EUROPE - which country has the best cuisine?

Trayce where the heck were you eating? Aberdeen Steakhouses?

Not even that good! I was staying in the country and eating at shitty diners, casual eateries, Wimpys, that kind of thing. I judge a place as much on its cheap food as its posh stuff, and I wasn't inspired. In fairness the home cooking I was served was nice (gammon and things yum) but god, enough with the chips.

I should be fair and point out that if you ate in rural Australia you'd likely be equally revolted as it happens.

they have Wimpys in the country? huh

I was going to say, rural WA had some absolute howlers.

And Angus steakhouses = the absolute Nadir of eating in the UK - Wimpy = twice as good IMO.

it must be difficult for tourists coming here to find what could be classed as 'British food' outside of the bog-standard variety served in most pubs tho (as opposed to UK takes on American fare). you'd have to research in advance to pick out gastropubs with the best ratings.

i would like to, just every now and then, go out for dinner at an actual restaurant serving trad British dishes, nothing too fancy but not like Harvester standard either. this is seemingly very difficult.

rivington grill was good the couple of times i went.

pub food in ireland is normally pretty good, in my experience.

It'd be hilarious if the Netherlands won. Belgium? I think our food is quite good but certainly no contender.

I think I just voted for Turkey

only the dark meat, though

France scores pretty highly for its cheap food as well, you can go to an auberge mostly frequented by lorry drivers in some village in the middle of nowhere and still get a really good meal, incomparable to what you'd get in an equivalent establishment over here. It's kind of a cliche to say that but in my experience it's true.

I slag off the food having lived on it for a year.

To be fair, you should also hear me bag on the american protestant meat & potatoes fare i spent 17 years eating.

serious lols @ anyone voting for anything from UK

-- remy bean, Wednesday, January 2, 2008 6:01 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

it's actually kind of heartbreaking to be honest

I am voting Germany, because sausage plus beer plus sweet white wines = heaven and I want to be a little contrary, but really France or Italy should just kill this.

It's not terribly difficult to find good Scottish food when eating out up here, with not a chip in sight. Game, haggis, Aberdeen Angus steaks, Scottish lamb, Ayrshire potatoes, OM NOM NOM. Then we have whisky and Deuchars IPA and heather ale and Mackies ice-cream (and Irn Bru and deep fried mars bars, obviously).

i spent a week eating UK food in London in late March. I recall eating in at least two better-known trad pubs and one contempo-ish one, church cafeterias, a Brick Lane curry place, a mod-ish chippie and a mid-range purportedly contemporary-French-influenced place in addition to takeaway sandwiches and pasties. The overwhelming flavor profile was bland/indistinct (if not in a few cases outright unpleasant), weaker than the rather good beer it seemed better-suited to than wine. the overwhelming texture was mushy or close to it. quality ingredients were rare, and what light foods I had seemed somewhat misunderstood by those who produced them. while hearty meats and grains could be quite satisfying, fruits and vegetables (potatoes don't count) appeared largely as afterthoughts, punctuation. the better foods I had went some measure to cut through the fog by introducing some minor but essential sharpness in the form of "curry," yeast, lemon, tomato, cheese and/or vinegar. they were also more often the non-british (indian or gastro pizza) or simply uncooked-or-even-composed (salad greens, cheese) meals. i'm sure there are many much poorer cuisines, but that doesn't mean it compares to what I get at home (or the no-better-than-bistro-level places I ate at in Paris). this could just be my native palate talking, but british cuisine is being defended by those whose palates are most accustomed to it as well. It's also entirely possible I just picked unwisely as blueski said.

Pubs - which ones? I could probably tell you whether or not the food is any cop at any of them.

Chippie - chances are it was crap, good chippies are increasingly few and far between, especially in London.

Brick Lane - almost certainly awful

As I hinted at upthread, the overwhelming problem with British food in pubs and some restaurants is a sense of 'will this do?' half-arsedness you get throughout the UK service industry (especially the bits tourists are likely to be coming across). There are a loads of good non-gastropubs for food in London but they're diluted by so many serving pretty bland stuff.

Really if you want to have good British food you're best off being invited into someone's house, even then I think there are several countries here that would comfortably beat any part of the UK.

The terrible reputation of traditional British food is a little undeserved but I'm not really going to defend it because of the nationalities on this list I would claim to have tried there are hardly any I'd be happy saying it's better than (lots of countries I know almost nothing about food-wise though).

There's good food in rural UK pubs and restaurants but it must be impossible to find the ones which don't just do soggy chips, cz chain anything is usually bad news so local knowledge required (lol food rockist?) and even £15+ main courses and the gastropub compulsion for unnecessarily fancy side ingredients on everything is no guarantee of anything being worth the money (and sadly for the most part any "British"-style restaurant or pub which wants to look like it has good cooking will be about that expensive or worse, which must be an automatic point-docker for the UK).

I mean whenever I've been in Ireland we've been at a total loss as to where to eat and ended up going for sandwich + soggy chips or Wagamama, but I'm sure that's not because Irish food's bad, just because we didn't know where to look.

