I’m also considering how food is arranged and presented. Mixing the protein, vegetable and starch together in one bowl (lo mein, bibimbap), or using the starch (fufu, injera) to pick up the protein is not common in British or American food.
I posted above, but I’ll repeat here: Although there may be no British restaurants in the US, for all the preconceptions there are about the cuisine, it is funny that no one talks about the number of places offering afternoon (often mistakenly called ‘high’) tea. This is a definite British tradition with a measure of traction. It just might be that its familiarity renders it invisible. Or you want only hot meals (chip shops, pie shops, etc.) .
I’ve often assumed that London hotels which describe their afternoon tea as “high tea” are marketing to the American tourist. As you say, high tea is something very different - in recent years, I can’t recall seeing it anywhere except Yorkshire . Does it still exist in Scotland?
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Two people divided by a common language. Americans really don’t understand English English. Things like high street or high tea are completely misunderstood. Americans attribute “high” class to the word high when it doesn’t mean anything remotely close to that. At the other end, Americans think the word scheme has a dark meaning whilst the English think of it as a completely benign term. I still remember the reaction from some of my English friends who were visiting the US at a time when a certain Austin Powers sequel came out with a title that Americans thought was cute and my English mates were somewhat shocked that you could have that word in the title of a movie.
But what about the supposed invention by the earl of sandwich? jk
And casseroles…
There are no absolutes, obviously. And yes, @sunshine842, casseroles exist, as do stews. But I stand by my general assessment.
Kinda like how I’m little shocked by how often the c word is bandied about on British tv.
I think of Sally Clarke and Stephen Harris.
Language changes. In British English (and maybe in American English), there is the c word and there’s the t word - both referring to the same part of the female anatomy. Two decades ago, you would never hear either on TV or in normal conversation. Now, the T word is commonplace and would hardly be regarded as an obscenity. By the by, in the last couple of weeks, an academic study has found that the F word has now replaced “bloody” in most regular usage . As in, that’s an effing good meat pie, rather that that’s a bloody good meat pie.
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Absolutely. I’ve been to both their restaurants and wish both were closer to home so I could become a regular. I remember Harris explaining to me that the salted butter on the table was made entirely in house. They bought in the milk but churned it on site. And they made they own salt from sea water which is, literally, a few minutes walk away over the sand dunes. By the by, his brother, Phil, runs front of house and introduced Mrs H to Viognier - a wine for which she’s developed a great love.
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I think in the U.S. it’s now mostly just an insult and only rarely refers to an actual body part.
Re: Picking up protein with starch.
Or anywhere? Ethiopia? Mexico? Taiwan?
As you prob can tell, I get my back up when ppl make sweeping statements about British food.
There are good cooks, chefs & bakers everywhere.
Have always found delicious and interesting new things to eat outside London.
I’ve also found, people, including myself, can be quick to label an entire country’s cuisine/foods based on a week or 2 of travel. A lot of ppl are disappointed by the food in Greece- my guess is that they usually didn’t figure out where the locals eat, and were eating at tourist traps recommend by hotel concierges getting a kickback. Happens in NYC and Paris, too. 
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Are any of those England or the U.S.? if not, you are helping me prove my point. I even specifically mentioned injera. And just to further clarify, a sandwich or a taco is not “picking up protein with starch” in that you are not using the starch as a utensil, as you are with injera or fufu.
Indeed, one of my favorite and repeat dining rooms in Britain was the Bathtub, a riverside pub/bistro in, of course, Bath. A young kitchen churning out inexpensive but fresh and well conceived and seasoned eclectic plates.
One thing we did which expanded our experiences was to buy aweekly BritRail passes. Not only took us to places on our itinerary but on many joyrides as we used it for spur of the moment “what should we do this afternoon?” and would jump on a train and go out into the country to wherever.
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A common issue everywhere, IMO. I’ve already mentioned the restricted view of Britain that many overseas visitors get because they only visit London (which, to many Britons, is almost another country).
The same applies to British visitors to the States. If they only visit the tourist hotspots in Florida, they are going to get a very different experience than even visitng untourist y parts of that state, let alone the wider country. Our visits have almost always been road trips and I well remember the early ones in pre-internet times. We’d roll up in some small town in the south and find a hotel for the night. Restaurants would be limited to whatever we could see from the hotel or may have passed on the way in to town. We ate an awful lot of chain food, never realising that there were great little places that all the locals go to just round the corner. No excuse now for eating badly - even if you have to rely on Tripadvisor a lot.
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I’ve used TA forums in places like Germany and Switzerland , and NYC, and depending on the poster, I’ve lucked out with recommendations . I used to post on TA a lot, almost as much as CH.
The lists are another story, more of a lowest common denominator popularity contest ranking. I still use them , to filter out chains and filter in hours, type of cuisine, etc.
Does it still exist in Scotland?
It definitely did up until the pandemic. I haven’t checked recently.
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I play very regularly on TA’s Tenerife forum. As we will all know using it for food recommendations is mega unreliable. I use it as a basis for getting names to research further. I recall one US trip where we road tripped through the Carolinas and Virginia. When I looked at the #1 rated place for each small town we were going to stay in, there was a big similarity between them. Generally speaking, it was pretty much always a European style bistro type place with pretty similar menus. Fine as far as it went, but you don’t want to be eating the same menu every night of a three week trip. We often ended up trying the 2nd or 3rd rated place.
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