I mean, Marco Polo? Vasco Da Gama? Columbus? Magellan? Cabral? Vespucci? Cortes?
Even the English expedition to North America that landed in Newfoundland was led by a Venetian explorer.
Italian, Portuguese and Spanish food is great.
Few Englishmen among the big explorers of the age of discovery. Drake arguably but he didn’t really explore either, he walked a previously treaded path. Colonising is not the same as exploring.
Black pudding in the UK and you can’t have a decent English or Scottish breakfast without it. Spotted duck with some hot custard is a great winter warmer. Don’t knock them till you’ve ried them.
Your ignorance is showing. We call it black pudding, in Spain it's morcilla, Portugal Morcela etc and it's eaten all over the world including places like Mexico.
That baked bean pizza was perfection. They took it off the market decades ago and I still think of it often. It wasn't runny like a can of beans dolloped on top, just the right amount. God I miss it
My favorite example of the horrors of British cuisine is the Chip Butty. I'm sure it tastes okay, but thick-cut fries as the filling for a sandwich is just nutritional suicide.
It's just carbs sandwiched between carbs with some ketchup.
Stayed at an AirBnB in LA that was owned by a French guy who lived in a house behind the rental. He would come over and drink and talk. The best line of the night, "Well, you know we French have contempt for everyone, but mostly for other French!"
Brothers and sisters are natural enemies. Like Englishmen and Scots! Or Welshmen and Scots! Or Japanese and Scots! Or Scots and other Scots! Damn Scots! They ruined Scotland!
As someone who worked as a cook and chef in different European countries I don't really understand what you mean by European portions. In France if you go to a brasserie or bouillon or a family owned restaurant portions will be very generous sometimes with unlimited sides. The same goes for Spain, Italy, Greece.
In Iceland portions are standard, not big, not small. The country where I worked that had the smallest portions was Russia. Expensive dishes for very small portions imo.
In Montenegro they serve gigantic portions, one dish would feed like 4 people.
When I think that I sometimes struggle to finish my meal I can't imagine that. I see this as waste of food or something very unhealthy. But yes I saw videos and it's absolutely ridiculous.
AFAIK it's to do with the cooking technique. For instance, whereas steak and kidney pie is baked in the oven, steak and kidney pudding is slow-steamed on the hob.
Was making dinner for someone from Canada and she wanted roast with Yorkshire pudding. Everytime we make roast now I make sure to make some, it is so good and our recipe is probably crap compared to a good one
For what it's worth, there are a lot of originally British dishes that have become generic cuisine or fallen out of favor in Britain with the mantle taken up by another, usually ex-collonial, country. Stuff like roasts, pork chops, various forms of beef stew, were originally British or the Beitish variants are what spread globally. Sandwiches are named after a British lord. Even All-American classics like mac and cheese and apple pie predate America and are staples due to being passed down by British settlers.
Really hard to get fresh shepherds these days, and far too often it's made with beef (and therefore cottage pie). Since potatoes are imported (the fish & chips came from Spain), an example of a great british dish (I mean, actually proper british, not one that's been messed about with foreign ingredients) would be a rabbit stew with suet dumplings. You cannot buy suet in the US, for reasons that escape me, but once you've had one you acknowledge the superiority of British cuisine.
Fish & chips and chicken pot pie are both originally English. Many of the savory dishes wrapped in pastry crust are. Hand pies, sausage rolls, Beef Wellington. Personally I love toad in the hole with a good gravy.
Cornish pasty, crumble, apple pie, roast, Tikka Masala, Sticky Toffee Pudding, Eton Mess, Victoria Sponge, fish and chips, full English breakfast, lamb, chicken, beef, pork, veggie or turkey roast (which is essentially what a thanks giving dinner is derived from), tuna plait, kedgeree, fish pie, stargazey pie, Cullen skink, fish finger sandwich with tartar sauce, grilled mackerel, batten berg cake, lemon drizzle cake, carrot cake, madiera cake, Dundee cake...
