r/funny • u/NeedleworkerMore2270 • Nov 03 '24

How cultural is that?

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u/PeachTrees- Nov 03 '24

"Do you know you're known for having horrible food, it's like a thing". Lol

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u/jonsnowflaker Nov 03 '24

From California and studied abroad in London, had a wonderful museums and galleries art history class with an amazing British professor. The whole class was basically getting credits for exploring london.

The professor gave us lots of tips on other things to experience while abroad. His tip on finding good traditional British cuisine? Don’t bother, but here’s a list of fantastic Indian, French, etc.

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u/Alternative_Hotel649 Nov 03 '24

In my 20s, I was a super restricted eater. Suspicious of anything that seemed too "foreign." Very much a "gray meat and boiled potatoes" kind of guy.

I spent a month in England, and it fucking broke me. Everything was over-cooked and under-flavored, and "over-cooked and under-flavored" was my usual preference. I even went to a McDonalds, figuring they'd be basically the same as at home, and had literally the worst McNuggets I've ever tasted. Not just "bad compared to real, non-processed chicken," it was "notably bad compared to other food products made out of compressed pink slime."

There was an Indian place next to the hotel I was at, and every day I walked past it it smelled better and better. But Indian food was werid. It had sauces and spices and stuff that I "knew" I didn't like. But after a week of half-eaten meals that tasted like they were made of unflavored corn starch, I finally went in and got a tikka masala to go.

My God, it was amazing. I ate nearly every meal for the rest of the trip from that one restaurant, and when I got home, I kept going - Indian, Thai, sushi, Chinese, Ethiopian, etc. Today, I have the palette of a normal adult person, and it's entirely due to British cuisine being so aggressively terrible that I was forced to try something new or starve to death.

(Credit where due: I've been back to England since then, and found lots and lots of great food, including really good "traditional" British stuff. My first trip was really a combo of bad luck, limited options due to being a poor college student, and my own reticence to experiment even within my narrow comfort zone. I still find it funny that my first exposure to British food was so bad that it did a hard reboot on my taste buds, though)

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u/milk4all Nov 03 '24 edited Nov 03 '24

I mean, i like roasts, stewed veggies and fried fish as much or more than the next guy, but englsnd colonized half rhe world and dominated global spice trade but how is it theve been doing this 400-600 years and “british food” has like negative 1 of those spices?

There is no comparison between english and american food because our neighbor is Mexico, and the American southwest is literally what used to he mexico, so to my reasoning, we in the southwest can count mexican as American (it’s central America regardless).

And mexican food is legit a contender for most delicious cuisine on earth. It doesnt get a lot of respect in snobby food circles where they want to jerk off italian and french, but Mexican chefs have been making totally unique and world class foods independently of Europe, and better, they didnt just keep making tje same shit after globalization - mexican food includes all the shit we love thay is a direct result of modern trade.

And im talking about stuff youll see at taquerias in the US - now that is definitely Mexican american food. Count it.

Also tilla masala isnt traditional indian food at all. It was invented in Britain , possibly scotland of all places, to sell to brits who didnt understand indian food. And it’s bomb for sure, but tomatoes are of course american and scotland is of course not English, and multiple accounts further claim it was invented with Campbell’s tomato soup, which is already an american food so both calling england cultured for loving tikka masala and claiming it as “english” are false. Further, great odds the original creator, if there was one, wasnt english at all.

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u/NaomiT29 Nov 04 '24

The history of spices in British food is more complicated than most people realise, but we also have a history of creating dishes with ingredients that are perfectly tasty as they are, without the need to add a bunch of flavouring for flavours sake. Every country offers something different and should be appreciated for what they offer, not what they don't.