This is an old trope. Like the English language, British cuisine takes all the good bits from everywhere and if you go to pubs in England you can find some terrific food. Of course, it can very variable, but all in all I'd say London is shoulder to shoulder with Naples as the food capitals of Europe.
Spent 5 years in London. If found an average cafe/takeaway/pub (worked in one) is gonna be quite sad especially when compared the average with any other country (except Scandinavia).
I can't tell if this is serious or satire, especially given the "English language" comparison. It's either a stupendous comment or just stupendously ignorant, and I can't seem to figure out which. Kudos, I guess? :o)
Some British pubs have been amongst literally the best restaurants in the world - as judged by the French, of all people. You know they wouldn't be giving a British pub any kind of award lightly.
You're right, British cuisine does take all the good bits from everywhere, but then brings them down to its level ;)
While I've definitely had great food in pubs and I agree that London has spectacular food options, I'd still opine that across England as a whole, "good pub food" is the exception rather than the norm.
Here in the Cotswolds we're spoilt for choice - there's at least one good food pub in pretty much every village. The same's true of the Yorkshire Dales, much of Mid-Wales, much of the South-West, and so on.
Generally in the ex-industrial areas it'll be less impressive. Pub food in much of the Midlands, for example, is essentially whatever's offered by the owning chain (often Marstons or Greene King). But it's not necessarily terrible, and there are some smaller chains who are pretty good (e.g. Brunning & Price). It's more a function of the fact that the pub is ubiquitous in British society - you wouldn't expect haute cuisine from a bar in the Midwest either.
I lived in the Midlands for half a year, and I've spent a good deal of time in the American rust belt as well (via a job where I had to travel a lot). A typical English meal is significantly more bland than meals served elsewhere in the world, and I think it throws people off who don't already have a relationship with it and therefore can't perceive it as comfort food. It took me months to warm up to.
That's not to say "food in England is bad". I'm ethnically Hispanic, and ended up eating a ton of Turkish food and Indian food during my time there, which was spicy, flavorful, not too common in America at the time, and awesome. And a full English breakfast with your friends when you're all a bit hungover is perfection.
> Here in the Cotswolds we're spoilt for choice - there's at least one good food pub in pretty much every village.
To be fair for every Green Dragon (Cowley) or Tunnel House (Coates / Sapperton) there are plenty of tourist traps selling pre-made cook-chill food from microwaves or tired carveries.
The Tunnel House is great. The Daneway at the other end is very different in character but equally enjoyable.
I think the tourist trap pubs are largely restricted to the few honeypots - Bourton-on-the-Water springs to mind, but then I've had good pub food in both Stow and Broadway.
Not exclusively -- London's the biggest city, and more generally the south east of England covers one tenth of the land area but has over one third of the UK population living there. So lots of people live down south, as well as in the industrial north.
Can't remember exactly where it was now (Cambridge-way) but I went to (what looked like) a traditional English pub that happened to serve really good Thai food. Slightly bizarre pairing but very tasty.
There was no separation, it was an English pub serving Thai grub rather than a double premises. The chef was apparently of some note although I didn't look into it.
the best food in London is always in the restaurants from the places the British colonized: Indian, Middle eastern, American, etc. English food - traditionally English food - is better than it used to be, but still down the gastro list.
It's not outrageous. The sheer variety of food in London is astonishing. In fact, in my opinion London's defining feature is that it contains the world in microcosm - every culture in the world owns a slice of London. And so every cuisine finds an ambassador there.
And yes, Sturgeon's Law applies there as everywhere. But it's not difficult to eat somewhere 1) unlike anything you've had before, and 2) incredible, every time you go out.
The run of the mill food-serving court is way better in Napoli or in other Mediterranean countries compared to the similar locations in London (or in other Northern big cities) for the simple reason that those Mediterranean locations have easier and cheaper access to fresher (and better) food.
Maybe some high-end London locations have the same easy access to fresh and better food (via dedicated airplane rides), but that does not make London one of "the food capitals of Europe".
This is a classic example of taking a genuine point (some things especially tomatoes really are better in Italy) and going too far with sweeping claims; London has always had fresh fish. The fishing industry is not what it used to be but the catch is still landed from the North Sea, driven to Billingsgate in the early morning and eaten that day.
If you happen to select veg that is actually available local and in season, you can get it fresh. That means you have to be a bit selective; the most premium example is probably asparagus. Lots of UK veg growing is in nearby counties like Kent.
The British reputation for disastrous food is mostly a legacy of rationing combined with a slightly colder temperate climate, and ceased to be representative in the 90s.
I think it's because many British people culturally don't value food much. Supermarkets are particularly poor. You need to go out of your way to get nice things.
It may not be as bad as it was in the 90s, but I still find nicer stuff in supermarkets in Spain, France, Germany.
Of course I'm not usually shopping at the equivalent of Tescos on the outskirts of town when I visit a supermarket on the continent, but I'm not exactly searching hard either.
Food in London is great, and varied. I don't much enjoy most Asian food, but London has a lot of it, in a way that e.g. Paris isn't as good at. OTOH I've had a much better hit rate, and at cheaper prices, in Barcelona for great food in restaurants, ethnicity aside.
