Eating
In many hotels and B&Bs you'll be offered what's termed an " English breakfast " - or Welsh or Scottish in the respective countries - which is basically sausage, bacon and eggs plus tea and toast. This used to be the typical working-class start to the day, but these days the British have adopted the healthier cereal alternative, and most places will give you this option as well. Traditionally, a " Scottish breakfast " would include porridge - properly made with genuine oatmeal and traditionally eaten with salt rather than sugar, though the latter is always on offer. You may also be served kippers or Arbroath smokies (delicately smoked haddock with butter), or a large piece of haddock with a poached egg on top. Oatcakes (plain savoury biscuits) and a "buttery" - not unlike a French croissant - will often feature. For most overseas visitors the quintessential British meal is fish and chips (known in Scotland as a "fish supper", even at lunchtime), a dish that can vary from the succulently fresh to the indigestibly oily - it's little wonder that lashings of salt, vinegar and tomato ketchup or the fruitier brown sauce are common additions. The classier places have tables, but more often they serve takeaway (takeout) food only, sometimes supplying a disposable fork so that you can guzzle your roadside meal with a modicum of decorum. Fish-and-chip shops (" chippies ") can be found on most high streets and main suburban thoroughfares throughout Britain, although in larger towns they're beginning to be outnumbered by pizza, kebab and burger outlets. Other sources of straightforward food throughout the day are " greasy spoons " (which tend to close at around 6-7pm), and pubs (which usually stop serving food by 9pm), where you'll often find plain "meat-and-two-veg" dishes: steak-and-kidney pie, shepherd's pie (minced lamb or beef covered in mashed potato, and baked), chops and steaks, accompanied by boiled potatoes, carrots or some such vegetable. However, a lot of British pubs now take their food very seriously indeed, having separate dining areas and menus that can compete with some of the better mid-range restaurants. In the smallest villages the pub may be the only place you can eat. Another recent development is the growing number of specialist vegetarian restaurants , especially in the larger towns, and the increasing awareness of vegetarian preferences in other eating places. In Wales especially you'll come across dozens of small, inexpensive wholefood cafes, often doubling up as alternative resource centres. Also on the rise in the major towns are vaguely French brasseries , informal bar/restaurants offering simple meals from around GBP10-12 per head and often with a set lunchtime menu for around half that. Britain has its diverse immigrant communities to thank for the range of foods in the mid-range category. Of the innumerable types of ethnic restaurants offering good-value high-quality meals you'll find Chinese, Indian and Bangladeshi specialities in every town of any size, with the widest choice in London and the industrial cities of the Midlands and the North. Other Asian restaurants, particularly Thai and Indonesian, are now becoming more widespread in England, but are generally a shade more expensive, while further up the economic scale there's no shortage of French and Italian places - by far the most popular European cuisines, though most cities also have their share of Spanish tapas bars. Japanese food has been one of the success stories of recent years, with sushi bars joining the expense-account restaurants that have been established for some time in the business centres. The ranks of Britain's gastronomic restaurants grow with each passing year, with cordon-bleu chefs producing high-class French-style dishes, California-influenced menus, internationalist hybrid creations, and traditional British meat and fish dishes that are as delicious as the more arty creations of their cross-Channel counterparts. London of course has the highest concentration of top-flight places, but wherever you are in Britain you're never more than half an hour's drive from a really good meal - some of the very best dining rooms are to be found in the countryside hotels. The problem is that fine food costs more in Britain than it does anywhere else in Europe. If a place has any sort of reputation in foodie circles you're unlikely to be spending less than GBP30 per head, and for the services of the country's glamour chefs you could be paying up to a preposterous GBP120.
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