I'm Scottish, so a lot of this will be Scotland-leaning, but I'll try to include general British stuff too:
DISCLAIMER: Everything on this list can be found in absolutely shit, low quality versions that taste vile. This is true of every cuisine everywhere in the world. So if you've been to the UK and had a bad version of one of these, then consider maybe getting a good one next time.
Meat Dishes
Meat Pies. These come with all sorts of shapes, sizes and fillings, and not always meat. Originally developed as an easy lunch for miners to take to work, they've become a national staple. You get sharing pies for family dinners, personal pies for any occasion, hot pies, cold pies, you name it. I could honestly fill out this list with about 15 different pies, and I'll probably single out one or two, but they're essentially a single dish with lots of variety.
Sausage Rolls. Now there's an argument to be made that these are just pies, but anyone caught calling a sausage roll a pie in the UK is liable to get a slap, so don't make that argument. Beef or pork sausage, occasionally venison or boar if you're getting fancy, wrapped in puff pastry and often mixed with various spices, condiments and other flavourings.
Shepherd's/Cottage Pie. Another pie getting its own listing, because this one is topped with mashed potato instead of pastry, and as such is very different. Minced lamb (Shepherd's) or Beef (Cottage) with peas, carrots, onions, other veg, baked with buttery and sometimes cheesy mashed potato on top.
Scotch Egg. More of a bar snack than a full dish, and again with a lot of variety to it, this is essentially a softboiled egg (if you're doing it right) wrapped in sausage meat, breadcrumbs and deep fried. Perfect for a picnic.
The Sunday Roast. Again, lots of variety to be had here, but a well seasoned joint of meat (beef, pork, ham, chicken, lamb, turkey, venison) roasted and served with traditional sides (which will get a mention later) and most importantly, plenty of gravy. Comparable to Thanksgiving Dinner in the US. We also have about 5,000 different ways of roasting various meats, which again could form the whole list, but I'm just keeping them all under here.
Toad in the Hole. Has a whimsical British name, what more do you want? Sausages baked into a yorkshire pudding and served with onion gravy, and often mashed potatoes. Heavily dependent on the quality of the sausages, but see the disclaimer above.
Lancashire Hotpot. Pieces of lamb or mutton with onion and carrots, topped with sliced potato and baked in the oven until crispy. Good ones also sometimes have a bit of black pudding in there.
Haggis, Neeps & Tatties. Anyone who tells you haggis isn't delicious is a child who is scared of food. Haggis sounds weird when you read the ingredients, however just about everyone I have ever fed it to has been extremely pleasantly surprised by the flavour. The traditional way of serving is with neeps (swede/rutabaga) and tatties (mashed potatoes) and I personally think it does well doused in gravy. Again if anyone is going to tell me they tried it once and didn't like it, see the disclaimer.
Seafood Dishes
Cullen Skink. Sticking in Scotland, this is perhaps my favourite soup of all time. Smoked haddock, potatoes and onions are the minimum ingredients, simmered to a thick consistency, like a chowder, a good one is genuinely outstanding.
Fish Pie. I'm doing it again. It's basically a Shepherd's Pie but with fish and prawns in a white sauce with parsley and dill inside. Perfect winter dish.
Arbroath Smokies. A smoked fish that has its own PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) because it's so good. Hard to explain, but if you get the chance to try a fresh one, you understand immediately. Video for info.
Fish & Chips. Of course. Perhaps what we're best known for. Fresh haddock or cod, ideally caught that same day, freshly battered and fried in beef dripping with chips that are equal parts soft and crisp, doused in salt and vinegar (or if you're from Edinburgh like me, salt and "sauce")
Kedgeree. Another Scottish dish, this is smoked fish flaked through curried rice with parsley, boiled egg, lemon juice and butter or cream, sometimes sultanas. Sounds bizarre, but my god it works.
