Can a Brit confirm this?

Nah, British are kings of pastries, pies and cakes. Also don't underestimate British cheeses. Cheddar cheese is the most popular cheese in the world, and where was it made? Britain. Then there's stuff like Stilton, Wensleydale, and while Somerset Brie is really just a variant of Brie, it's still really nice.

That's not even digging into the various curries that gained their current forms in Britain, mainly by British Indians, who are just as British as any other.

Fat Americans out here standing in the world's largest glass house hurling rocks with gay adandon.

Technically a lot of the classic curries are british food

That semi-colon made me wretch.

It's weird because a comma or colon would have been fine, but a semicolon just feels wrong.
Much like your colon after having British food.

I have been to London a few times. The best food in London is Indian or Turkish food. English food is trashy.

The taste of their food and beauty of their women made the British the greatest sailors on Earth.

We got bread. We got cheese. We got beans.

What more do you want?

Flavor
- Salt?
Including beans in breakfast is a British culinary achievement that I will never stop defending.
- Beans for breakfast is also in Mexican food. So not weird to me.
- As an American, I ate a sushirrito and a pizza sandwich.
  Beans for breakfast upsets you, you haven't lived.

I live in the UK. Tonight we had fresh haddock and chips, caught locally. Yesterday we had lamb curry, made with locally sourced lamb. Local produce is abundant, and high quality. How you cook it is up to you, but we also have some of the best chefs in the world.

Local produce is abundant, and high quality.
French sounds of incredulity
- Dans l'arène des imbéciles sans complexe méritant mépris, moqueries et mépris absolu, les Français trôneront toujours sur une tribune d'honneur. Cela est dû à leur provincialisme arrogant et absolu lorsqu'ils se proclament arbitres du goût. Leurs prétentions prétentieuses et élitistes à être la source des meilleurs délices épicuriens du monde ignorent toujours leur plagiat puéril des techniques, des saveurs et du talent artistique de leurs voisins européens, notamment italiens, et de leurs lieux de pillage asiatiques : les Indiens, les Chinois et les Japonais.
  N'oubliez jamais de leur rappeler leur grossièreté inconsciente lorsqu'il est question de goût, d'art et de plaisir de vivre. Sinon, leur pompe étouffera tout.
  Et surtout, faites-le en français. C'est le comble du bonheur que d'insulter les porcs français dans leur propre langue absurde ; c'est vraiment comme s'essuyer le derrière avec de la soie.
  The Quebecois
Nice. It’s cool that curry has become a national English food. And well-made fish and chips is hard to top.
Yeah, the produce is high quality... for your British standards.
- Ha, you've no idea what you're talking about, Amigo. North Sea fish from the waters of Shetland is amazing. Shetland lamb, Scottish Beef. Google it. I suspect it shits all over the drugged up fodder served in American cities :-)

Sounds like somebody never tried a warm plate of Scraggledy Numps, or a bowl of Thumps in a Bodice, or even a hot cup of Singeshammy Longerjohns in Tabbernickywammelty sauce.

I genuinely believe these are actual names of actual british foods.
Go back far enough, and you uncover dishes with wonderful names like Farts of Portingale.
- well america has shit on a shingle
I had a hot cup of Singeshammy Longerjohns in Tabbernickywammelty sauce once.
Never again! I prefer mine cold.
Ever tried some bubble and squeak?

I don't remember where I heard/read it first, but someone said that the British eat like they're still going through the blitz. I thought that was hilarious, and it seemed true.

British Food is awesome. It's not very colorful or ultra complex but it's the kinda food that warms the soul.

A good Sunday Roast with yorkshire pudding, lamb, roasted potatoes, peas, and gravy
Fish and Chips served with a good curry or mushy peas
Fresh warm scones with clotted cream and jam
A proper fry up with a cup of tea
Beef Wellington
Pie Mash
Meat pies
Bridies
Scotch Eggs
Minemeat Pies
Spotted Dick (Yeah yeah)
Treacle Tart
Banoffee Pie

There are few things that bring me more joy than popping into a Greggs on a cold rainy morning for an overheated cup of generic tea and a sausage roll.

