The Gravy Feud® and Other Gastronomic Delights

[Spoony]

10 hours ago, BOF said:

My experience of England is that your bread is generally terrible. It's like you don't even like bread over there. Like how Americans don't generally do proper cheese. The vast vast majority of the bread available in your shops is the run of the mill long life sliced pan, and even those ones you've got are shit. I agree with you that the thick crusty is a different meal, but I'm now beginning to think when talking bread with an English person we're probably not even talking like for like, and the things you guys do, or do not do, to your bread is heavily influenced by what you're working with to begin with. I sympathise with your plight.

I think that would have been more true in the last but now is possibly a bit more generational/regional/money-orientated. There are incredible bakeries in the UK and a growing popularity of sourdough, rye breads, soda bread etc which are now widely available in some parts of the UK (I’m talking the more gentrified areas, especially in London) and eaten by mostly millennials and other douchebags (I myself am a millennial douchebag but I value good bread and won’t buy the hovis type shit as it actually gives me hiccups).

Having said that, I haven’t been to a single country in the world where the ‘standard supermarket bread’ that MOST people are buying and eating day to day isn’t just the same shit in a different wrapper. I’ve never experienced a culture of literally everyone eating delicious bakery bread every day. Most people are grabbing the cheap shit and readily available stuff every day, from my experience. 

[ferguson1]

34 minutes ago, Spoony said:

Having said that, I haven’t been to a single country in the world where the ‘standard supermarket bread’ that MOST people are buying and eating day to day isn’t just the same shit in a different wrapper. I’ve never experienced a culture of literally everyone eating delicious bakery bread every day. Most people are grabbing the cheap shit and readily available stuff every day, from my experience. 

Not sure I agree with the bold part. In France especially, bread is relatively cheap compared to England and is of far better quality. Whether from a supermarket or from a back of a van.

I do agree though that most supermarket standard bread here is pretty poor stuff. 

[TheMelvillan]

2 hours ago, bickster said:

What? A streaky bacon sandwich is far superior to a back bacon sandwich. Thought that was a generally accepted fact

[Rds1983]

14 minutes ago, TheMelvillan said:

What? A streaky bacon sandwich is far superior to a back bacon sandwich. Thought that was a generally accepted fact

Honestly don't know anyone who prefers streaky bacon. It's way too fatty and greasy. I'd happily pass up a streaky bacon sandwich, gimme a nice crispy and thick bit of back any day. 

[bickster]

26 minutes ago, TheMelvillan said:

What? A streaky bacon sandwich is far superior to a back bacon sandwich. Thought that was a generally accepted fact

Streaky bacon is an ingredient in something else not the main attraction in a meal

[Spoony]

55 minutes ago, ferguson1 said:

Not sure I agree with the bold part. In France especially, bread is relatively cheap compared to England and is of far better quality. Whether from a supermarket or from a back of a van.

I do agree though that most supermarket standard bread here is pretty poor stuff. 

I would say a lot of UK supermarkets do now do Pretty decent bread but I guess the issue remains people are grabbing a hovis or whatever as it remains a bit cheaper, and expensive bread is a luxury for most people.

Tbh it’s pretty symptomatic of the whole British food scene. We’ve come so far with respect to food and I don’t think there are many better places in the world for food than London anymore (both in terms of available quality and diversity), but it all comes at a cost and the food available to your average working man outside of the big cities and towns remains pretty poor. Any arguments that British food is terrible just isn’t true anymore (it’s on you if you come to the UK and have a shit fish and chips in a shit pub in a tourist hot spot). We have excellent produce and in my experience a willingness to adopt many different food cultures, and the whole culture around food and drink has shifted so much over the years that food and drink are very ‘hot topics’ in the UK.

However, I think the issue is access to good food. I think the average working man in many other countries is eating much better as actual fresh, good food is (more) readily available and affordable (at least that appears to me to be the case). For a country that has so much farming and so much amazing produce, it’s pretty shocking that most people have to rely on processed or non-fresh food to be able to make ends meet (but of course the issues that cause that and the situation with farming in the UK, class divides, regional divides, generational divides and the cost of living runs very, very deep).

[Spoony]

55 minutes ago, TheMelvillan said:

What? A streaky bacon sandwich is far superior to a back bacon sandwich. Thought that was a generally accepted fact

Thin salty crispy bullshit. Back bacon has a bit of crisp but also meaty goodness and depth.
 

there are situations where streaky bacon is better (in my opinion a burger, on loaded fries, for salads and other sprinkle kinds of shit), but a sandwich needs to be OG back bacon.

[fightoffyour]

11 hours ago, TheMelvillan said:

What? A streaky bacon sandwich is far superior to a back bacon sandwich. Thought that was a generally accepted fact

This is the single most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read on here and I’ve been in on topic.

[OutByEaster?]

16 hours ago, TheMelvillan said:

What? A streaky bacon sandwich is far superior to a back bacon sandwich. Thought that was a generally accepted fact

It's barely a step up from a frazzle.

 

[Sam-AVFC]

32 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

It's barely a step up from a frazzle.

 

Now you're showing yourself up.

[OutByEaster?]

3 minutes ago, Sam-AVFC said:

Now you're showing yourself up.

Fair enough. I do love a Frazzle though.

[TheMelvillan]

3 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

It's barely a step up from a frazzle.

 

Tbf a frazzle crisp sandwich sounds brill

[blandy]

On 13/05/2022 at 16:11, TheMelvillan said:

as much as I appreciate good bread most of the time, for a streaky bacon sandwich give me shitey whitey. fresh of course - im not a monster - but cheaper the better with proper butter which the bacon subsequently melts til its pooling down your wrists

I’ll side with you for a BLT. It needs to be streaky in a BLT, in my book.  The first and still the nicest BLT I ever had was beside a swimming pool in a hotel in Oman, cold beer, BLT with some sort of mustard/olive oil dressing and nice fresh multigrain type bread. Lovely ripe tomato and lettuce that wasn’t a waste of space.

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, blandy said:

BLT

Who in their right mind eats bacon with weeds?

Lettuce, the ultimate sandwich killer

[blandy]

1 minute ago, bickster said:

Who in their right mind eats bacon with weeds?

Lettuce, the ultimate sandwich killer

I nearly tagged you in, but decided you’d find the post by yourself.

Lettuce is basically ghost cabbage - you can have that.

[Wainy316]

21 hours ago, TheMelvillan said:

What? A streaky bacon sandwich is far superior to a back bacon sandwich. Thought that was a generally accepted fact

If the universe consisted of only you then yes.

[Wainy316]

Streaky bacon is what Americans refer to as simply ‘bacon’ and I just think to myself how much they’re missing out.

[bickster]

Just now, Wainy316 said:

Streaky bacon is what Americans refer to as simply ‘bacon’ and I just think to myself how much they’re missing out.

They refer to proper back bacon as Canadian Bacon because American pigs clearly have no back

[TheMelvillan]

3 hours ago, Wainy316 said:

If the universe consisted of only you then yes.

A fantasy I've had many times

[sparrow1988]

19 hours ago, Rds1983 said:

Ordered a takeaway pizza and the lad wanted a chicken one. The restaurant used Tikka or something else with spice on the chicken without advertising this and now he won't eat it. Money down the drain that could have been easily avoided of they'd advertised properly. 

That'll teach him to order chicken on a pizza.