak accompanied by a "kidney pie".)
  - HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
    Yeah, but a kidney is a piss filter. Eat it raw or cook it how you like, but it's still a piss filter.
    - foldr 2y ago
      Sure, not everyone likes kidneys, but they're part of many cuisines. It's not like using kidneys in certain recipes is something unique to the UK.
  - lukas099 2y ago
    Of course if you like something you like it. Just so happens that kidneys are not one of the most universally liked ingredients is all I’m saying
    - foldr 2y ago
      Sure but as I said, there’s nothing particularly British about using kidneys as ingredients. You wouldn’t conclude that French cuisine is unappetizing because some French dishes include them.

HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago

OTOH the national dish is Chicken Tikka Masala. Still, can't beat a good British fried breakfast.

b800h 2y ago
That's out of date. It was popular for a while. According to YouGov it's Fish and Chips again now. Which was based on something Jewish (and fairly different) but I think we can claim it now. I do love a chippy tea.

andrewaylett 2y ago

The UK excels at nicking bits of culture from other places, making them our own, but passing them off to the world as authentically foreign.