Those sound good to have now and then, but not every day
Some other great British dishes:
Tikka Masala
Shepherd's/Cottage Pie
Sticky Toffee Pudding
Cornish Pasty
Crumpets
CUSTARD
My mom dated a Englishman when I was a kid and he made us "Yorkshire Pudding" that shit was excellent.
The best 'Fish and Chips" are made at this little seaside rstaurant in Oregon and made with Salmon. They must have ran out of chips because I got French Fries instead. Was still excellent though.
Ba dum tiss!
- Best Fish n' Chips Ive had was at a small pub near the old harbor in Reyknavik, arguing with two brits about toy internet spaceships, where the fish was alive that morning.
  Euro food is the best, even the simple things, its just better.
Still? Greggs is a rip off now and there are far too many of them. 16 in the damn centre of Manchester.
Just so none of us have to do a web search. What is spotted dick and why is it called that?
- Dick refers to pudding.
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_dick
  It's a steamed suet pudding made with raisins or sultanas which make it look spotty.
- "Dick" is an archaic way of writing dough. It can also be called spotted dog

I once had a conversation with my boss who was well-travelled. He said the secret to Europe is to eat in the Catholic countries. If you must spend time within a Protestant country, look around for a Catholic enclave within it. Not only will the food be superior, but people will be falling over each other to make sure you are well fed.

I looked at him incredulously. How can you say that? It's such a sweeping generalization! And then I went to Europe…

I don't know.. my experience is that in Muslim communities they wont let you leave until your stomach explodes... then they offer you coffee and sweets to go with.
- That's good to know! Actually, now that I think of it, my wife and I visited the one and only mosque in our home town during a public event in a show of solidarity after it got vandalized. And I have to say, it was an absolute food fest in there!

It’s ok, we all think American food is shit too.

why
- Their bread is sweet, their chocolate tastes like vomit, and everything has high fructose corn syrup in it
  On the other hand, real Texas bbq is amazing

Say what you will about British food, but a full English breakfast is the best thing after night out drinking.

So every morning then
We have something similar in the US, but we leave out the beans because we are not savages.
- Your opinion is WRONG.

British food is still made either like the Luftwaffe is flying overhead or we are celebrating the fact that the war is over and we can cook with butter and oil again. There's nothing in-between.

We'd hope y'all could come up with something better than deep-fried butter tho
- Uhh, what could possibly be better than deep fried butter?!?
Have you smoked a spotted dick?
- Not since boarding school..

Thanks to successive waves of immigration in the 20th century from India, Bangladesh, the Caribbean, Africa, China and others we actually have a pretty diverse and vibrant food culture.

Sadly a lot is still dominated by roast dinners and meat and two veg (one of those veg is always potato) but go to any major city and you'll likely find excellent quality restaurants from pretty much every culture on earth.

Sounds like you have had some shit roast dinners. A good roast dinner is amazing. I love all the foreign foods we have access to now as well, but our traditional cooking gets a lot of shit when really it's just bad cooks. Although we do also have stuff like jellied eels and mushy peas, so I'm not saying it's all good...
- I love a roast, it's one of my favourite meals, but a shit roast is proper shit.
I went eating at an Italian restaurant in, I don't know, somewhere in the Highlands, and I haven't been aware that it was run by Scottish people, including the kitchen. Our trip had many highlights and was really cool all in all, but that food has to be the deepest trench we had to pass through.
Careful! Facts will damage the worn-out, out-dated stereotype!
Yes but those are restaurants, im assuming grandma is still serving up run over peas and boiled potatoes
- Fuck grandma, my roast dinners are an event. Got my roastie game en point, my yorkies are crispy and all the trimmings are standard. Plus the gravy, not to brag, will make you jizz your pants its that good.
Thanks to successive waves of immigration in the 20th century from India, Bangladesh, the Caribbean, Africa, China and others we actually have a pretty diverse and vibrant food culture.
OK, but the idea is that it's the indigenous food that represents the place in question. The Indian (subcontinent), Caribbean, African, Chinese, etc cuisines count as the food culture of those places, not british food culture.
Don't be like germans who are stupidly deluded enough to say "The döner was invented in germany" , when , no, it wasn't invented in germany, it was invented in the ottoman empire. Also, Hans isn't out back in the kebab shop busting his ass making that gigantic log of meat, it's Ahmet. If you want to argue that derived foods that are based on local ingredients are part of the food culture of that place, that's a more interesting debate that isn't cut and dry; no one is selling kapsolon made with gouda cheese in İstanbul, nor are they making Tacos al Pastor with pork and pineapples.
British food is good. Kinda simple, but good. Just not legendary. It's like a more mid version of itallian food; relies too much on fat and carbs and meat to feel delicious and satisfying, instead of advanced techniques or "just right" spice blends.
- My point is that those immigrant communities have brought their food and their culture with them and they've created fusion dishes that have created a unique food culture, one that has itself been exported back abroad. Like I've said elsewhere, most of the dishes people associate with Indian food were actually created in Indian restaurants in Britain.
  If only indigenous food counted, American cuisine is hominy and fry bread and Indian food is lentils.
don't know if we can call that british food lol. That's African, Chinese, etc foods
- Many of those countries happened to be part of the British Empire. Technically, they were British.

