Posted: Feb 15, 2020 4:16 pm
jamest wrote:I'm not just talking about Britain.
I lived in Italy - I could go out to dozens of restaurants serving Italian food. I lived in India - I could go out to dozens of restaurants serving Indian food. I live in Thailand - I can go out to dozens of restaurants serving Thai food.
Every country I've lived in, restaurants serving the national foods were common.
You live in England - where are the English food serving restaurants?
They're pubs. That's just the way it is; it's historical and cultural... restaurant-going is a fairly modern pursuit in the UK.
Sure, there are some upmarket restaurants serving predominantly British cuisine, but we're talking about readily available, widely distributed outlets of local food. In England, that's a pub. So it's not really surprising that British food in other countries is also served in a pub. It would, in fact, be really bloody weird to go to an "English restaurant".
jamest wrote:When you go overseas in my limited experience it's very difficult to find 'British food'. I don't know why that is.
That tends to be the case in every country for every food other than the local food. If I may be a little snippy, that's part of being in a different country.
However, I would be surprised if you couldn't find a British pub serving British food in all the biggest cities in the world.
jamest wrote:Though I do remember eating good quality fish & chips somewhere in the USA.
While fish and chips may seem like a classic English/British dish, it's not really actually peculiar to the UK. You can find very similar dishes in pretty much every country that has a coastline.