>It may not be as bad as it was in the 90s, but I still find nicer stuff in supermarkets in Spain, France, Germany.
Sainsbury and Tesco are on par with Carrefour and Mercadona. Waitrose is on par with or better than Albert Heijn. But the Chinese supermarkets through Europe have the best value and range of ingredients for cooking, imo.
Afaik there are no agricultural fields surrounding London nor there is any fresh see-food to speak of. I've visited London only once 10 years ago but I don't remember any fishermen bringing their catch in the morning in downtown London and I'm pretty sure things have not changed since then.
Later edit: Please do substantiate your point in what you think makes London food great, with some examples, maybe I've been living in the dark all this time in thinking that a place that glorifies "fish and chips" cannot be the "culinary capital of Europe".
Smithfield market is a really interesting place, and if you can believe it smack dab in the middle of the market is a fantastic cocktail bar – Oriole[1]. Unfortunately they're closed now due to the coronavirus, but once they reopen I highly recommend a visit.
I am not affiliated with Oriole or Nightjar in any way, just a huge fan. (So much a fan that I've flown in to the UK on several occasions just to go to these places, can't praise them enough!)
I've just google image searched for the Spitalfields Market, apparently people in here believe that plums and avocado grow just outside of London (because that's what I saw in those photos).
What I'm saying is that London cannot compete with countries/provinces where plums or what have you grow just a 15-min van drive away from said restaurants, and as such calling a city like London "the food capital of Europe" is a joke. Anyway, also calling Napoli the "food capital of Europe is a joke" because of its size and population density, I can assure you that a 2- or 3-hour drive to the South can get you to some random Calabria small town with way better food than you can get in most of Napoli.
But the food-mania is high with many people who think that just because a place happens to have money it also has good food.
Plums grow in England. I don't know where you got the idea that they aren't possible to be local produce or the idea that you cannot run a good restaurant more than 15 minutes drive from a plum tree. I think the food mania is in the room but it's not coming from me.
> I've just google image searched for the Spitalfields Market, apparently people in here believe that plums and avocado grow just outside of London (because that's what I saw in those photos).
London is only 35 miles away from the sea, how far do you think it is to a field.
As to your Van Drive: For example, Brixham (160 miles) is a popular place to get high quality seafood for the posher end of the restauraunts, this is ~3hr30. Getting fresh ingredients to london is a completely solved problem.
I was really confused by this comment because Spitalfields market as far as I know isn't really a food market, or at least isn't these days; but what they're probably referring to is New Spitalfields Market, i.e. not the one in the City. I wonder why they chose the same name as the old market, super confusing.
Fish and Chips is a staple of the working classes, it's not supposed to be fine dining.
What do the poor eat where you come from?
Also, "I've visited London only once 10 years ago but I don't remember any fishermen bringing their catch in the morning": Restaurants will be stocking up roughly when dawn breaks, and not through the front door.
> I've visited London only once 10 years ago but I don't remember any fishermen bringing their catch in the morning in downtown London
Billingsgate fish market opens at 4am and closes at 8am. Peak is 4am to 5am (by which time all the best fish will have been sold); if you want a bargain you wait until 7am.
This conversation is a bit weird. There's plenty of terrible food in London. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. But there is also a lot of very good food in London. I guess it depends what you mean by good food, but there are over 60 restaurants with Michelin stars. (3 with 3 stars, 10 with 2 stars).
(I upvoted you. I think you're wrong but you're polite and adding to the conversation.)
> you don't need to right be next to a field to have fresh produce every day and yes
You kind of have, because frozen produce is not the same as real fresh stuff. Yes, better-off people living in metropolises like London or NYC (like many of the users in here) probably lie to themselves in thinking that their money can purchase better food compared to a peasant in Turkey who lives just between an orchard and the Aegean See, but that is not the case.
You're absolutely mad - this has no relation to reality at all.
> Is it fish caught in that same day like you can get in any Greek taverna in the Cyclades?
The UK has some of the richest fishing waters in the world. We have so much that we export worldwide. Of course it's available in London.
> Suburbia? Is there anything else for a radius of 50-60 km?
How big do you think the suburbs of London are? It's not LA. Draw a 60 km radius circle around London and take a look at the expanse of rural England for yourself.
Northeast of London you have East Anglia which two of its counties are really only known for their agriculture. Suffolk [1] & Norfolk [2]. Southeast you have the flower garden of Kent [3]. I live Southwest next to a train line called the Watercress Line [4] that was named such as it ferried fresh watercress into London.
> Is it fish caught in that same day like you can get in any Greek taverna in the Cyclades?
Yes
>Or frozen fish brought in from half a continent away?
You can get that too.
The negative response you are getting from users is because you are completely wrong about inability to get high quality, same day picked/slaughtered/fished food in London.
edit: in regard to frozen fish, I trust that the Japanese (who regularly freeze the absolutely highest grade Tuna during transit) know what they are doing.
This is an old trope. Like the English language, British cuisine takes all the good bits from everywhere and if you go to pubs in England you can find some terrific food. Of course, it can very variable, but all in all I'd say London is shoulder to shoulder with Naples as the food capitals of Europe.