I think the problem is that after the Second World War, Britain's economy was so shot to hell that folks had to keep eating like the Luftwaffe was still blitzing London. That kept going on long enough to introduce generational trauma into British cuisine.

To me, another be part of it is that the British seem to have an awful penchant for giving delicious things names that sound like Victorian euphemisms for something awful. Spotted dick and toad in the hole sound like they would be ways for Victorians to talk about their STIs, and I'm unsure what exactly Gentleman's Relish would mean, but it strikes me as some sort of medieval form of punishment on the peasants.
- Toad in the hole
  My mom made these all the time when I was growing up, but she called them "Egg in a basket" 🥚 🧺. Sounds a lot nicer than "Toad in the hole". 🐸 🕳️
  I had grown up calling it that it would probably seem normal to me though.
Rationing in the UK went on until 1954, nine years after the war ended.
- Why, though? I mean it's not like Britain had to rebuild anything right?
folks had to keep eating like the Luftwaffe was still blitzing London
To be more precise, they had to keep eating like the Kriegsmarine's U-bootwaffe was still sinking the ships with the food.
That's how traditions are born.

I honestly think British food is some of the most underrated in Europe. It is unfortunately a few years between each time I visit, but I am always blown away by the tea houses and pub food over there. Of course there is a lot of bad fastfood over there, but pointing to that alone would be like judging Norwegian food by our frozen pizza.

I can confirm that no "Brit" uses a semicolon like that. We're not barbarians.

he's also not complaining. Not a true brit.
I'm not a Brit (not even a native speaker), but it bothers me too.

Dunno man I just roasted a couple sausages, yorkies, sauted mushrooms, butter peas, and gravy. It's pretty damn good.

Yorkies
My man is so desperate for flavor he’s eating the neighbor’s dog. Blink twice if you need help.

Shepherd's Pie (with beef, though, I only like lamb in gyros, and only then when it's a blend with beef), minced meat pies, good chicken pot pie, and Yorkshire puddings are all great. Bangers and mash with the right sausage is great. Fish and Chips are generally great but the flavor and texture of the batter can vary significantly.

(trivia: a Shepard's pie with beef is technically called a "cottage" pie!)
- Yeah, I know what true shepherd's pie is made of thanks to Denis Leary.
- Good to know!
If you like Yorkshire pudding, try toad in the hole.
- I made bangers and mash this evening, and put it into a large Yorkshire pud.
  I don't know if it would be named differently.
- Yorkshire pudding is fine, but Pomeranian pudding is really superior.
- Looked it up, I am intrigued.
I had a homemade vegan shepard's pie at a coworker's house (she lived in the US, but from the UK) and it was one of the best dinners I've had in a long time.
- If you ever make one, a good way to get the lentils or tvp tasting beefy is mixing some marmite and tamari sauce into it.
Gyros like kebabs right? That's where I normally prefer lamb too tbh.
- no, I mean Greek gyros, in pita bread.
  https://thebubblychef.com/kebab-vs-shawarma-vs-gyro/
  Though perhaps you meant the Turkish doner kebabs
  https://foodsguy.com/doner-vs-gyro/
  It's not really that I like lamb in a gyro, it's that when it's a blend of beef and lamb I can't really taste the lamb. I just really don't like lamb meat. I'll take a fully beef gyro over a blended meat any day.

Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.

Fish and chip is awesome wdym

Chicken Tikka Masala. Nuff said.

British-Asians truly improved British cuisine. Tikka Masala is next level!
- Nah, too much cream. Here in Australia it’s like every curry is masala, even if it traditionally wouldn’t be.
Ewww.
Tastes vary. But gimme a toad in the hole, or many other Brit dishes and I'm there.
- I'll take both, though maybe not at the same time

Mostly a stereotype perpetuated by cheap or hastily found dining places.
\ When you get fish and chips from a good place that handles fresh catches, there is considerable flavour, yet buy from the fast food place in the middle of a high street and you'll get a soggy representation from the frozen cod.
\ Same situation with a good roast, or a cottage/shepherds pie, or pie and mash that isn't just a casserole with a hat, etc.

Honestly I've stepped foot in 39 US States so far, and it's a similar thing there. I just think the "British food bad" thing has stuck as humour, there's plenty of theories about it I won't get into but it's just a thing I suppose.

