I kind of like British fish and chips, the staple food for British people. But then once I've tasted Spanish fish and chips in Costa del Sol, I have just realised that I've not tasted a real fish & chips!
But the main reason I am looking forward for breakfast in any British eatery or any of their Bed & Breakfast apart from their wonderful Earl Grey tea, it will be their delicious marmalade. If I've remembered correctly, I have fallen in love in the very first bite!
To be fair though, a lot probably wouldn't consider the main place you get "British" food, the pub, as "eating out" because it's rather less formal.
> but it is nothing to write home about
I'll grant you that it's very, very variable, and the quality of a lot of pub food is crap in a lot of places. However there are lots of pubs that you can get very good British food (my local, for example - https://www.dancingmanbrewery.co.uk/food-glorious-food/resta...). You just have to know where you're going. And probably pay quite a lot for the good stuff. And avoid the chains.
There are many good, British restaurants around too - places like the Hawksmoor in London, or the Oxford Brasserie here in Southampton (the menu is here - https://www.theoxfordbrasserie.co.uk/menu). I wouldn't necessarily say I was going out "for British food" when I was visiting them though.
Do Thai people say they're going out for Thai food if they head out to eat in their home country? (I have no idea!)
The rib meat in that main is slow cooked, shredded meat from short ribs, not served as "ribs". And with a horseradish gravy, yes that's very british.
It's a shortened menu due to Coronavirus, usually there is a roast lamb and a pork belly dish too.
Plus there are three shortcrust pies, not explicitly called out as they are rotating specials, served with gravy and mashed potato.
All in all it's a very British menu, though yes there are two burgers on there. There are burgers literally everywhere these days!
> It will be seen that we have no cause to be ashamed of our cookery, so far as originality goes or so far as the ingredients go. And yet it must be admitted that there is a serious snag from the foreign visitor’s point of view. This is, that you practically don’t find good English cooking outside a private house. If you want, say, a good, rich slice of Yorkshire pudding you are more likely to get it in the poorest English home than in a restaurant, which is where the visitor necessarily eats most of his meals.
> It is a fact that restaurants which are distinctively English and which also sell good food are very hard to find. Pubs, as a rule, sell no food at all, other than potato crisps and tasteless sandwiches. The expensive restaurants and hotels almost all imitate French cookery and write their menus in French, while if you want a good cheap meal you gravitate naturally towards a Greek, Italian or Chinese restaurant.
What about sandwiches(!), desserts, and gastropub fair? Tasty.
Not to mention afternoon tea (a fine tradition) and lots of nice grab-and-go lunch options in many shops. And items marked as suitable for (usually ovo-lacto-)vegetarians.
And cheeses, many cheeses (though they may not all be strictly British in origin.) And chocolate - even the humble Cadbury bar seems better than its US version.
There is also something to be said for the full English breakfast vs. the anemic "continental" breakfast.
The reason you don't see them on a restaurant menu is because they're mostly functional meals you can leave in a slow cooker, or throw together with whatever you've got in the cupboards.
You will never know local british cuisine unless you were raised with it.
Rules [0] in Covent Garden, London's oldest restaurant, established in 1798, disagrees.
Pedant alert: Fish and Chips is not originally British! (It's only been a staple over here since the 1860s.)
The chips had their origin as Belgian frites, and the fish is from Sephardic Jewish immigrants from Holland, who picked up and modified the recipe for pescado frito. (Fried fish could be eaten cold the next day, so was suitable for shabbat.)
For instance, chili peppers were introduced to asia by the portuguese during the 15th century, but now chili-heavy dishes are characteristic of much SE Asian and Indian cooking.
Is pasta characteristic of Italian cooking or do we need to look further back to ancient greek origins and say it's not really from there?
Are we sure we should credit either France or Belgium with the British 'chip'? While they argue over the origins of fries between themselves, and certainly their 'frites' pre-date the British chip-shop, they are cut very differently. Or do they both owe their heritage to Spanish "Patatas", as Spain had the potato first, and really, frying the damn things is pretty obvious when you think about it ...
Personally I think things cross-pollinate constantly, and very little can be considered solely and exclusively the property of one culture or other.
We have 'wagamama' which at best can be said to be japanese influenced, and a few chain sushi places (like Yo Sushi) across the country. They really aren't all that great. But if you look at some of the smaller/independent Japanese places that are around and about, they seem to be far better quality. I think London probably suffers from its centre being dominated by chains.
But on katsu ... I've had Chicken Katsu Curry in the UK, sure, but also in Australia, in Singapore and in Bangkok. If that's not a big thing in Japanese Cuisine then quite a lot of the world might have grasped the wrong end of the stick!
While I don't know about this specific case, it wouldn't necessarily be surprising to see 'fusion' food exported. You can get chicken tikka masala, which is a British Indian invention, all over the place these days (and in fact even the katsu curry might be a remote descendant of British Indian 'fusion' food; AIUI the Japanese navy adopted curry from the British in the 19th century).
The name of the dish is simply kare rasiu (curry with rise) and that's most common form. It's also super simple to make if you have rice cooker at home. Just pre-fry some onion, carrot and potatoes on the pan, then boil it with considerate amount of water and add curry blocks to it - done. You may add meat but it's just an additional ingredient which can be easily omitted. You can make it once and it lasts for couple of days. You can even freeze it if you want.
(No offence to British sausages intended, but I just had to sneak in that reference)
It is also often paired with cheese, both hard as well as the local "queijo minas", especially the "frescal" variety, which is a very young kind of cheese.
That being said, I haven't had UK marmalade to be able to compare, I'm coming from my experience in marmelada and extrapolating from there.
"Romeo e Julietta"
Portuguese 'Marmelada' is absolutely a historic ancestor of the british version. Atlas obscura has a good article on this. [0]
See also US/British flapjacks.
The earliest references to the orange version of marmalade, was marmalade made for Queen Catherine of Braganza (A portuguese noblewoman in the british court). It's innacurate to claim they are just phonetically related.
If it doesn't look like a duck, and it doesn't quack like a duck, then it ain't a duck. Even if you called it a duck the last 500 years, it still ain't a duck -- at least, it's not a duck like my duck's a duck.
It's merely a categorisation thing I suppose, but to me they occupy very different niches, and saying one is better than the other is comparing quinces to oranges...
Both are tasty but I wouldn't consider one to be "better" than the other, any more than I would consider peanut butter to be "better" than dijon mustard.
Marmalade is a form of citrus jam, very sweet, usually very sharp, and containing candied citrus peel. It's generally eaten on toast for breakfast. Quince cheese (in the UK) is generally less sweet, is a quince paste rather than a jam, and is used as an accompaniment to hard cheeses as an alternative to chutney. I believe this is how it is largely eaten in Spain, too, with manchego.
So while both marmelada and goiabada are great (I presume, having not tried goiabada), it's really a different thing to marmalade.