What to Eat?

[Entropy]

Ahoy,

To me, travelling is seeing the sights, meeting the people and eating the food.

We're cruising next around the British Isles ( counterclockwise in case you were wondering) visiting England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland. I would like to hear from others what to eat. Not fine dining or the best restaurant type of info but traditional, street food, pub food stereotypical kind of food.

I already have some ideas like fish & chips in London is a cliche' which is definitely on my list.

What are your ideas?

[LHT28]

Cornish pasty

try an afternoon tea /scones

Haggis  if you are up for it 😉

Steak & Kidney pie

bangers & mash

bacon buttie with brown sauce

Scotch egg

just  a few I can think of

[GastroGnome]

Wide question!  I'll try not to type too much of an essay.  What are your ports as regional food can be very specific?  also it varies with the time of year - especially if you want to eat locally produced which is (obviously..) seasonal. But in more general terms....

 

Fish & Chips isn't a classic London thing.  Its more seaside.  If you want "Victorian England" type thing try Jellied Eels or cockles in vinegar.  It can be hard to find regional cuisine in London - but there are some really great board type traditional places offering cuts which have fallen more out of favour or "nose to tail" type board fare.  You could also try afternoon tea in London - originating in Langahms it is now available in most up market hotels. (Albeit of varying quality!). 

 

Try Soda bread in Ireland.  Or Irish Pudding (a white blood pudding similar to English black pudding.) Or Colcannon?  Dublin Bay Prawns of you can get them.  Lava bread in wales.  Or Bannock cakes.

 

Haggis in Scotland absolutely (not deep fried - made that mistake once!!).  Deep fried mars bars are a bit of a "thing" especially in Glasgow.  But again - not my thing.  Cruachan.  A Pudding made of fruit, oats and chocolate.

 

A "Scotch Egg" isn't in fact Scotch at all.  It was invented by Fortnum's in London, allegedly as  snack for the Scotch Guards on detachment at the Palace nearby.  (Separately Fortnums is worth a visit if you are foodie - but very expensive.)  There is a Yorkshire equivalent which originated in Whitby with the paste around the egg being made of fish rather than meat.

 

If you dock in the South West and you can find them a proper traditional Cornish pasty.  Originally designed as a tin miner's meal you hold the thick ridge on the crust to avoid getting arsenic in your mouth when tin mining.  It should also have meat at one end and jam at the other - but that is really hard to find now.  (And actually not that nice...)  Cornish Yarg is a favourite cheese.

 

If you are stopping in East Anglia - and the time of year is right  - Crab. Oysters in Kent. Scouse if you stop in Liverpool....oh I could go on and on.

 

We don't really have a classic "street" food in the same way some countries do.  But many larger towns have areas which have over time become associated with a particular nationality - like Chinatown in London, or the Curry Mile in Manchester.  They tends to have anglicized versions of the relevant street food.

 

I could keep going for pages and pages... food is a bit of my "thing".  Post your ports and I'm sure we can come up with a list!

 

 

[Cotswold Eagle]

26 minutes ago, GastroGnome said:

 

Fish & Chips isn't a classic London thing.  Its more seaside. 

 

 

It absolutely is. Many historians reckon Joseph Malin’s fish and chip shop in the East End was the first. If it wasn’t, it was very early. The other contender is from an industrial town in Lancashire. Neither near the seaside 🙂

[Globaliser]

Some answers in relation to Scotland:-

 

 

(A note to the OP of this thread: try not to take all of the suggestions seriously! )

[Bob++]

To be honest, food in the UK is so varied now, it's difficult to recommend anything. Chicken tikka masala is said to be one of the most popular dishes and that is hardly a regional speciality.

 

Cornish Pasties can be an okay snack, but many (most) of what you will see on offer are pretty vile. Decent, locally produced food at reasonable prices can be found in most places. TripAdvisor is a good resource, but chefs and management come and go, so what was great last year may be indifferent this year and vice versa. We had a really nice little restaurant near us, but sadly the owners, a young couple, upped sticks at Christmas and opened an establishment in Mauritius - a bit far to go for Sunday lunch. The new owners (who probably paid a lot for the goodwill) are nowhere near as good.

 

If you say where you are going and when, you might be lucky and find someone on this forum who will suggest a few good choices, especially in London. Otherwise, you could ask people you meet or just take a chance. Some of our most memorable meals have been purely serendipitous. In general; avoid the chains and anywhere with some celebrity chef's name attached.

[John Bull]

In London, jellied eels.

But only in London - the rest of us have standards to maintain 

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Pasties for sure, and available everywhere. But buy fresh from a baker's shop (especially a "Proper Cornish" shop), not soggy and full of preservatives from a supermarket chiller.

