British restaurant named best in world non-shock

[mandragora]

Watching HIGNFY tonight I saw that The Fat Duck at Bray has been named the world's best restaurant for 2005.

Not exactly a surprise. Nor was it a surprise that Britain had 13 restaurants in the top 50 compared to France's 8 and the US's 6.

Arguments aside whether the 50 named restaurants are *really* the best in the world (doubtful, I mean, how would you know? Has any of the judges visited *every* possible contender - I think not), it is a sure sign of what is well known in Britain. Which is that the (well-deserved) past reputation of Britain as a culinary desert is just that. Past. Nowadays British cuisine is actually really rather good. Which is why Britain has more restaurants than any other country in a list of what are undoubtedly 50 very good restaurants (even if they're arguably not the 50 'best').

So, to anyone thinking of travelling to Britain and some local trots out the usual "Oh but the food is just *terrible*" rubbish, tell them just that - they're talking rubbish. (Mandragora thinking with irritation of the New York investment banker she met on a bus in Barcelona who *insisted* that British cusine is crap, even though he'd never actually been to Britain and even after Mandragora informed him that Britain has more Michelin starred restaurants than the US does.)

ETA: Actually, it wasn't 13 of the top 50 restaurants were British but 14. I had missed out the winner!

Comments

[akaspeedo.livejournal.com]

Times have changed.

g, d, rlh

[mandragora1.livejournal.com]

*g* Nah, no read to run at all. Times have definitely changed and when I was a child British food was pretty damn terrible. But it really isn't nowadays and hasn't been for a good 20 years at least by now.

That's one of the things I love about London, the plethora of good restaurants. Actually, the only other cities I can think of that have a similar array of great restaurants are New York and Paris.

[akaspeedo.livejournal.com]

Has the food improved in Ireland? Haven't been there since I was 17. I remember getting chips with my Chinese, which cracked me up.

[mandragora1.livejournal.com]

You can get some great food in Dublin. And the breakfasts at Irish B&Bs are superb. I haven't been to Ireland for a while, but when I was last there I had excellent food and some friends of mine who are total foodies toured Ireland a couple of years ago and came back raving about the food. So I suspect that it's improved since the 'chips with everything' (literally) days.

Chips with Chinese would crack me up, as well. Even when I was a kid we were never served with chips at Chinese restaurants in Britain.

[akaspeedo.livejournal.com]

I remember the breakfasts being great. But I also remember not being able to find much else that was appetizing. Of course I was young, and didn't go to any fancy places.

I've never been to England, alas.

[mandragora1.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, you know where you can stay if you fancy a trip to London...

[saffronra.livejournal.com]

I've not had chips with chinese in a chinese restaurant but I get them with take away all the time. they do them in a special way (I think it's the oil they use) which makes them taste really good.

[mandragora1.livejournal.com]

Chips with Chinese, hmmm. I must admit when ordering a Chinese takeaway I've always ignored the chips option (if it exists) but shall have to try them at some time.

But chips in a Chinese restaurant, no. I'm trying to imagine the expressions of restauranteurs in Chinatown if a asked for chips. *eg*

[thermidor.livejournal.com]

I miss noshing with you in England!

[mandragora1.livejournal.com]

Oh me too, me too. Lobster Thermidor, yum. Only in your case it's the scintillating company, of course, not the, er, taste. *g*

[kay-taylor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, someone in my class on the BVC (who's also going into crime this October) trained with the owner of the Fat Duck and got a call from him at 4am to tell him the good news! Sadly, I don't think this will translate into budget meals there, which is a shame.

While I was at Oxford, we saved up to go to lunch at the Manoir aux Quat' Saisons as well (another one on the Michelin list) and it was worth every penny, even to an awkward vegetarian like me ;)

[mandragora1.livejournal.com]

At one point the Roux brothers owned a restaurant on Cheapside in the City and one of my flatmates was a chef there. I always asked the waiter to let her (she was one of the rare female chefs the Roux's employed in those days) know when I was there and she always sent me a free pudding from the kitchen.

Ah, happy memories.