I think you've unintentionally reinforced how bad British food is.
In any other country, I don't need to go looking for gourmet chefs and fine dining luxury ingredients for the food to taste good. In most countries I've been to, I could step into a backstreet little "fast food" type restaurant and it still tastes good; whether that's in Italy, Spain, Thailand, Singapore, Croatia, Austria, America, India, etc etc.
A gourmet chef with the finest ingredients can make anything taste good. And that's what it takes to make British food taste good.
- 🤯
- I find that hard to believe, since I would go to India sometimes twice per year when younger (for over a decade).
  \ In 2005 we were told to be cautious of I think cabbage containing dishes, because it was making many people sick. It was also common for milk to be sold highly pasteurised and in blue bags within the city.
  I've also had questionable and not good food from those little backstreet fast food places whether in Atlanta, Minnesota, Arkansas, and I even had a rather average Chinese dish from near Santa Monica (which I didn't rate well).
  There's a good chance you were in the right area for good food, but that also exists here (example: Camden Town, which has been a 'Foodie' destination for a while now), or the plethora of food festivals all around London.
  \ I apologise if I gave the impression that they're hard to find: they're really not.

I had bangers and mash once because a family member made it. It was super good. She told me she couldn't get proper bangers and had to substitute with some other sausage. (Don't remember which) I presume that if she used proper bangers it would have been gross.

England, Britain, it's the same and of course the capital of Europe - France, OP. And the best English food? Curry. Says it all really. Scottish or Irish (yes, I know!) food is actually decent.

I sometimes wonder after the unusually high number of “British people try X food for the first time and are blown away” videos.

Then I started watching Great British Bake-Off, and it’s clear there’s some damn good food somewhere over there. The number of times I’ve envied Sue Perkins her taste testing job is extreme.

British food is a lot like the english countryside - lots of earth tones in the palate and everything sounds different (but after your third slice of hamlet you realize it's all basically the same)

Aww, hamlet AGAIN?! I thought we could have village tonight.
- No more lip from you or it's docks tomorrow!
But... Does ~~someone~~ everyone have to die after dinner?

Here's a good read about it: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/aug/05/how-did-british-pub-food-get-so-grim-gastropubs

TLDR: it got better in 2000s but then it went down again because of raising costs.

Guide to make good food: https://www.youtube.com/@HowToBasic/videos
/j

If nothing else, a Full English is the best breakfast there is, so there's that.

Also, beans on toast is clearly superior to the American equivalent PB&J, and if you disagree, you're just wrong 🤷

Then you haven't had Kalles Kaviar on hard cheese & soft bread&butter for breakfast. The real viking breakfast 😋 (swedish).
I disagree about them being equivalent, they're completely different? But I have no strong feelings about which is better.
- I disagree about them being equivalent, they're completely different
  They're the most popular low cost low effort home made bread based comfort food of each country. I'd say that's more than enough thematic similarity for them to be equivalent.
  I have no strong feelings

The food, the weather and the women made Britain a seafaring nation.

Stargazy pie is pretty good.

Oh good lord. I looked it up:
Stargazy pie (also starry-gazy pie, starry-gaze pie)[1] is a Cornish dish made of baked pilchards (sardines), along with eggs and potatoes, covered with a pastry crust. Although there are a few variations using other types of fish, the unique feature of stargazy pie is fish heads (and sometimes tails) protruding through the crust, so that they appear to be gazing to the stars.
- 😆
- I bet it's pretty good. If the fish are small enough they can usually be eaten whole and there's no strange taste from the head. In Japan there's a small smelt that gets grilled or fried and is intended to be eaten whole (often served with a bit of mayo).
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishamo

The deep fried Mars bar is the pinnacle of cuisine tyvm

That's Scottish
- Believe it or not Scotland is located on the island of Great Britain and is often referred to along other nations of the UK as "British"

I donno. I've had spotted dick. It's actually good.

Not British, but as someone who eats, food is food :3

Curry is great and I feel that's British now

Fun fact: Britain took curry to Japan and they developed it into katsu.

Going out to eat is eating some other ethic or nationality’s food.

Depends on who's asking. If an American... They shouldn't even ask. For them "bad food" is just "food".

Oh please. The US has many problems, and there are food deserts to be sure --- but go to a first class US city and you'll find great food.
- Don't even need to go to a big city. There's a ton of awesome regional food all across the US.
- Gotta go where the fresh immigrants concentrate lol. Personally, LA is my food mecca. I’m a sucker for good authentic Asian/Indian/Mexican food. Gimmie all that spice!
- Contrary to England?
- What I read is “US is big enough that if you search long enough you find good food”. Overall, a random US restaurant will be a fairly forgettable experience
Yeah! Booo America!
L take. It might be poison, but the average food is definitely better than average Euro food north of Italy.
We have nothing on Mexico/SA or any Asian countries tho.