El Barbudo wrote:TBF, he was referring to a little restaurant with chintz curtains.
I think you'd agree that restaurants now are way, way better since Brits have ventured abroad and furriners have come here.
Oh aye.
Kebabs. And (as opened in Angel only a few days ago) 'curry burritos'.
There has been an improvement in some restaurant food in some places. The biggest improvement has arguably come at the high end – we really didn't have one previously – and has been massively influenced by the French; in particular, the Roux brothers and Raymond Blanc, who have, between them, influenced (and trained) a couple of generations of chefs now. That's been a huge sea change.
I remember my first steak, in a steak house in Lancaster, which was considered very good. It was tough and the only thing I remember was being utterly bemused as to why people raved about steak so much. It was a couple of decades until I tried again, and that was in an Argentinian steak house in Amsterdam.
On the other hand, we've lost most proper fish and chippies – and Wimpys, when they were cheap but decent.
For reasons of work mostly, I eat out regularly in a variety of towns and cities in the UK. And a lot of what I experience (usually when I'm not getting to choose the eatery) is vastly over-rated and frequently over priced for the quality; my experience of chain restaurants varies from seriously poor (provoking lengthy written complaints) to not bad. I think it's a shame that there aren't more places like the baker I passed in Glasgow a couple of years ago, where I bought a meat pie and ate it outside – and it was gorgeous.
The emergence of the gastro pub annoys some ('a pub should smell of ale, not cooking' was a complaint I heard recently) but has also produced some of the better eating experiences at a lower price range.
A rule of thumb for dining abroad is to look where locals go – and you can apply the same thing in the UK too. So for instance, few locals eat on Brick Lane, but there is one curry house just a tad off the beaten track where local people do eat. Similarly with Chinese restaurants – and many others, I'm sure.
Equally, it's worth noting that, while it may be possible to argue that there have been improvements in our restaurant scene, it's still come at a time when home cooking has declined further: dining table sales down, microwave sales up and, by 2005, the UK consuming more ready meals than the whole of the rest of Europe put together.