The Cornish pasty is the classic. The GastroGnome mentioned Cornish pasties with meat at one end and jam at the other, to provide those Cornish miners with a two-course lunch - but I've never seen them either, despite living in Cornwall for a few years.

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In the UK there's a huge selection of savoury pies.

Some national favourites like steak & kidney or steak and ale (yummy), meat and potato, minced beef (not so good), chicken, chicken & bacon, chicken & mushroom, and some regional pies like Melton Mowbray port pies.

Usually available snack-size and family-size, and often on pub menus.

 

The US is heavily into pies - but always sweet dessert pies like apple-pie.

I used to wholesale basic ingredients to traditional "from scratch" bakers in the UK, and on a trip to the US I once had a long chat with a country baker in Pennsylvania who was wondering whether savoury pies would work in the US.

I gave him a few pointers about the differences in the pastry, about what sort of pastry is best for selling hot from the oven or for re-heating, and the most popular fillings.

I've often wondered how he got on - probably not well.

But a quick flip round the internet suggests that savoury pies are "the next big thing in the US". And the driver seems to be Australia, where the pie reigns supreme. 

 

Some "pies" are made without pastry, they have a mashed potato topping which sometimes incorporates melted cheese.

Most common are fish pies, cottage pies (beef) and shepherds pies (lamb). These are part of a meal, not suitable for eating from the hand.

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Lots of regional cheeses in the UK. Almost all are hard cheeses, and almost all are from cows' milk.

 

The king is Stilton, a blue-veined cheese, named after Stilton in Cambridgeshire, the village where it was first produced in 1730.  But under EC rules Stilton is a protected name & it can only be called Stilton if produced in Derbyshire or Leicestershire or Nottinghamshire. Not in Stilton.  Go figure. 

 

Cheddar was first produced in the village of Cheddar in Somerset (special, because of the lush pastures of the Somerset levels and the maturing of the cheese in the cool caves of the Mendip Hills). But for centuries it's been a generic name and has no protection so it can be produced anywhere & of any quality.

 

There are good continental cheeses too, most are soft cheeses.

 

Sorry, but the US has la lot to learn about cheeses, Cheeses like Jack cheese and American "cheddar" are tasteless, rubbery slices packed with artificial junk.   

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I won't get involved in the origins of fish & chips, but for many years it was England's national dish.

I will however get involved in the debate on the condiments. Salt & vinegar. It needs both. It doesn't need ketchup or mayo (a Belgian favourite).

But nothing wrong with adding a mushy-pea fritter. 

 

Best wrapped in yesterday's newspaper, but health&safety banned that decades ago because of the printers' ink. At one time I researched  getting historic newspaper pages (coronations, notable births & funerals, war news, inventions, cricket & football reports, etc) re-printed with food-safe ink. Unfortunately it was expensive and fish&chip shops, like so many retailers, would spend good money for good products to sell but not for freebie incidentals like wrapping paper.

 

We've lost an awful lot of chippies in recent decades, due to the plethora of alien fast-foods like burgers and kebabs. And a lot of chippies are now run by Chinese - call me racist, but they don't have a clue about fish & chips. 

 

If you buy from a chippie in Birmingham (unlikely, it's a long way from the sea), make sure to say "no curry sauce, thank you"  or your chips will be drenched with the stuff. 

 

---------- 

 

Britain's most popular dish these days is curry.  

Particularly chicken tikka marsala, though it's as authentically Indian as pizza.

I'm happy with the occasional curry, but one time a friend took me to an authentic curry-house in Leicester. That curry was hot, dry, and vegetarian. Genuine curry as eaten in Mumbai. Yuck. Sometimes tweaking a dish to suit local tastes is a very very good idea.

 

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If ashore on a sunday you shouldn't miss a traditional English roast lunch. Roast beef or chicken or turkey or lamb or a bit of a mix. With all the trimmings - Yorkshires, roast parsnips & carrots,, roast 'taters and lashings of thick gravy.

Available in most pubs 

 

JB 

[dogs4fun]

The 3 items that I love in the UK are:

Cornish pasties

Fish & Chips

Cockles (if you can find a good restaurant that serves them is a wine/butter sauce)

YUM!!!

[Langoustine]

3 hours ago, John Bull said:

But a quick flip round the internet suggests that savoury pies are "the next big thing in the US". And the driver seems to be Australia, where the pie reigns supreme.

Pie Face (an Australian chain) opened up a number of stores here in NYC, but they all quickly went out of business. There's an interesting article about the situation in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_Face

Florida has a large population of retired Brits (must be something about the weather...) so it's pretty easy to find British pubs and food there. There's a bakery in Sarasota that turns out great pasties: http://www.4and20pastycompany.com/

[VMax1700]

Depending where you arrive in Ireland........

Bacon and cabbage with boiled potatoes;

crubeens (called trotters in UK = pig's feet)

Tripe and drisheen  (tripe is lining of sheep's stomach and drisheen is a white blood sausage) really nice!

