Posted on 08/19/2004 7:01:22 AM PDT by Pokey78
My American friends in England never stop complaining about the food here. It’s all ‘gloopy’, they say, and they bitch about the warm beer, grey curries and unidentifiable soups. Sometimes their longing for US comfort food — beefburgers, hotdogs, cookies, tacos and dairy queen ice cream — becomes so strong that some of them even resort to a company called the Food Ferry, a British Internet site that delivers Skippy Peanut Butter, beef jerky and Oreo cookies.
My solution is a little different. I tell them that American food is overrated, unhealthy and revolting, and the sooner they wean themselves off it, the better they will feel.
American food seems pretty impressive at first sight, but during a four-year stint in the US I realised that it is basically a con trick: bigger isn’t necessarily better; brighter colours don’t mean more intense flavours; sugar tastes good, but leaves you feeling depressed, sick and still hungry.
British cuisine may be considered bland but at least, by and large, you know what you’re putting in your mouth. One of America’s bestselling snacks is a cheese dip designed to be scooped up with nacho chips. It’s runny, it’s orange, it tastes like cheese, but a label on the jar says that it’s a ‘non-dairy product’. Then there are Twinkies — small yellow sponge cakes found in the lunchboxes of most US children. Twinkies are made of such mysterious stuff that they don’t have a best-before date and are subjected to scientific tests. ‘A Twinkie was left on a window ledge for four days,’ says one Internet report, ‘during which time many flies were observed crawling across the Twinkie’s surface but, contrary to our hypothesis, birds — even pigeons — avoided this potential source of sustenance.’
Even the food that’s made of food is a challenge. A pastrami sandwich comes with a good six inches of meat in the middle — how do you get your mouth around something that’s nearly as big as your head? After a few attempts, any appetite you might once have had is gone. Have you ever tried an American apple? They look perfect — enormous, red and shiny — but have the consistency of cotton wool. It’s the same with the meat: huge, juicy-looking steaks, and chops, perfectly grilled, pink inside, but tasting of wet paper.
The Cheesecake Factory is one of the most popular family food chains in the US — and for me the most grotesque example of American food. A single slice of cheesecake is as big as a brick and would more than suffice for a meal. An entire cheesecake could quite easily put a small child into hyperglycaemic shock. It must put a strain on family life, having to watch your nearest and dearest eating this gunk. The cheesecake is just one of the ‘factory’ specials whose metal menu lists hundreds of other dishes, like the Tons of Fun burger: ‘Yes, It’s True! Double Patties, Double Cheese, Triple Sesame-Seed Bun with Lettuce, Tomato, Red Onion, Pickles and Secret Sauce. Served with Fries’ and the Mile-High Meatloaf Sandwich ‘Topped with Mashed Potatoes, Crispy Onions and Barbeque Au Jus. Served Open-Faced on Extra Thick Egg Bread.’
The labelling of dishes in American restaurants provides an interesting challenge to both menu-writer and reader. Ordering from the food encyclopaedias of restaurants like The Cheesecake Factory is rather like resitting one’s SAT tests. There is a full page dedicated to every beast, bread and starch as well as every national cuisine; also ‘fusion’ dishes. Whatever I chose, I was always left worrying whether I’d made the wrong decision. And despite the bewildering variety of foodstuffs on offer, any attempt to veer from the menu is greeted with blank incomprehension:
‘Just the turkey, please.’
‘The dish comes that way.’
‘But I only want the turkey, thanks.’
‘I’m sorry, miss, that’s not possible.’
‘But I know you’ve got grilled turkey — it says so right here.’
‘That’s our Grilled Turkey Sandwich, miss. Our Grilled Turkey’s on our dinner menu.’
‘But surely you can just remove the bread?’
‘No — I’m sorry. Like I told you before, the Grilled Turkey Sandwich comes with the bread.’
‘You make it sound like it’s born with the bread.’
