Our bad food began
cause to celebrate, no? No, for it only serves to show that the universal acceptance that our food is bad continues to be perpetuated.
Even Mr Chirac didn’t say we were actually the worst – Finland apparently held that accolade in his opinion – yet somehow we still manage to continue this myth that we eat terribly.
And myth it is. Yet it is hard to shift the perception of foreigners who insist that they know our country better than we do.
Many Americans still apparently think we wear bowler hats, carry black umbrellas and stop all activity at 3pm when it is “time for tea” and that it rains constantly in all parts of the UK, despite the fact there is actually less precipitation in even wet, west coast Glasgow in an average year than in New York (1124mm and 1274mm respectively, if you’re interested).
Brits of all kinds (to the Americans, it makes little difference whether you come from Portree or Polperro) are exactly how they expect us to be. The fact that the world has moved on and we no longer all have brown, crowded teeth and a pathological fear of physical contact is ignored. Like many people, they love a good stereotype.
And herein lies the crux of the problem of our globally bad culinary reputation. It is a little known truth that this was acquired when the first major influx of American visitors came to the UK and returned to their homeland with tales of unpleasant meals and lowquality ingredients.
It was, of course, wartime. Food was heavily rationed and ersatz ingredients replaced the many hundreds of types of foodstuffs which were suddenly unavailable to the average person.
American airmen took their tales of powdered egg and camp coffee back across the Atlantic and, hey presto, the legend of terrible British cooking was born and spread quickly across the globe.
I am not sure what we can do to right this wrong, except bombard our tourists with the facts. In Britain, we produce roughly 700 different kinds of cheeses — that’s 100 more than France, which is supposedly the king of the stinky stuff. Many of our cheeses, including plenty produced north of the Border, are artisanal products, made from raw milk and lauded in international competitions.
In Scotland, we are proud and quite rightly so, of our produce. We have unparalleled seafood and delectable strawberries; delicious venison and tasty North Ayrshire potatoes; local craft beer and Scotch whisky.
In cities and major towns, you cannot walk more than a few steps without falling across a restaurant that uses locally made charcuterie, Scottish grown vegetables or handreared meat from a farm a few miles down the road.
Out in the countryside, there are an increasing number of farm shops and cafes with excellent food provenance and kitchen skills, while the remote Isle of Skye boasts a number of restaurants which over the years, have won coveted Michelin stars not least, the worldrenowned Three Chimneys, which, while no longer a darling of the Michelin inspectors, has won over 30 awards since it opened in 1985.
I would love to know where these visitors to Scotland ate. Mcdonald’s perhaps, although, even that chain says all of its beef is sourced within the UK and Ireland.
Most likely, I believe, their complaints have little to do with what they actually experienced and more to do with what they had already, ahead of their visit, decided they would experience.
While we can always strive for excellence in what we provide for our visitors and for ourselves, what we actually need to focus on changing is perception.
And that is possibly even harder than changing reality.