Clonakilty black pudding,

a Waterford Blaah  (soft floury roll)

Coddle - a old Dublin dish from pork sausages, potatoes, onions and (should have) barley.

Boxty - a pancake style with shredded potato.(or can be made as a dumpling)

and of course, Irish Stew, which should be made from mutton!

 

then finally, the Ulster Fry - guaranteed to clog your arteries!

 

[John Bull]

1 hour ago, Langoustine said:

 http://www.4and20pastycompany.com/

 

The pies & pasties certainly look right.

But why is it called "Four and Twenty" when no blackbirds feature in the product list? 

 

JB 

[GlennaRoseGoes]

You’ve got a lot of great recommendations so far! I’d add sticky toffee pudding; my boyfriend at the time was obsessed with it when we travelled around the UK nearly 20 years ago.

[geoherb]

Some of my favorites were the ice creams. I remember a stem ginger one at a London theater, boysenberry and clotted cream at Buckingham Palace, and honeycomb in Kinsale. (Honeycomb is similar to peanut brittle without the nuts.) 

 

When I worked at a club on Pall Mall, one of my favorite desserts was spotted dick. 

[Capt_BJ]

Edited March 12, 2019 by Capt_BJ

[Omega1]

18 hours ago, geoherb said:

When I worked at a club on Pall Mall, one of my favorite desserts was spotted dick. 

.....with custard! A school dinner classic.

Edited March 12, 2019 by Omega1

[Langoustine]

On 3/11/2019 at 1:26 PM, John Bull said:

But why is it called "Four and Twenty" when no blackbirds feature in the product list? 

That's on the "secret" menu...I think you have to have a British passport and know the secret handshake....

The first time I ever had a pasty was in Penzance, and managed to completely mispronounce pasty, much to the amusement of the proprietor...the second time was in Sarasota, and I told a friend who had retired there from Croydon about this place; she gave it her seal of approval.

Edited March 13, 2019 by Langoustine

[LondonTowner]

On 3/11/2019 at 11:06 AM, Globaliser said:

Some answers in relation to Scotland:-

 

 

(A note to the OP of this thread: try not to take all of the suggestions seriously! )

I hate vinegar n chips. Like mine with just a bit of salt and a ‘wally’.

[John Bull]

22 minutes ago, LondonTowner said:

I hate vinegar n chips. Like mine with just a bit of salt and a ‘wally’.

 

A "wally"?

Gherkin? Battered gherkin? Pickled onion? Olives?

Google and I are confused. 

 

JB 

[LondonTowner]

2 minutes ago, John Bull said:

 

A "wally"?

Gherkin? Battered gherkin? Pickled onion? Olives?

Google and I are confused. 

 

JB 

I thought that would cause confusion. Every Londoner will know it’s a large pickled gherkin that you have with your fish and chips.

 

Every fish and chip shop would have a large jar on the counter, often alongside a jar of pickled eggs. You don’t always see them these days, but they still have them in a lot of places.

[John Bull]

15 hours ago, LondonTowner said:

I thought that would cause confusion. Every Londoner will know it’s a large pickled gherkin that you have with your fish and chips.

 

Every fish and chip shop would have a large jar on the counter, often alongside a jar of pickled eggs. You don’t always see them these days, but they still have them in a lot of places.

 

Yes, I remember them - but for reasons of propriety I can't quote what we called them, because it referred to an elderly gentleman's wedding-tackle 

 

So London chippies still have those big jars of gherkins and pickled eggs (and huge pickled onions?) 

And I though that the Isle of Wight was the only place still living in the 1950's   

 

JB 

[LondonTowner]

43 minutes ago, John Bull said:

 

Yes, I remember them - but for reasons of propriety I can't quote what we called them, because it referred to an elderly gentleman's wedding-tackle 

 

So London chippies still have those big jars of gherkins and pickled eggs (and huge pickled onions?) 

And I though that the Isle of Wight was the only place still living in the 1950's   

 

JB 

Yep, well they do in ‘trendy’ Islington where I live. Not so sure you would see them in the West End.

[geoherb]

On 3/12/2019 at 5:55 PM, Omega1 said:

.....with custard! A school dinner classic.

 

Yes, with custard. That goes without saying, since the chef served us custard to go with dessert every day. I'd eat custard by itself the days he'd serve stewed rhubarb, which thankfully was not very often.

[jocap]

The national dish is- pastry!

Check every high street, where you'll find a Greggs, with people queuing to buy their hot steak bakes or sausage rolls.

When you're in port, look round for a local church, or women's group offering coffee mornings/afternoon teas, where, for a ridiculously low price you can stuff yourself with home made cake, egg mayo sandwiches- and any amount of pastries, savoury and sweet.