POST-TRIP2B: FOOD in England - dinners

Post-trip

Dinners

Lunch was typically a bite grabbed on the run, or an unexpectedly pleasant museum café snack, but dinners were usually a nice sit down meal somewhere. The smaller towns (Chipping Campden, Keswick) had fewer options for cuisine, but Bath, Oxford, York, and London all offered lots of options, much as you find here in the Bay Area. And, as can be true here, for popular spots you needed to make a reservation in advance to be assured of a spot.

We did have the classic fish and chips once, in Oxford at a pub. The main difference from what we've had here as fish and chips is that there was a single, very large piece of fish! It had a nice, light batter and minted peas on the side; I enjoyed it and would've had it again but somehow we never did. 

We had other sorts of pub food a few times (think burgers, sandwiches, salads), but mostly our meals were quite varied: Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Arabian, Nepalese, Turkish, Italian. We normally eat vegetarian + seafood; it was not too hard to find vegetarian options on menus, although sometimes there weren't many options or they were somewhat lame options. In that respect, it felt similar to the situation in the US.

We once ate at Nando's, a popular chain of fast casual restaurants that originated in South Africa. That was one place where it was harder to find veggie options on the menu, as the speciality of Nando's is "peri-peri" chicken, a Portuguese-African style of chicken. I liked my veggie sandwich and salad ok, but Doug's veggie burger fell apart on him. Later I was curious and checked: there are Nando's outlets in the US, but currently only in the Washington DC and Chicago areas.

One thing admirable I noticed about the Nando's menu is that they are participating in a UK effort to make menus accessible to the visually impaired. There's an app you can get that will read the menu out loud for you, for participating restaurants. I thought that was pretty cool.

Another chain we ate at, one that only exists in the UK, was Giggling Squid. What kind of cuisine would you think that is? When Doug saw one in Bath he thought it was a pub. Well, it turns out it's Thai food! It was good Thai food, too. We ate Thai food three times I think; our favorites were Giggling Squid and the Mali Vegan Thai I mentioned in an earlier post.

Speaking of chains, another chain that we saw in more than one city was Tortilla. Their claim to fame is "Real California Burritos & Tacos". We opted to pass, as we figure we've already had the real thing. Apparently the UK-based chain is going strong, with outlets in the Middle East as well. It's nice to see chains other than US-based ones. (I saw some Taco Bells in the UK, but not a Chipotle; however I just checked online and there actually are seven Chipotles, all in London only, while there are 23 Tortilla outlets in London alone and 36 elsewhere in the UK. I think I know who's winning.)

In reflecting back on our eating, I realized that most of the time, for dinner, we were going to a specific restaurant that we'd at least checked out briefly online first, in terms of their reviews. Maybe that's why we were generally happy with our meals. The pub meals tended to be less exciting, but we had many good meals.  Below I mention some of our "best" meals in terms of originality and distinctive flavors, but a meal is more than just the food. For instance, I'll always remember happily slurping a bowl of noodles at Noodle Bath (the name cracked me up, but it was in Bath), eavesdropping on the conversations behind us.

Here are three of the best dinners we had, and they were all outside of London even. (I'm sure there's comparable dining in London as well, but it was nice that we found some outside London, too.)

• Oak, in Bath: a vegetarian place, according to its own chalkboard: "Best Vegetarian restaurant in the UK --The Times". It was in fact delicious and creative food. Some dishes from that meal were: a simple dish of grilled asparagus, but with a wonderful garlic/almond sauce on it, a blood orange fennel salad, and a potato pave, topped with mushrooms. The dessert we chose featured a star anise ice cream (shown in an earlier post).  

• Bantam, in Helmsley of all places: We were just stopping in Helmsley for one night, on the way to York, and I didn't expect much, but Doug found this restaurant which is listed in the Michelin Guide. They offered tasting dishes to share; we got four of them. The food was creative and interesting. The dishes shown below are chickpea pancakes with aubergine (eggplant), raisin, and pine nuts, and a salad  of brown crab, shaved fennel, rocket, chili, and pomelo.

• Sticks & Sushi, in Oxford (Allie's pick): we got two of their pre-arranged sushi/skewer sets, one which was vegetarian, one which did have fish and chicken. All the items shown below were from the vegetarian set; the skewers were sweet potato and oyster mushroom. It was memorable because of the creativity, variety, and quality of the sushi. Note: I just looked it up and Sticks & Sushi is a chain based in Copenhagen! 

Next Post

My cold is getting better (yay!) and I tested to make sure it's not COVID, but my awake/sleep patterns are still pretty weird. I'm not sure how long my blog momentum will last. It's fun to look back on the trip as a whole, but it's a little harder in some ways (e.g. i have to think about all the photos I took, not just the ones for one day). Anyway, I definitely will publish at least two more posts, possibly three. 

P.S. We realized today we never saw bagels on our trip. I'm sure there must be bagels somewhere in the UK, but we realized that we never ran into any, or were ever offered any at our B&Bs. 

POST-TRIP2A: FOOD in England - breakfasts

Post-trip

UPDATES: A friend sent me ice cream consumption statistics for 2020, and apparently the US still consumes more per capita than the UK, almost three times as much! The US was 2nd highest, the UK was tenth. And New Zealand was first! It still seemed like ice cream was very high profile in England, but also we were mostly in tourist areas, so that could be part of it.

I also have found out that the CDC currently ranks the UK as a level 3 travel advisory, and that internal air travel in the UK has been problematic (this heard via an NPR broadcast), more from Brexit issues than COVID. I increasingly feel we were very lucky in our travels, more so than I initially appreciated.

