Work through the list in order. Hide the notes when you know what to do.
-
Eat a Sunday roast
Roast meat with potatoes cooked in duck or beef fat, a Yorkshire pudding, vegetables and gravy. The central British meal, served on Sundays only.
Book ahead at a good gastropub for Sunday; the roast usually runs out by five. The potatoes should be crisp outside and fluffy within.
-
Try fish and chips
Cod or haddock in beer batter with thick chips, malt vinegar and mushy peas. The batter should be blistered and crisp rather than sliding off in a wet sheet.
The vinegar is malt rather than wine and goes straight onto the chips in the paper. Look for a chippy that fries to order and warns you about a ten-minute wait.
-
Eat a full English
Eggs, bacon, sausages, baked beans, grilled tomato, mushrooms and toast, with black pudding in the proper version. Served all day in a caff rather than only in the morning.
A real caff has formica tables and tea from a big pot, unlike a chain brunch spot. Black pudding can be left off if you ask when ordering.
-
Try pie and mash
A minced beef pie, mashed potato and liquor, a green parsley sauce. East End working food, surviving in a couple of dozen old shops.
The liquor is green and contains no alcohol despite the name. Classic shops also offer jellied eels alongside; not for everyone, but part of the genre.
-
Eat a curry
Indian and Bangladeshi food in London stopped being foreign long ago: from the classic curry house to regional places serving South Indian or Pakistani cooking. Tikka masala was invented in Britain.
For regional cooking go to Tooting, Southall and Whitechapel rather than tourist Brick Lane. In a curry house you state the heat when ordering, and madras is already noticeably hot.
-
Get a salt beef bagel
Boiled beef brisket with mustard and a pickle in a dense bagel — East End Jewish food. The classic Brick Lane bakeries run twenty-four hours.
Ask for mustard and pickle; that is how it was designed. The bagels are boiled before baking, which is why they are dense rather than airy.
-
Try a Scotch egg
A boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat and fried in breadcrumbs. In a good pub the yolk is still runny, which is the main sign it was made on site rather than bought in.
Served warm with mustard or Branston pickle. The cold supermarket version is a different thing entirely and not a fair test.
-
Eat oysters
British oysters from Whitstable, Jersey and the Mersey, both flat and cupped, with a pronounced mineral edge. Old oyster bars serve them by the dozen with brown bread and butter.
Flat natives are seasonal and cost more; cupped rocks are available all year. Lemon, tabasco and shallot vinegar come alongside, and you pick one rather than all three.
-
Walk Borough Market
A food market under railway arches selling cheese, game, oysters and hot food to take away. Go on a weekday; on Saturday it is impassable.
British cheeses — Somerset cheddar, stilton, Kirkham's — are offered to taste before buying. The hot food stalls stay open longer than the produce stands.
-
Try a Cornish pasty
A pastry filled with beef, potato, swede and onion with a thick crimped edge. Miners held the crimp with dirty hands and threw it away, which is why it is so thick.
A true pasty is crimped at the side rather than on top, and the filling goes in raw. Eaten hot, with your hands, from a paper bag.
-
Eat sticky toffee pudding Desserts and pastries
A date sponge drenched in hot toffee sauce and served with cream or custard. Dense, warm and entirely unapologetic pub dessert.
Ask for custard rather than cream if you want the classic version. Its menu neighbours are rhubarb crumble and Eccles cake.
-
Take afternoon tea Desserts and pastries
A three-tier stand: sandwiches at the bottom, scones with clotted cream and jam in the middle, cakes on top. You work upwards, and it replaces lunch rather than following it.
A scone is broken by hand rather than cut. The argument over whether cream or jam goes on first is genuine, and Devon and Cornwall answer it differently.
-
Try Eton mess Desserts and pastries
Crushed meringue, whipped cream and strawberries mixed without any tidiness. A summer dessert that gains from being messy.
British strawberry season runs June to August, and outside it the dish loses its point. The meringue should crunch in pieces rather than dissolve into the cream.
-
Drink a builder's tea Non-alcoholic drinks
Strongly brewed black tea with milk in a big mug — an everyday drink rather than a ceremony. The milk goes in after the tea, and the argument about the order continues.
Cafés will ask how strong you want it; builder's tea is almost orange. Ordering tea with lemon is regarded as odd here.
-
Drink a real ale Local alcohol
Cask-conditioned beer pulled by hand pump, served at cellar temperature without added gas. Soft, malty and nothing like a cold lager.
Look for the wooden hand pump handles on the bar; that is the sign of real ale. Ask for a half if you want to try several.
-
Try cider Local alcohol
Apple cider from the West Country: dry, cloudy and not sweet at all, unlike the industrial kind. The proper farmhouse version is called scrumpy.
Ask for dry if you do not want sweet; the default pour is medium. The pear version is perry and is harder to find.