So, don't give up hope at getting a free course or two at the Fat Duck. And I agree, the good restaurants are worth every penny. Gordon Ramsey is still may favourite chef (for his food, not his personality). He used to make the Best Pudding Ever (it was a banana and chocolate confection) and I went into mourning when he took it off the menu. Sigh.

[kay-taylor.livejournal.com]

Alas, my college friends are mounting an expedition to Ramsay's next week, but I am in a rent/food sort of situation, so it will not be happening. I shall have to content myself with getting that DVD in the Times tomorrow and making cheap knock-off versions of his famous dishes.

By the by, er, I realise I've had your Angel DVDs longer than is strictly polite or conscionable. I have to sneak to Oxford to watch them, as the DVD player is decidedly unswitchable. But I will give them back ANY time you want: I'm in town most days if you want to yell for an urgent Charisma Carpenter fix.

[mandragora1.livejournal.com]

Ouch, I'm sure it hurts on the Ramsay front, but Your Time Will Come and when you're a QC (even specialising in criminal law and therefore being paid at LSC rates) you'll be able to go to Ramsay or the equivalent every night, although I'm not certain you'd want to try coping with haute cuisine *all* the time.

No rush at all on the Angel front. I've just received Buffy Seasons 1 to 4, so have loads of DVDs to watch if I want to watch the wonder that is Charisma. Besides I'm deep in the throes of fannish love for Stargate Atlantis atm, so when I watch anything tend to watch episodes of that. It's research, don't you know. *g*

[kay-taylor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm feeling a little pessimistic about the future at the moment (eating Asda Value soup every night while reading about proposed decreases to the graduated fees scale), but you're right - I will be a QC one day and therefore rich as Midas. Or something.

Ah, the cheap Buffy. That news caused me deep personal conflict, but I've realised the only Buffy I can really justify saving up for is Season Seven, which I haven't seen yet. Plus, my friend bought me Season Two on VHS for a bargain price, and it's so funny to watch - they were so young! and had such horrible outfits!

[mandragora1.livejournal.com]

Now don't get too carried away - the list of top-earning criminal silks for 2002/3 has just been published. Top earner was on £800,000 and number 10 on the list earned £500,000. By contrast the top-earners at the commercial bar earn about £4 million. And the tax silks earn considerably more than that (even if they're shy about advertising it). OTOH, £500,000 to £800,000 pa is enough to purchase an awful lot of dinners at Gordon Ramsay's...

On the cheap-Buffy front, I suspect that the cheap sets will come round again. I know a bit about the way the video/DVD industry works having been involved in the administration of the largest video-distributor in Britain back in the 1990s. After the initial 'we can make you pay high prices because they've just been released' point the marketability declines quite dramatically and there comes a point when they need to sell them for whatever they can get because of the terms of the distribution agreements etc. The only trouble is when they go 'out of print' so to speak.

I know what you mean about the outfits.

[kay-taylor.livejournal.com]

I shall take heart. I'm at the stage where anything higher than the £10k entry level looks pretty damn good. And £500,000 would buy an awful lot of DVD box sets...

I just watched an episode in which Buffy wore blue denim dungarees. I feel violated.

[astolat]

Hey, I will testify to the drinks at Covent Garden. *g*

Actually, the food on my own UK trip was great, sometimes in surprising places -- like at the tiny little motel/inn I stayed at in the Highlands, where the waitress warned us not to order anything but two dishes -- but those two (fried haddock and steak-and-onion pie) were *superb*. Also, the best hot chocolate I have ever had in the world was at the ski house restaurant at the top of Cairmgorn Mountain.

[mandragora1.livejournal.com]

You do realise that you've now got me wanting to go find that ski house, don't you? Crikey, contemplating travelling several hundred miles for a cup of hot chocolate, how sad is that?

On the drinks front, when you're back for the book launch we ought to go to the American Bar at the Savoy - best cocktails in town IMO. The Savoy Grill is good, too. Has a Michelin star.

Glad to read that your experience supports what I've been saying - that British food is no longer routinely terrible.

[cyberducks.livejournal.com]

I thought the food was great in England already 10 years ago. And oddly enough I had the best pizza ever (outside of Italy), also 10 years ago, in Ireland.

