Food

England has never been famous for its fine cuisine (admittedly, neither have the Netherlands). Gone are the times of just Spotted Dick, Pigs-in-a-blanket, Bangers and Mash, and Yorkshire Pudding – which did score points in the Funny Name Contest!

It has greatly changed, luckily. In London alone, there are now 10 restaurants with no less than 3 Michelin stars: 28 with 2 and 46 with 1, plus 35 Bibs. Prices are way up high, but then again there are many good deals, like ‘pre-theatre’ menus which start at 6, finish by 8. Wines can be particularly expensive, but often come in large glasses (175ml) and we were pleasantly suprised by a range of excellent English sparkling wines. Who would have thought?

We started our trip with Kitchen W8 (*), a diminuitive name based on zipcode rather than a sassy code for ‘weight’ or ‘wait’. Lunch at The Portrait, dinner at Gordon R’s Bread Street, and a typical English dinner at Maggie Jones’s (the “s’s” is not really English, I think). Be aware that a ‘discretionary service charge’ is automatically added to your bill, ranging from 10-15%. Quite steep as a tip for us Dutchies, but hey… and we refused to pay this at Gordon’s, because of explicitly lousy service. So much so that they gave us an additional 20% discount, so there.

Breakfast is a warning sign: go English and think bacon, sausage, white beans. Luckily there were other options too.

Coffee is great. Gone are the TEA focused days (with ‘cream’, can you imagine??), and the British alternatives for the ‘bucks (Nero and Costa, plus the interesting Knoops) are excellent.