This is another post from an old blog that I am transferring to this one.
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Naturally, one of the main reasons why I chose to go to England was because of their reputation regarding food. Coming from a food background immersed in New Mexican chile, variety, and taste, I knew that, since I'll be staying in the catered student accommodation, I would be exposed to some of the best English cooking available. Now, I don't mean to brag, but their food is definitely (mostly) edible.
I will say that there might be a bit of exaggeration in how much people complain about the food here. Yes, it can be tasteless, and yes, while eating in the dining hall, half the time I'm not even sure what I'm consuming, but there is at least one thing that the British can do right: breakfast (and puddings).
A stereotypical English breakfast consists of a multitude of things: eggs, bacon, pork flavored beans, mushrooms, toast/some kind of bread, sausage (a.k.a. bangers), tomato (I think grilled or fried), chips, and hash browns (there's a proper name for this, I just forget it). The entire meal is huge! Although my flat serves a condensed version of this, I've yet to finish a plate before becoming too full. Special dishes that can be served are things like toad in the hole (bangers in a sort of Yorkshire pudding bread) and bangers and mash (sausage and mash potatoes). It all can taste pretty good, although the meat tastes very robust, if that makes sense. It seems that, above all, the most important meal of the day really is breakfast.
Now, I've yet to go to a good fish and chips place here. I've had it a few times at my dining hall, but, considering it is flat food, I'm convinced there is something better out there... somewhere. Really, the fish that I had tried was more or less tasteless (good with lemon juice, though), and was what you could expect from student accommodation food. *I will note that, since I've written this blog, I did try some fish and chips at the Lake District, which wasn't a good experience, mostly due to the lack of taste.
There is one thing that I am really growing to love here: their puddings. First off, let me clear something up: all desserts are pudding. That is, if you eat a main course meal, the dessert you have after will be called a pudding. Even if it is cake. Or scones. Or biscuits. Or actual custard. If you are eating a dessert just in the middle of the day, NOT after a meal, it is usually called a pudding if it has custard or creme in it, such as a pie. Otherwise, other sweets have their own name to it, but do have the capability to be referred to as pudding if it is part of a dinner. I learned this yesterday, actually, when I went to an event near campus called Jazz and Pudding. There was jazz. And they did have pudding. Just not the pudding I was expecting. I did try my first tart and scone though, on top of several other little goodies.
Anyway, their puddings are great. Seeing as one of the few things I can ever really justify spending money on is food (it's apparently my weakness in terms of vice and guilty pleasures), I'm excited to be here simple because there are so many small cafes around that are easy to just pop in and see what they have to offer, for a relatively cheap price.
Another type of food that the English apparently love and hail as being quite tasty is curry. There is a very high Indian and Middle Eastern population here, and as a result, there is a pretty strong market for Middle Eastern foods. Small Take Away places are positioned all around campus that advertise hamburgers, kabobs, fried chicken, and curry-related foods all in one shop. I've yet to really explore the Take Away shops, but it is on my to-do list.
It is also surprisingly hard to find a good tea place near Uni. Most cafes serve multiple types of coffee, with a generic tea on the menu. An interesting part of this is that tea is stated as simply tea, as in the U.S., where coffee is just coffee, and if you want it specially made, you have to order it that way or find a place that has more selections. But, perhaps this is mostly because I am looking near the University, where caffeine needs are high, but locating a tea shop has proved to be difficult.
Aside from that, the English cuisine is not too hard to tackle. Yes, dorm food leaves it open for me to say it is better than what I generally eat, but I will stand by the fact that a lot of the more traditional foods are heavier than what I am used to. For example, they serve some form of potatoes (usually fried) at every meal here. At dinner, they have two kinds of prepared potatoes available. Their most well known foods (fish and chips, bangers and mash, etc.) involve fried food of some sort. Luckily, there are plenty of other international food available. I've actually become quite attached to a small Italian Take Away place called Miro that serves warm paninis. And, even if other alternatives weren't available, I can safely say that, at the very least, they make some damned good puddings.
On a quick side note, the word 'nosh' in the title means food. All food is nosh. And through that, the title of this piece is actually a double loaded pun.
Cheers,
Gianna
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