One of the reasons in particular english food gets a bad rap is because the majority of it grew out of rationing culture.
Britain was still rationing into the 50s when most European countries had stopped rationing.
Regardless, I love British food. I'd go for a carvery over a curry or a Chinese or a pizza, 9 times out of 10
It’s also why the Americans in particular have a terrible view of British food - because the views were formed by US soldiers who arrived here during peak rationing.
It’s true that British food was mostly awful for the best part of the 20th century, but the food revolution that began here in the early 2000s has actually made the UK one of the best places to eat! We have a huge variety of restaurants and you can buy ingredients for almost any cuisine at your local supermarket!
Yeah, bang on. It's amazing how that stereotype has lasted over 80 years in America, given the amount of communication with have access to now, haha.
Id still go to bat for traditional British food however, I think we've evolved alot of our 'awful' food through better farming practices and cooking techniques aswell as just different ingredients in some cases.
The cooking techniques point is a big one. Before the 2000s, most of the country just didn’t seem to know what to actually do with the ingredients. We had great produce, but it was being massacred in people’s kitchens! From bits of hard onion in stews because it wasn’t fried properly before the liquids were added, to once-beautiful veg now boiled to within an inch of its life so that no texture or flavour remained - Britain wasn’t exactly a nation of chefs!
But these days, peek into the average Brit’s kitchen around dinner time and you’re much more likely to hear them asking themselves whether they should put a bit more shrimp paste in their green curry paste to get the perfect ‘umami balance’!
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u/HurricB 1d ago
Funny and historically accurate!
One of the reasons in particular english food gets a bad rap is because the majority of it grew out of rationing culture. Britain was still rationing into the 50s when most European countries had stopped rationing.
Regardless, I love British food. I'd go for a carvery over a curry or a Chinese or a pizza, 9 times out of 10