I find it intriguing to watch the contestants on Hell’s Kitchen struggling to cook beef Wellington—a thoroughly British dish—and I wonder how many of them knew what it was before they went on the show. For that matter, I wonder how many in the TV audience know even now.
It’s surely part of Ramsay’s success that he contradicts the received idea of the polite, reserved Brit. Whether he’s screaming at incompetent risotto-makers or hugging the newly on-track restaurateurs of Kitchen Nightmares, he’s nothing if not emotional.
You also have to respect Ramsay for being the only British celebrity chef to open restaurants in America: that takes some nerve. It’s a surprise to go to one of his restaurants and find it’s a cool and sophisticated place, rather than a center of loud verbal obscenity and thrown food.
It must also be said that in Ramsay’s American restaurants, the Britishness is toned way down. Yes, on his menu at the London in West Hollywood you’ll find partridge and venison, at Maze in New York, there are some English-sounding desserts such as vanilla custard, and the London Bar, also in New York, offers “full English breakfast,” but he seems to be holding back. The website for London, West Hollywood, states that the cuisine is “western European with subtle Asian influences,” and Britain is certainly in western Europe, but Ramsey obviously doesn’t want to labor the point. The ox tongue and cheek, which is a signature dish in his British restaurants, and well worth seeking out, was only briefly on his American menus, which frankly is a damn shame: it’s a terrific dark, rich, gamey, very elegant concoction. There’s no beef Wellington on the menu either for that matter.
So if Gordon Ramsay isn’t going to satisfy our need for good British food in America, where should our quest take us? Well, there are quite a few, as it were, British “theme restaurants” scattered across America, various Britannia George and Dragons, Cat and Fiddles, along with an increasing number of gastropubs, a genuinely British invention that continues to mutate both in Britain and America. You hope these places will serve shepherd’s pie, bangers and mash, maybe Cornish pasties. When these things are good they’re very good indeed, and to an Englishman even when they’re not really good they’re still not bad.
Some places may even serve curry, a British version of Indian food that’s a long way from anything actually eaten in India. The British have made curry in their own image, usually spicy but mild, sometimes creamy, occasionally extremely fierce, and generally accompanied by copious amounts of Indian bread. I suspect that not every American food lover will want to put too much energy into seeking out authentic versions of inauthentic copies of foreign cuisines, but if they do they’ll definitely be sharing flavors that are comfortingly familiar to millions of Britons.
Among the more interesting places where I’ve satisfied my urge for British food are the Lyons English Grille in Palm Springs—which serves a steak and kidney pie that’s satisfyingly heavy on the kidney, and sometimes they even have beef Wellington as a special—while in New York there’s Keen’s which certainly has British origins, as part of Lamb’s Club in London in the nineteenth century. There, as well as the famous mutton chops, you’ll find English trifle and Stilton from Neal’s Yard. High quality British cheese is certainly something that a deracinated Englishman often craves. It’s not impossible to find in America but here it’s a high priced luxury, whereas in Britain it’s an affordable staple.
And how about fish and chips? For the true British fish and chip experience you should be standing on a beach in a bleak English seaside town, the wind numbing your fingers as you eat the vinegar-soaked chips. It’s not an easy one to replicate in America. In southern California there’s the H. Salt Esquire chain, which is very authentic in some ways. The original owner really was named H. Salt (the H stood for Haddon), an Englishman, son of a fish and chip shop owner in Skegness, a bleak seaside town to be sure. The story here is that American tourists who ate at the shop enjoyed themselves so much they convinced Haddon that America would go wild for his food, and he duly moved to California. This may or may not be true: the hardest part to believe is that there were ever any American tourists in Skegness. I rather like my local H. Salt; the fish and chips are pretty good—they’re not haute cuisine, but fish and chips aren’t meant to be - and the layout of tables, counters and fryers really does have the feel a genuine English fish and chip shop, but the windswept beach is a long way away.
Much greater claims are made for A Salt and Battery, in New York’s West Village, with its English owners, cooks and sensibility. These result in chunky, irregularly shaped French fries, and crisp golden batter that doesn’t overwhelm the melting taste of the fish inside. One of A Salt’s fryers, Mat Arnfield, even beat Bobby Flay in a Food Channel “throwdown”: the fact that Flay used serrano chili vinegar certainly suggests he wasn’t going for authenticity. Fortunately he didn’t attempt the deep fried Mars bar, another A Salt and Battery specialty, one with Scottish origins, not as perfect an invention as the haggis, but definitely in the running.
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