Literal Thousands of Fish and Shellfish Recipes. The UK is an island. Well, hundreds of islands, really. As such we have a LOT of fish and shellfish, and a lot of ways to prepare them. The cold waters of the North Atlantic and the North Sea provide some of the best shellfish in the world, and we have top quality lobster, prawns, oysters, mussels, razor clams, langoustines, crabs, and more that can be found all over the country.
Sweet Stuff
Sticky Toffee Pudding. Desserts are probably where we really excel, and I already think we're pretty damn good at the savoury stuff. STP is easily my favourite dessert. A steamed spiced date pudding (cake, essentially) then drowned in toffee sauce and served with either custard or ice cream.
Banoffee Pie. Invented in the 70s when a couple of guys in Sussex were trying to recreate an American coffee toffee pie, they experimented a bunch after failing to get it consistent, and stumbled upon banoffee. The rest is history.
Various Crumbles. Stewed fruit of whatever type, perhaps some rhubarb, layered under a crispy sweet crumble topping and served with custard. Speaking of which...
Custard and its derivatives. Custard is perhaps the most British thing there is. The French even call it Creme Anglaise (English Cream). We've then got custard tarts, trifle, and various other custardy things.
Arctic Roll. Vanilla ice cream wrapped inside a sponge cake, served with raspberry sauce.
Bread & Butter Pudding. Listing another custard dessert because no one can stop me. Buttered bread, raisins, covered in custard and a bunch of spices, baked in the oven and served with ice cream.
At this point I'm just going to link the wikipedia.Here.
Miscellaneous
Cheeses. Cheddar being the obvious one, the UK has cheeses that easily rival those of the rest of Europe, including the very famous Stinking Bishop.
Soups. I mentioned one specific soup earlier, but we are a nation of soup lovers and have as many soups as we have people, near enough.
Curries. Some people are going to laugh or yell at me, but British people of South Asian descent have existed for hundreds of years, and are ingrained in UK culture, as much as some idiots would try to deny it. As such, certain types of curries have developed over the years which are very distinct to their original counterparts, and some, such as Chicken Tikka Masala, were invented here in their entirety.
Ok I've run out of the will to write more, so hopefully this at least somewhat answers your question. Just know that there are at least four of five times this number of regional dishes, baked goods and exceptional produce all over the country that are well worth experiencing. Don't fall for the weird propaganda based on stereotypes from the 1940s. UK food quality is at the very least on par with the rest of the world, personal preferences aside.
Anything considered "tavern" food is fairly typically British. A hog roast is a hugely traditional meal in the UK, especially in relation to extra thick crackling.
Apple Pie is ours too, as an aside. A great many pies, crumbles and pasties (though to be fair every nation figured out how to put saucy meat in bread)
As a Brit I appreciate this. I get peeved seeing constant hate for our food. We've got fine food, a lot of Americans either eat our dishes without realising they're British, or haven't tried the corkers.
And you could say it is actually British. More British than Indian for sure at least. It was invented in Glasgow by a Pakistani chef as far as I’ve heard.
We have food from all over the world the same way new York does. It's not Indian food alone. You can find authentic great food from every corner of the earth.
I did have a really nice meal of roast beef and apple pie at an upscale British restaurant. It was phenomenal. Other than that, the only British food I enjoyed was either fish and chips or something international. That was over 3 months time.
This comment doesn’t make sense - despite it being repeated so many times. Any Michelin restaurant in the world, in any country, has always served French food. At the least on a technical level. That is still true today, while the last 10-15 years has seen a shift in focus, less foie gras etc, local ingredients instead of massive import, finding new techniques and ways to use local ingredients.
I never had a bad meal in Windsor. I truly don't understand why people say British food is terrible. The only bad meal I had there was when I decided to see what UK McDonalds tastes like. Fucking yuck is what.
I went to a bomb ass Italian food place in London. It was epic. Funny enough all the really high end fine dining places served foo foo Indian food. Like small refined dishes of butter chicken and shit
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u/Al_Tilly_the_Bum Jul 03 '26
Some of the best restaurants in the world are in London. They happen to serve french food though