Fish & chips is the perfect synthesis of the "Salt, acid, fat, heat" theory of cooking. Truly delicious food starts with the combination of those elements in exactly the right amounts.

There's a lot of great things you can do with spices. I love, love, LOVE Indian food, Thai food, Mexican food, Spanish food, Chinese food, Cajun food, etc, etc, etc. But if you don't understand how to make something delicious without spices, you'll never really understand how to make good food with them. It's always about fundamentals.

Edit to add: Here's another really good way to think about this; people to bring up British food and complain about a lack of spices, but you never see the same complaint about aglio e olio or caccio e pepe, two dishes that contain, respectively one herb and no spices, and one spice and no herbs (parsley, and black pepper).

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's exceptionally easy to do as a tourist. Last I visited, first we went to a restaurant and ordered and it was subpar. So then we were told "you have to go to a Chippy, if you want real fish and chips" so we did... they should have told us which "Chippy", they are not all the same.

That was the worst culinary experience of my life. I have never had a more oily nasty fried fish. The wet breading just fell off, and it tasted like very old oil. I threw out 2/3s of it, as did basically everyone else.

We ended up eating at indian restaurants the rest of the trip.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

To be fair, this is not helped by the fact that British people are often very bad at recommending good places to eat. A lot of people value familiarity over quality.

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

We were actually there for my uncle in laws wedding, so you would think we would have gotten better advice. But I guess weddings are busy...

The food at the wedding was amazing though. I can't even remember it all, they brought out so much food. I think there was venison and duck, and fish I have never even heard of before, it was over the top. But his parents were like old money wealthy, so I doubt that's common. It was also in like a minor castle, and the grounds were just gorgeous. I could have spent days just inspecting all the plants, so much variety of foreign plants and super cool hardwood trees.

That was the only great food we had, although the Indian food pretty good. Got old after a week though.