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!