I was very happy with all my meals when I was in Germany but they were pretty much all fried pork + maybe some mushroom sauce + a mountain of carbohydrates so I'm a little puzzled any time anyone votes for it (though German breakfasts and cake shops are beautiful, beautiful things) (and, oh yeah, sausages, wines, all the Christmas gingerbreads, FEDERWEISSER!!"£$*... oh hell, maybe Germany it is! no, no, that cannot be)

pubs - Bank of England, Ye Olde, mod/yuppie-ish place up in NW somewhere with quite good pizza
chippie - in Peckham, taken by local more-than-half-merkin, the contempo stuff my friend had was much better than the trad stuff i thought i should try
Brick Lane - don't remember, but was really pretty good

Bank was pretty good even if the vegetables were mostly nuked

Original British food that is good:

Garden fruits
Baked fish
Ploughman's lunch
Bread'n'butter pudding

Nothing wrong with staples like shepards pie and roast dinner either, even if they're uninimaginative next to some other countries' food.

Clotted fucking cream

I actually like shepherd's pie better than the French version.

There are a loads of good non-gastropubs for food in London

what are your top 3 picks right now? i haven't eaten pub food within zone 1 for ages. but then i've not had anything quite as bad as gabbneb describes either, unless my standards are just that much lower than his (and it's not like i really know more than a half a dozen places i like and would go to often anyway).

my favourite brit food experience of last year: a cafe in totnes eating perfect bacon and cheddar sandwich and then some excellent local clotted cream on a scone. why yes my cholesterol levels are fine thank you for asking...

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i134/dgoobl/cheese-map-smallcopy.jpg

France (but England for dessert)
A friend and I drove from London to Scotland and back last summer. Out of all the places we ate, the random pubs we chose along the way turned out to have the most reliably good (really! good!) food.

But we abandoned hope of getting any decent veggies or leafy salads in the pubs on day three and instead had whatever treacle tart-y clotted creamy thing was around for dessert. Turned out to be a damn good trade off.

Got to be Italy. France, Spain and Portugal fighting it out for minor honours.

Politically-charged choice to use that UEFA list, by the way. Spain's campaign to freeze out Gibraltar claims another success.

Pubs - which ones? I could probably tell you whether or not the food is any cop at any of them.

Chippie - chances are it was crap, good chippies are increasingly few and far between, especially in London.

Brick Lane - almost certainly awful

this is a bit unfair on gabbneb -- if the pubs/curryhouses/chippies-that-serve-good-food have to be found in a guidebook, that's a problem right there. who has the time? if you're looking for a general high standard, i can't see this not being france/italy; i know it's boring but srsly.

I agree. Good British food *is* really good, but your chances of finding it aren't really that high, but in France and Italy you're pretty much guaranteed something delicious.

I haven't had that bad luck with chippies in London, at least compared with Reading where I used to live, where they were nearly always terrible - I lived up Oxford Rd for a bit and tried every one between the town centre and my house and they were all inedible.

I grew up in Worcester and the chippies were pretty good as a rule there. I dunno if it's a geographical thing or if the standard has deteriorated generally since the early 90s (price of potatoes causing cutting corners quality-wise?) - I'm going up there this weekend, maybe I shall get a portion of chips and investigate!

this is a bit unfair on gabbneb -- if the pubs/curryhouses/chippies-that-serve-good-food have to be found in a guidebook, that's a problem right there. who has the time?

Yeah that was the point I was making really, it's all a bit needle/haystack, especially in big cities. I suppose this is why when British people go out to eat, it's not often to eat 'British'.

Re French cheese and fucking with it, that's maybe the only foodstuff I think Brits do well - I'd take cheddar & stilton over any of that fancy French muck, but that's probably just my undeveloped British palate.

chicken tikka massala went out of favour as the nation's favourite since world cup 1998 innit and vindaloo took over. i had one just two nights ago

pies pies pies

most curry houses it's just code for not-very-hot/quite-hot/hot/very hot/rugby player.

most curry houses it's just code for not-very-hot/quite-hot/hot/very hot/rugby player.

and hence brilliantly british.

Also: Gastropubs.. are they "British cuisine"? Some serve Thai food! and like lasagne and stuff! Does food become British when it's served inside a vaguely british establishment?

Are there as many fried chicken shops in the UK in cities other than London? If so.. does that make fried chicken british??

i guess most people accept britain has great traditional dishes but that it's far more effort than it should be to get a good version of it easily given the number of places around.

perhaps we should send gabbneb a hamper.

Thai pub != gastropub. Most gastropubs probably do focus largely on British cuisine.

Lots of gastropubs near me have quite french-influenced menus.

I'd take cheddar & stilton over any of that fancy French muck, but that's probably just my undeveloped British palate.

I am currently enjoying enough imported Neal's Yardiana that I wouldn't even think of disagreeing, though it helps that a certain percentage of it is goat, towards which I am especially biased

my parents brought that hamper back

fruits and vegetables (potatoes don't count) appeared largely as afterthoughts, punctuation

vegetables are often in the UK referred to as "rabbit food"

mmm rabbit with vegetables

yeah i was thinking that!

if you let the rabbit eat the salad, then immediately kill it and eat it, you can eat a rabbit AND have the 5 portions of veggies that you need for day in one sitting!

vegetables are often in the UK referred to as "rabbit food"

-- Tracer Hand, Thursday, 3 January 2008 16:48 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

The worst crime of English food is how they, as a rule, cook vegetables, which is to dump them in a pot of unsalted water and boil them for 22 hours. It's probably a tie as to whether England has treated Africa or mushrooms worse in its history.

Mushrooms should of course be fried for 22 hours.