Bad Food Britain: How A Nation Ruined Its Appetite. Joanna Blythman

frightful internal haemorrhaging … “Spare ribs” (whatever they were) also seemed popular. So were spring rolls, basically a Northerner’s snack, which Lily parsimoniously filled mostly with beansprouts. All to be packed in the rectangular silver boxes, food coffins, to be removed and consumed statutorily off-premises. The only authentic dish they served was rice, the boiled kind; the fried rice they sold with peas and ham bore no resemblance to the chowfaan Lily cooked for themselves …’

      Although Britain’s willingness to embrace world cuisine – albeit in bogus forms – is admirable, the huge success of non-British restaurants in the UK reflects the relative weakness of our indigenous cuisine. The natives of Bremen, Bruges, Bratislava, Bologna, Barcelona and Bordeaux feel less need to eat foreign food and remain largely immune to its charms quite simply because they are more content with their own home-grown offering. For them, a restaurant specializing in a foreign cuisine represents a potentially interesting novel addition to native cuisine, but it is not a substitute for it.

      Because there is nothing much to defend in the way of a British restaurant tradition, our new-found claim to gastronomic distinction lies in our eclecticism, our willingness to break rules and invent new traditions. We have no baby to throw out with the bath water. We start with a clean sheet of ideas and a healthy openness to ingredients and culinary approaches from all over the world. But the pitfalls are obvious – a mongrel mish-mash of misunderstood foreign cuisine, cooked by amateur chefs and served to naive and inexperienced diners. As Jonathan Meades, the most authoritative of all recent British restaurant critics, pointed out, this is not a recipe for success, but a culinary Tower of Babel:

      ‘Instead of repairing or reinventing its own cooking, it has crazes: French, Thai, Swedish, Cantonese … There is no kitchen in the world that is safe from the depredations of the British cook exhibiting both a denial of confidence in national identity and the dumb conviction that the grass is always greener.’

      Britain’s globetrotting culinary tastes reach their nadir in the country’s secondary cities, where restaurants strive to show sophistication by their bold synthesis of diverse ingredients and cooking styles. Here is a typical menu from a ‘modern British’ brasserie in one of Britain’s largest cities:

       STARTERS

       Thai fishcakes with sweet chilli sauce French onion soup and toasted cheese Blackened Cajun chicken Caesar salad Chicken liver parfait, toast and spiced fig chutney Seared scallops, sunblush tomato, potato and rocket salad Moules marinières King prawn tempura and ponzu sauce Roast field mushroom bruschetta, pesto and parmesan Seared squid with rocket, chilli and lime Crispy duck, beansprouts and watercress with soy and

       sesame dressing Tiger prawn salad with mango

       MAIN COURSES

       Shepherd’s pie and peas Calves liver and bacon, mash and onion gravy Tuna burger with wasabi mayonnaise and chilli fries Braised lamb shank with mint, garlic and root

       vegetable couscous Five-spiced duck with sweet potatoes, pak choi and

       shitake mushrooms Steak frites Nasi Goreng with roast chicken supreme Salmon fishcake with spinach, lemon and parsley

       sauce Fish and chips with mushy peas Seabass fillet with hot and sweet sour vegetable

       noodles Smoked haddock, mash, poached egg and Mornay

       sauce Risotto with sweetcorn, peas and mushrooms Roasted shellfish spaghetti with lemon, garlic and

       parsley Jumbo macaroni three cheeses, roast tomato and toast Rigatoni, tomato, spicy sausage and mozzarella bake Red onion and mulled cheddar tart Coq au vin

       DESSERTS

       Tarte Tatin and vanilla ice cream Sticky toffee pudding and custard White chocolate chip brownie with chocolate sauce Lemon cheesecake with strawberries Warm chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream Pannacotta with spiced poached pear

      If they were so minded, diners in this type of establishment could construct a meal with some territorial integrity – French onion soup, say, followed by steak frites and tarte Tatin. They might head East and feast on tiger prawn salad with mango and five-spiced duck. In an Italophile mood they could tuck into roast field mushroom bruschetta, rigatoni and pannacotta. But more than likely, most British diners will find themselves eating a combination like prawn tempura and ponzu sauce, followed by risotto, followed by chocolate brownie. In other words, it is a mongrel menu that cannibalizes world cuisine and spawns meals that do not gel into a coherent whole because they lack any sound unifying principle.

      The existence of such menus might cause the trusting diner to suppose that the kitchen has mastered a repertoire of diverse skills and tastes, when, in reality, these are far beyond the reach of the average second division city bistro or brasserie. Nonetheless, many British people will turn up and pay for this type of package and go away pleased with what they are given because they lack the experience to know whether of its type it is any good or not. Once again, we are putting ourselves at a disadvantage by overlooking what is familiar and on our doorstep, instead dabbling with exotica we rarely understand. Italians have strong ideas about what constitutes a good risotto. Indians recognize a fine masala dosa when they see one. Japanese people know when their sashimi is truly fresh and refuse to settle for less. Back in Britain, any undertrained, ill-equipped outfit can trade on the advantage that if it serves foreign food, then few people – the chefs included – will be equipped to judge it. It is a case of the blind leading the blind. Bill Knott, editor of Caterer and Hotelkeeper, likened it to a game of Chinese whispers where the original message gets more and more distorted in the transmission.

      ‘The average menu [in the UK], even in restaurants proudly describing themselves as “modern British”, is written in a curious mixture of French, Italian, Spanish and just about any other language that doesn’t involve hieroglyphs. Even worse, many of the foreign terms used are thoroughly inaccurate and deeply misleading. Millefeuille of aubergine, cappuccino of white beans, chicory tarte Tatin … the game of gastronomic Chinese whispers, in which a modish, foreign-sounding dish goes through so many incarnations that it becomes completely meaningless, is all the rage.’

      Study the restaurant reviews in national newspapers and you will notice that some 80–90 per cent consist of restaurants in central London. Indeed, restaurant critics frequently get it in the neck from readers for overlooking restaurants outside the metropolis. Claims that newspapers are London-centric in this respect do have some basis, but it overlooks the plight of the British restaurant reviewer. Although it is entertaining to read the occasional excoriating review, readers mainly look for recommendations from critics. The minute they travel beyond the M4, however, the critics have a problem because there are simply not enough establishments worth writing about, and those that are have already been reviewed ten times over. So the critic faces an invidious choice: step outside London and face the risk of having to write a negative review of the ‘elitist London critic attacks popular local institution’ variety – certain to incense the locals – or leave well alone and court criticism for lazily ignoring ‘The Regions’.

      The Observer’s restaurant reviewer, Jay Rayner, attracted a large mail bag, many letters using language ‘ripe enough to make a navvy blush’, amounting to ‘string the bastard up’, when