Reddit reviews In Search of Perfection

> Yup, I remember having some awesome Indian food there.

And the thing that always isn't widely understood (don't know if you're aware already or not, but for conversation interest...) is that good "Indian" food in Britain isn't simply a case of "so decent foreign cuisine is available, so what, any civilised country has quality foreign restaurants". It is essentially a British 'genre' of cookery. Not to take away from it's subcontinental roots of course, I just mean it is different to Indian food in India - it was developed by south Asian immigrants over here. And the average curry house is just as if not more likely Bangladeshi than Indian anyway - just they got called Indians because back in the day it was all part of British India.

> It's just the traditional English cuisine (or lack thereof)

Well, I wanted to quote Jamie Oliver here, but google is letting me down. I'm sure I remember him having a nice soundbite about how traditional English cuisine has a bad rap but it's actually potentially great and we should be proud of it etc.

The thing with traditional English cuisine is that it's sort of 'peasant food'. If you look at the phrase 'haute cuisine' - high cuisine - it suggests something about that tradition developing, class-wise, amongst the rich elites; whereas traditional English staples like pies and stews are of more of a low culture background. Other countries cuisine's are similar, for example I'm thinking of rural Italy, but have a stronger reputation for their cuisine - I might venture because they have had a stronger ability to keep passing cooking skills down the family? Maybe I have a romanticised view of Itay (and Spain and so on), I'm not sure, but I can imagine people there my age taught to cook by their parents who were taught by their parents so on back to Napoleonic times. Whereas here we have been pretty shit at that and I think there is probably near total discontinuity of oral cookery culture over that period.

Also, I think that English sort of 'low culture' cooking is undoubtedly quite unsophisticated, as per the "meat and two veg" stereotype. It is undoubtedly a little crude as compared to more complex blends of herbs / spices / flavours encountered in, say, Mexican or Oriental cuisines. However, in its defence, I would suggest that "meat and two veg" can be awesome - if you have awesome meat and awesome veg. As such, I think the general trend to industrialised farming, frozen food etc has really not helped, not to mention rationing in and after WW2 was a real set back more specifically. Basically, if you have some horrible factory farmed meat served with pesticiser-laden veg imported from miles away weeks ago and so on, and cobble it together badly with a microwave & nasty electric cooker, with no skill, serve it up with hideous lumpy-watery instant gravy out of a tin, it obviously comes out terrible. Which is what was widely encountered in the past, in the earlier days of common international travel, leading to the terrible rep it has worldwide now. However, if you get a really great array of fresh, local, organic meat or game, vegetables, etc, and a bit of knowledge to make really nice gravy, apple sauce / mint sauce for that pork chop or lamb shank, cook everything just right... well then the meal may still be ultimately gauche, but still culinary heaven in its own way.

I think what we've seen over the past few decades is an increasing move towards better food, with (some) Brits spending more on quality / organic (etc) ingredients and spending more time cooking. However, ironically, it has been mostly driven by foreign or at least foreign-fusion cuisines. People have been inspired to go seek out fine pancetta and olive oil to make a better carbonara, or whatever, but have looked upon "their own" (traditional English) cuisine with something of the same negative light as the rest of the world and not really bought into applying the same ethos to them. I think now we are maybe finally starting to see a turnaround and people taking seriously the idea that you can do a roast beef and yorkshire pudding or fish and chips but do it really well and it's not inherently shameful. For example, Heston Blumenthal - In Search of Perfection

> traditional English cuisine ... like haggis

Scottish :P

> or ulster fry

Irish :P

(well, presumably, I'm not familiar with it)

There's the Blumenburger, although it apparently wasn't worth the effort. Blumenthal's books, In Search of Perfection and Further Adventures in Search of Perfection have some very long, complicated recipes, in addition to stories about how he came up with them.