How to pig out in England

 …or at least in Southern England. From our month-long travel, I have shortlisted the following six for must-do pigging-out experiences in this country:

1. Supermarkets

This is ideal for cheap eats. You get tasty, quality sandwiches here. I personally love me a salmon & dill sandwich, but there are plenty of others and they are available at Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Tesco, the local co-op etc. In places like Marks & Spencers (they do food too, now), you will also find scones, baked fresh daily. You can also grab other packaged foods which you wouldn’t find in other parts of the world. Like Cadbury’s Caramilk, readymade Victoria sponges or battenburgs, mini-poppadams etc. Poppadams, as they call it, seems to be the British counter to tortilla chips and is a diluted version of regular Indian papadams because rice flour, as opposed to gram flour, is the first item on the ingredients list. But really, the prices! I cannot stress enough how much cheaper supermarkets are in the UK compared to the US. Makes me realize that I have been using US’s headline inflation figures as false consolation.

2. Pubs

When I watch British TV, my eye is often on the food. The classic scene is of someone having a pint and a plate of bangers and mash, always with a side of peas (which country doesn’t have that side of undesirable greens to lessen the guilt you carry with eating 1000 calorie meals). Pubs are very much part of the real English dining experience. Going to an inn and grabbing a pint of beer or cider, and getting some pub food with it (I got mackerel and fried white bait one time and a steak pie on another occasion) and being kinda cozily shacked up is a lovely experience. Towards the end of our trip, in Oxford, I got hung up on paying homage to Inspector Morse, by doing an Inspector Morse pub crawl. It was quite unnecessary and I probably missed out on some fine pubs as a result, but we also ended up going to a couple of nice ones. Cider, by the way, is a lot nicer here, compared to the few I have had in the US. I like the fizz and the sweet apple flavor, and you can find ones with higher alcohol content in the UK, so you don’t have to get bloated while trying to get drunk a nice buzz going.

3. Fish-and-chipperies

If you are by the coast, there are plenty of places that specialize in fish and chips. They will typically always have cod, and then a few other varieties of fish such as plaice, seabass or salmon. My favorite was one in Eastbourne unabashedly named Holiday Inn Fish and Chips, because not only did they do batter-fried fish, but also grilled salmon (with chips), which was delicious. We went to the place at least three times during our stay. (Sidenote: after seeing the Ritz in London, from the outside only, and checking out room prices online, I now get the unintended humor of all those shacks/diners in Goa which are called the Ritz).

4. Tearooms

Any Agatha Christie mystery will tell you that afternoon tea is a quintessential part of the British country life. The first high tea I had was in fact in India last year, but it did not involve scones. It did involve some lovely tiered tea trays and infinite yum yums. But from Britain, I wanted scones. I didn’t want the fancy high teas like the ones in Fortnum & Mason. I mean, if foreigners came to Kerala and went to 5-star hotels to have biriyani or porottas, it would be pretty ridiculous, wouldn't it? So instead, we looked around for tea shops that either served afternoon tea, which usually comes with a pot of tea, scones with clotted cream and jam, cakes and sandwiches, or cream tea, which is a trimmed-down version of afternoon tea involving just (just? what just? It’s never just!) a pot of tea and scones with cream and jam. It’s nice to have the afternoon tea, especially as an experience (we had one with coronation sandwiches, tuna & cucumber sandwiches, a Victoria sponge and lemon and elderflower cake), but it is quite excessive unless you have worked up a proper appetite. Instead, we had cream tea a dozen times all through our trip. It leaves one feeling very content.

5. Pasty shops

Cornwall specializes in pasties. There are pasties everywhere. We came across Warrens, a pasty chain, every tens minutes as we walked along the main streets of Penzance. We sampled the traditional steak & ale, cheese & onion and steak & stilton. I also had a lamb and mint roll, all of which were really tasty. But they are heavy, so it’s best shared. There are some with bacon or ham, but after these the pasties are of a more experimental variety (going in the curry, thai, chorizo, vegan direction) and I was disinclined to try these.

6. Diners

Here, you get all the English classics, including a good English breakfast. I think what makes English breakfast appealing is the idea that it is tradition, and therefore, perfectly okay to have bread and butter + fried eggs + sausages + bacon + potatoes for breakfast. It makes one think that there was once a time when people ate such things for breakfast and carried on to live full and happy lives. To make things better, they serve blood sausage and fried tomatoes and beans alongside, which you can judiciously avoid.

Other honorable mentions:

Unlike in the US where good shawarmas are hard to come by, in Britain, shawarmas are widely available (geography explains a lot, I suppose). Even the gyro shops have chicken shawarmas. One of the best we had was in Brick Lane, London where I got both a chicken and lamb shawarma. In Bath, shawarma became a habit.

Also, Brits take their Indian food seriously, certainly far more than Americans. They are probably as comfortable with it as Americans are with Mexican food. We had some great dosas, porottas and momos and there were Indian restaurants in each and every one of our stops and pitstops.

And last, but not the least, we had a lot of doner boxes while we were in London. It’s a great way to get some clean meat into your diet on a low budget.