[mandragora1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think by 10 years ago the revival (in the Middle Ages English cuisine was considered to be very good indeed. *g*) was well under way and British food was already in the 'very good' category.

The best pizza I've ever had was in Chicago. I was attending ZedCon (I just can't remember to call is ZCon) and we ordered some pizza to be delivered, asking the hotel's recommendation as to which pizza company to use. Eating that pizza was a revelation - I really 'got' pizza in a way I never had before. Even though I've eaten many a pizza in Italy.

Most British pizza isn't up to much, but sounds like you can get excellent pizza in at least one place in Ireland. It's probably run by a nice Italian couple, mind you.

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

Possibly Britain has so many good restaurants because they are consciously attempting to overcome the longstanding stigmatization of British food as terrible. And people over a certain age who remember the days when the food sucked are so thrilled by their ability to go to a restaurant and get a really nice meal that they eat out a lot for the sheer novelty and pleasure of it, thus allowing all these restaurants to survive economically. And the younger generation, accustomed to good food, expects it to continue. And then you get a virtuous circle of positive reinforcement for good restaurant food, and non-acceptance of lousy food.

I have always had very good food at restaurants in England. And the widespread popularity of the table d'hote menu (everything is a la carte here) means you can get a very nice dinner at a less ridiculous price. The only time I had lousy food in England was at a Chinese restaurant in southwest London. Now, I'm picky about Asian food, living in a Pacific Rim city with a huge immigrant population, and lots of extremely authentic Chinese restaurants (and lots of extremely authentic other Asian cuisines, also). But I thought that food was absolutely crap.

Now, I could've just struck out with one particular restaurant, or it could be that Twickenham doesn't have a big Chinese population, and therefore no demand for good Chinese food. Come to think of it, I rarely saw a non-white face in Twickers, and it usually belonged to someone who was obviously there in a service capacity rather than as a resident.

[mandragora1.livejournal.com]

Re your first paragraph, I think you're onto something there. Certainly British eating habits have changed, at least in the cities. It's routine for people my generation on down to eat out several times a week. And we all grew up travelling abroad on holiday and tasting the food there. So, when we eat out we're not prepared to settle for anything that isn't decent. Plus, the more good restaurants there are the more there become in order to compete. Which is all to the good.

On the Chinese restaurant in Twickers front, I would say that Chinese restaurants in the suburbs can be very hit and miss. If you go to Chinatown in the West End, or one of the Chinese restaurants in Queensway, you're pretty much guaranteed a decent meal (even the very cheap Chinese there tend to be at least edible). And some Chinese restaurants there are world-class, absolutely superb.

But if I'm going out for a Chinese near where I live in North London I only go to the ones that I know are decent, which is probably about 1 in 3. I have the advantage that I know which ones are good, but if taking pot luck odds are I'd end up at one of the not-so-good ones. I suspect living where you do with a large Chinese population you're better off in the consistently good Chinese stakes than surburban London. Incidentally, my local Chinese takeaway is the best one I've ever come across. Which makes me very happy. *g*

[pandarus.livejournal.com]

Hurrah! Go Team Blighty!

(And today I'm off to The Marriot in Cairo, where they're having a British Cuisine week in celebration of St George's Day. BACON BUTTIES*!!! Roast Beef & Yorkshires! Ploughman's Lunch! Hurrah!)

Ahem.

(*Bacon being a rarity on menus, here in predominantly Muslim Cairo.)

[mandragora1.livejournal.com]

Oh, I can empathise with the excitement on the bacon front. There's just something about bacon...

Best food I had when I visited Egypt was the local cuisine, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I visted a couple of excellent restaurants in Cairo, the names of which completely escape me (and I've lent my Egypt guidebooks to a friend who is thinking about going). And when we were cruising along the Nile the chef was very good at producing Western style cuisine (the food was of a very high standard indeed) but his Egyptian cuisine was a revelation.

But no matter how much I travel, sometimes you just get a craving for the familiar on the food-front. When I lived in Gibraltar, much though I adore Mediterranean cuisine, I was glad that there's a large Safeway there, which imports all the British stuff on a daily basis and that meant I could enjoy both worlds. So I can well understand your glee. *g*