There's Something To Be Said About the Food in London

Reflections on a UK stop after a stint in Italy

In London right now, the best restaurants take ingredients seriously, but almost no one takes English food traditions very seriously.

Not only is there the kind of immigrant populations and the food of those various populations that bring wildly divergent cooking to almost every block, but it’s also not even clear that the people who’d want to do traditional local cooking agree on exactly what that is, or maybe there’s not that much of a market for eel or shepherd’s pie. It’s as if the wars and hardships and changes suffered by the British not only paused traditional cuisines but muted them.