So you decide to eat in, but this involves a trip to the supermarket and hours spent trying to spot the microscopic differences between thousands of identical brands. Whereas in England we would have an aisle of grains and jams and cereals, Americans will dedicate an area the size of a tennis court just to varieties of bread: loafs of every shape and shade, bagels and buns, waffle mix. Often, in desperation, I’d just go for the most adventurous option. ‘Coconut-sprinkled sweet potatoes’ made one appearance in my flat, but only one.
Half the problem, I think, is that food isn’t just food in the States — it’s an obsession. Not only does Adam’s Peanut Butter Cup Fudge Ripple Cheesecake exist, it can be gawped at online. The Krispy Kreme website features a five-minute video with a jaunty electronic soundtrack showing rows of little doughnuts browning slowly on a conveyor belt, before being lovingly glazed, bought and eaten. Food even provides whole states with a sense of history and identity — Midwestern towns fight over titles like ‘home of the peanut’, ‘birthplace of the corndog’, ‘Krispy Kreme Kountry’.
And with the excesses of American food comes a national fixation on dieting: as Eric Schlosser reports, McDonald’s has attempted to cash in on this with a McLean burger for dieters. We may not go to the gym so often in Britain, but our food doesn’t demand that we do. I flew back from America looking forward to shepherd’s pie and pints of beer only to be confronted by an upsurge in American fast food in London — not enough to keep my US friends happy, but still worrying. Perhaps we and the Americans should pay more attention to global gastronomy. We could form a food think tank to wean the US off sugar and on to snails, squid and sushi. It would make us all healthier — and happier.
This coming from someone who eats spotted d*ck and bangers.
Yeah, but our teeth are much better, so there!
Could be that bad teeth are a result of British food.
What are offals you say? Offals are the entrails and internal organs of an animal used in food.
It's telling that this whiney lady is comparing American "fast food" to general English cooking - fish 'n' chips and Mighty Casey burgers are probably a more accurate comparison. I think that the average little American mom-and-pop restaurant that serves "meat and two" - usually chicken-and-dumplings, fried chicken, pot roast, meat loaf, or sliced turkey with your choice of two vegetables and a roll (or cornbread in the South) - is going to give you a better meal than your average English restaurant, say in a small county town. At least, that was my experience.
Indigenous English cooking just isn't all that great (sorry!) We got some very good meals in Scotland though.
Heaven: The English are the police, the French are the cooks, the Swiss are the administrators, the Italians are the lovers, and the Germans are the automobile mechanics.
Hell: The English are the cooks, the French are the administrators, the Swiss are the lovers, the Italians are the automobile mechanics, and the Germans are the police.
< g >
Steak and kidney ...Shepherd's pie ...Cornish pasties ... Roast beef ...Ploughman's lunch ...Simple English fair is very decent food indeed ...
One of America’s bestselling snacks is a cheese dip designed to be scooped up with nacho chips.
That stuff is gross, but I don’t think it can be legitimately labeled “one of America’s best selling snacks” anymore than it can be labeled “cheese.”
It’s yellow glue sold mainly to stoners in Seven 11 after one in the morning.
I'm striking her off my invite list next time I make Frito chili pies.
We just don't eat all the "blood and guts" food. ;-)
British food sucks. Period. Now Chinese food in Britain rocks! Don't eat steak in the UK. Eat Chinese.
She obviously wasn't dining at Peter Luger when I was there last Friday.
Didn't Jack Nicholson come up with a solution for that kind of problem? Five Easy Pieces. I laugh every time I think of that scene.
Another enlightened author letting everyone know just how intelligent and openminded they are, while talking about, what is clearly a foreign culture.
SNORT!
Since when? This seems fictitious as in recent years restaurants have gone out of their way to make food as requested. Its easy, professional, and makes the customer happy.
When did people with eating disorders start becoming food critics?
Wierd British food habits, are the result of the attempt
to adapt to wierd British food taxes, duty, tax on the
duty, duty of the cost of subsidies, EU vat,
plus tax.
Otherwise, British would want American style food.
Any such "Brit" must have a mental disorder.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=19257&item=5511332680
And Tereeeza Heinz is one that helps them turn out bad crap too.
That sounds offal!
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