Abominable British Food

The British have a longstanding and well-deserved reputation for producing some of the world's most wretched food. About twenty-five years ago, I started hearing about modern British cuisine and London’s booming food scene. And so, it was with high hopes that I planned out my varied restaurant selections for last week's trip. 

I can now report that, despite all the fuss about nouvelle London cuisine, the food still sucks. I realize this makes me sound like an ugly American tourist. I'll own it.

We went to a few of the city’s most illustrious eateries and had one fantastic meal at the über-sceney Chiltern Firehouse, the London outpost of a swank hotel conglomerate mostly based in the US. A quick Harrods lunch -- salted beef sandwich for me, Chicken Kiev for Joe -- was tasty and serviceable. The rest of our meals were – how to put it mildly? – rubbish. 

 

My family will attest to the fact that I am a most adventurous eater. My father taught me to try everything. Having exposed my husband and in-laws – to their dread – to molecular gastronomy along with other avant-garde eating experiences, I get no amount of grief for the times when I subjected their less-daring palettes to menus that included “dirt” and “air.” 

 

But this time, I blew my own fuse. The apotheosis of a week of disappointing London food came on our last night, at an establishment called Quo Vadis. This Soho spot is known as the site of a notorious brothel and a former lodging for Karl Marx, where he started writing Das Kapital. 

I am normally undeterred by an occasional foray into obscurity, but this menu contained almost no points of light. “Cullen skink, salt mallard, pickled prunes, baked salsify, griddled ox tongue, smoked eel, grouse, teal, rabbit, and hake” were but some of the restaurant's delights. 

I went for cullen skink (a Scottish soup made from smoked haddock bones), an overly salted salad, and “cannelloni” stuffed with pumpkin, spinach, chard, 3 kinds of cheese, and sage. Joe managed to find a salad with organic chicken and pommes frites after pushing around some pumpkin, ricotta, and toast on his appetizer plate.

 

None of this was atrocious, but it wasn’t good, either. Our concierge made the final referendum on our American taste, diplomatically telling me that “we must not care for modern British cuisine.” Indeed not.

 

When traveling, as in life, I never regret any opportunity to expand my horizons, even if it is to discover a few dislikes among my many likes. 

 

“Quo Vadis” roughly translates into “where are you marching?” or “where are you going?” After my experience at London’s “Quo Vadis,” I am marching myself straight to the nearest burger joint back home for some primal – and recognizable – satisfaction. 

 

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