Our magpie tendencies make the British palate a world-beater
Did you know that when it comes to wine tasting, the Swedes are world champions? And who takes silver? Us Britons. Yet in the annual wine-tasting world championship, hosted in Burgundy last weekend, the French struggled.
Is the result such a surprise? The answer may be that France’s tasters, glutted with home-grown riches, just don’t have the palate for the global variety on offer. But both we and the Swedes, not so blessed with domestic cépages
(our sparkling wine aside), are open to try a little bit of everything. We are a magpie nation and all the better for it. Our national drink, after all, is Chinese.
When it comes to food, Britain is a nation of borrowers, too. Today, you can hardly move for ingredients (chorizo or za’atar) and cookbooks (any of Ottolenghi’s bestsellers) that are wholly reliant on our propensity for adopting other cultures, many of which have strong communities in Britain. As a result, Britain’s restaurant culture has gone from being the global joke it was a few decades ago to one of the best in the world today. France, by contrast, is awesomely conservative – for better, but too often for worse.
Of course, to some the magpie mentality is more aptly described as theft, pure and simple. The truth is, it’s complicated. Our fondness for things such as pineapples is due to colonial explorers during the expansion of the British Empire. And it’s impossible to mention sugar without slavery. But we can celebrate, in postwar Britain, our invitation to Chinese, Bangladeshi, Italian and Jamaican communities – among so many others – to live here, allowing us to try dishes from their homelands. Many of these are now considered classic British dishes: curry, spaghetti bolognese and the stir-fry are now almost boring staples of our domestic cuisine.
These days there is a decidedly Mediterranean flavour to our British eating. We share small plates. It’s hip to be Hispanic. But it makes money sense, too. In our capital and beyond, the optimism and energy of imaginative imports drive ever-more restaurant openings, such as Bao, run by the British trio Erchen Chang, Wai Ting and Shing Tat Chung, who have Taiwanese and Chinese parents. Their food – including bao (various steamed buns) and rice bowls – is fun, but is also an important way of allowing them to share their stories with diners, a fact we often overlook. Cooking as communication is as old as the hills, but they are adding to a British, not an Asian, narrative.
Slowly, though, we are expanding the variety of things we grow. Non-native ingredients are increasingly familiar, such as “British” quinoa, chillies and edamame beans, the latter by Guy Watson, founder of the veggie box company Riverford Organic. Do such newcomers raise hackles? On the contrary. Watson insists we Brits are “incredibly open-minded and experimental”. Try saying that about a Gallic gastronome.
“Beg, borrow and steal” may not be an honourable motto, but it makes for delicious eating and drinking. Celebrate it and raise a very British glass – lapsang, perhaps, or sauvignon blanc – to our mongrel tendencies.