Has 'Modern British’ cuisine put an end to the era of shame about British food?

 “for the longest time, it was just accepted that we didn’t have a British cuisine”, Food Writer, Broadcaster and restaurateur Tim Hayward said in a piece for the FT Weekend Magazine.

But in recent years, he argued, this has started to change: now, the use of the term ‘Modern British’ stands as a classification of cuisine, and a great one at that.

But where has this come from?

It was a long-accepted stereotype that British cuisine wasn’t good. Americans, Tim said, would “return home with tales of the ghastliness of British cooking, of the slop they’d eaten at a B&B or the soulless, genteel posturing of hotel dining rooms”.

However, he argued, this is actually a fairly modern thing, and that before the first world war, there was a lot more for us to boast about. At the same time as “the French were formalising their cuisine in the mid-19th century," he said, "there was already spectacularly grand food available in Britain.”

But with the world wars came food rations, and generations of Brits started to see food as fuel and not as a craft and started to develop what Tim calls “culinary cringe,” or a “sense of culinary inferiority to our neighbours, France and Italy.”

However, recently, Tim believes that we have seen a re-emergence of British food as good food, beginning, he said, with George Perry-Smith at The Hole in the Wall and includes influential chefs such as Joyce Molyneux at the Carved Angel, as well as many others. These were, as described by Tim “all firmly middle class, often university educated,” people who “bypassed the apprenticeship of the kitchen or formal training to become the most influential cooks and restauranteurs of a generation.”

They birthed a tradition of simple food, inspired by the Mediterranean and started the long history of British food taking inspiration from other cuisines from all over the world. As Tim stated, “Your Modern British meal […] might have an old English, French or Italian core, been foraged like a Dane or portioned like a Spaniard, but it will sit on the plate like it was arranged by a Japanese master.”

With the development of the Internet, faster communication and spread of ideas we have seen a shift away from the Mediterranean inspiration of British food towards the Nordic regions. As Tim stated, “It’s almost as if, at least where food is concerned, we’ve finally accepted that we are a northern European Nation.”

Modern British comes from the unique situation it was born from. The lack of tradition and the history of rationing caused us to look elsewhere for our food inspirations and that has led to Modern British food being about, in Tim's words, “an honest joy in eclecticism and diversity.”

Do you agree/disagree? We'd love to hear from you, share your thoughts in the comments below.

Image credit to Mike Sim