The best part of British food is that we're incredibly good at adopting all of the worlds cuisines' as our own. I remember being at the Belgian GP and literally you could have chips with various shaped sausage and one pizza place hiding at the back. At the British GP you could eat some variant (admittedly, probably not the best variant) of pretty much every cuisine you could imagine.
Even in our supermarkets if you want to make a Paella or Peri Peri chicken you'll find all of the ingredients you need. If you go to a Spain it's really hard to find Peri Peri and if you go to France you'll struggle to find ingredients for a Paella.
I have many times visited friends in England, and I find their traditional home cooking to be quite nice. Maybe it's a teensy bit underspiced at times, but I am not averse to actually be able to taste the natural aromas of the bulk ingredients. I admit that it may not be on the level of some of the traditional Italian home cooking I have tasted, but that would be a very tall order indeed.
Yeah I can agree with you that perhaps many countries have cuisine we consider bad because countries just do their best and they can't all be Italy or the Szechuan Province.
I don't agree that because of the British Empire their food is good. They had the British Empire long enough to prove or disprove that claim.
I've visited England 5-ish times. I love it. But I've personally encountered some true Curry monstrosities over there. And Abominable fish and chips. I have fond memories of eating marzipan.
MOREOVER, Gordon Ramsay making dog-food egg mush and calling it scrambled has criminally misled a whole generation of youtube-addicted hipsters. I can't tell you how many times I've heard some random Millenial describe his exact, twisted method and inevitably I learn they've watched this exact video. Okay, twice.
After an excursion to London many years ago (from USA), I reported to my coworkers that the food was great.
I received the strangest looks from the British-ex pats. I still think the food was quite good, though thinking back I don’t think I sampled the “native” British cuisine.
Anyone complaining about British food has never eaten Dutch "cuisine". After having lived in both countries I'll always defend the Brits when it comes to food.
