When was the last time you heard anyone in a group of friends trying to decide where to go out to eat say, “hey, let’s get some English food!” That would draw a more jaw-dropping look than a criminal finding out he was up against Sherlock Holmes.
Let’s leave this argument to Niles Crane, brother of Frasier Crane, the gourmet cook with signature dishes and knowledgeable about food and the best restaurants, who employed the British physical therapist Daphne to care for his father, Martin. They had run-ins about English food.
Daphne: Where’s my jar of Bovril?
Niles: Oh, the meat paste! Well, I threw it out, it smelled rancid.
Daphne: Well, that’s how it’s supposed to smell – it’s English!
Bovril is a thick, salty meat extract paste made from beef, often used as a spread or to add flavor to soups and stews. It can also be diluted with hot water to make a savory drink known as beef tea. I wonder if it goes with kidney pie.
First, English Food is an oxymoron and you’d have trouble convincing an ox or a moron to eat it, except for Fish ‘n Chips of course, although the best in England wouldn’t stand up against North Atlantic cod, halibut, or haddock in New England and Boston.
The site Taste Atlas rated Greek food the best in the world – as did renowned Chef Gordon Ramsay, who infuriated an Italian counterpart in so declaring it – and Greek food is one of the primary reasons tourists come to the country.
But not Susan Edwards, 69, who said she was surprised to find when she came to her hotel on Corfu that she couldn’t get any kidney pie, bovril, crumpets, jellied eels, bangers and mash, or clotted cream. It didn’t even have spotted dick. I say, it’s just not done!
You can credit the English with a lot: John Steed and Emma Peel in the Avengers, the Magna Carta, good umbrellas, stiff upper lips, James Bond, politicians who like the company of dominatrixes, getting away with keeping the stolen Parthenon Marbles, pillaging colonies, moats, Shakespeare, intrepid explorers, the seed drill, the telegraph, toothbrushes and tennis.
Just not food. When was the last time you saw a restaurant sign saying “English food”?
Edwards, who’s no Shirley Valentine, said her stay at a hotel was “horrendous from the minute we got there,” the kind of talk usually heard from tourists on Mykonos who just found out the lunch they bought without checking the menu cost them $500 or so.
She told the British newspaper The Daily Mail that she 750 British Pounds ($1,016) for the vacation but didn’t like anything on the menu or buffet and said, “There was no food we could eat and we couldn’t have anything to drink,” drawing a rebuke from the hotel that she was a well-known whiner.
On the first morning, she could have “toast, a hard boiled egg or something in sauce. There was no bacon. The next day’s breakfast was mozzarella and sliced tomatoes. There was no hot bacon or sausage … we got chips one day, but only one day out of the whole lot.”
“’There was fish, sardines and rice – I was sick to death of looking at rice. There was pasta and salads, none of this was marked,” and she wondered why no British food was offered on a Greek island. She went there with her family.
“One night there was a Greek night and they had kebabs – I couldn’t eat that,” she said. The drinks on offer included wine, lager, ouzo, or brandy as well as soft drinks and she complained that bottled water cost €1.50 ($1.71.)
She said she doesn’t like ouzo or brandy and could have had a rum and coke but that it was too expensive at €9 ($10.28) and wound up paying $610 for meals because they couldn’t eat what was at the hotel. She didn’t say what alternatives to British food she found.
The hotel said her claims are “inaccurate, exaggerated, and in many cases entirely false information. Our buffet is rich and diverse every single day, offering fresh salads, fruits, vegetables, cold and hot dishes that meet a variety of European and Mediterranean tastes. The idea that we served ‘only rice and sardines’ is simply false.”
Unless you know where the locals go in Greece, as a tourist there’s a good chance you will be overcharged for facsimiles of Greek foods that are turned out assembly line style at island and tourist restaurants with so many tables there’s numbers on them – and avoid those with billboards.
There are superb restaurants in Athens and all around the country, many of them that will never see a Michelin star because they’re run by a family so close to the beach the owner catches the night fish dinner in the morning and it will be the best you ever tasted.
From gemista to moussaka, pastitsio, dolmades, spanakopita, spetsofai, stifado, and especially the classic horiatiki village salad, you can’t beat Greek food – unless your taste buds are as bland as English food.
Edwards complained that for the money that she spent she could have gone to the Caribbean instead, but if she does she could try Kouzina or Olivia on Aruba or find a Greek restaurant just about anywhere. Skip the spotted dick.