Also I have come down with Doug's cold, so am somewhat under the weather, which is the reason for delayed postings. 

English breakfast

In six out of the seven places we stayed, our lodging fee included breakfast, a full "English breakfast"— not just the pastry and coffee that you sometimes get at inexpensive US motels. The seventh place, our hotel in London, could include breakfast as an option, but Doug had declined it, which ended up working out well. We were busier in London, and there were plenty of options for grabbing an on-the-go breakfast.

So what is an English breakfast exactly? Each place varied somewhat, but I would say the core elements are: 

• Sausage and bacon (veggie sausages available as an alternative)
• Eggs
• Mushrooms
• Tomato (grilled)
• Toast (choice of white or brown bread)
• (sometimes) Baked beans
• (sometimes) Hash brown triangles
• (sometimes) Black pudding (a kind of blood sausage with grain...we didn't order any)

Breakfast in York, poached eggs weren't wrapped  up tightly as they were in other places, sausages  are veggie sausages per our request

Toast

I knew about the sausage, bacon, eggs, and toast, but I was a little surprised by the mushrooms and tomato. They were consistently present throughout though. Lighter options were available, too—things like yogurt, cereal, and limited pastries (typically only croissants). Our first place, in Bath, offered the widest range of breakfast options, including smoked haddock, pancakes, Scottish oats with whiskey. 

As time went on, we opted for yogurt and cereal a little more often, as we're not used to eating eggs every single day. Doug got his eggs hard-boiled, soft-boiled, scrambled, poached, etc. just to change things up.

Each place handled breakfast a little differently. Most places had a menu you would order from (example shown is from our Oxford place). The small place in Keswick had a more detailed checklist where you'd check off what you wanted the night before. The place in York defaulted to a full English breakfast for everyone but you could tell them what to leave out. On our last day in York, when Doug only got a single poached egg and toast, I think our hostess was shaking her head in wonderment that he could get by with so little food (he did have some cereal and yogurt, too). 

The best breakfasts were definitely at Duke's, the first place we stayed in, in Bath. It had the most options other than an English breakfast and it had a very nice fruit compote. In all cases though, despite our getting a little OD'd on eggs, sitting down to a cooked breakfast was a nice way to start the day.

London breakfasts

In London we were on our own for breakfasts, which gave us a lot of flexibility, and more variety. I loved that the nearby Pret a Manger (which means "Ready to Eat" in French) carried tubs of hot porridge. If they hadn't run out yet, you could also get seeds/nuts to put in the porridge, as well as honey. Another nice breakfast was when we stopped at a Leadenhall Market coffee shop. 

Next Post

In the next post, I'll continue talking about what kinds of food we had for dinner, and what were the best meals.

POST-TRIP1: Some differences in England

Post-trip 

Here are a few light-hearted differences that struck us when we were in England. It was fun to make a list of them, as a reminder of what the experience was like, being there.

Since these observations are based on casual impressions from this one trip, they may not be truly representative. I'm hoping those who have spent more time in England (I can think of at least two of you) will chime in on whether or not you think these observations jibe with your own experiences.  

Some things that were different about England

FOOD

Ice cream: The Brits really like ice cream. I mean, I think ice cream is popular in the US, but in England, ice cream was everywhere! There was always an ice cream truck, almost anywhere you went. I remember there was one at Stonehenge. The yellow truck below was at the Castlerigg Stone Circle, pretty much out in the middle of nowhere. We could get gelato in the theater, and were served a fruit pop on the plane!

Lemonade: I like lemonade, so I started ordering it and soon realized that lemonade is ubiquitous in England. (Note that in one of the ice cream photos, there's a lemonade stand in the background.) It seemed like it was always on every menu, plus it typically was a sparkling lemonade. Lemonade was available on the flight home (shown in photo); US flights typically just have orange juice or cranberry juice.

Tea: Doug was surprised that while tea was always available, there often weren't as many different kinds offered as in the US. In the US, sometimes they'll bring out a little box of tea selections for you. He decided it was because in England tea is more of a staple, like milk; whereas in the US it's a discretionary item.

Eggs: We had a lot of eggs in all our English breakfasts, and Doug noticed that the yolks were consistently very orange, oranger than in the US. Also the poached eggs were almost always wrapped very tightly by the white, in a way I hadn't seen before in the US. There was also a "Scotch egg" which we hadn't had before.

Vegetarian options/food allergy info: England is fairly conscientious about providing vegetarian/vegan options, and about requiring food allergy info be listed. In a special exhibit on food trends at the Natural History Museum in Oxford, they included this note on one of the exhibit signs: "In the UK, a quarter of evening meals are already vegan or vegetarian." I don't know if that's true; menus still seem to be meat-dominated, but there is a consciousness about providing vegetarian/vegan options at least. I would say it's similar to the US (California at least), not way better or worse. I think the UK is better with food allergy info though. Menus typically have detailed info on the presence of regulated food allergens.

HOTEL/INDOOR 

Heated Towel Racks: All but one of the places we stayed in had heated towel racks. They can be handy for drying laundry as well as for heating/drying towels. The place that didn't have one was the hotel in London, so it's hard to know how common it is in London. Our other b&b places all had them!

Switch-offable power outlets: All of the places we stayed had power outlets that could be switched on and off for energy conservation, which we first encountered in our trip to India. At our last lodging, which was more of a hotel, the power to the whole room was also controlled by having you insert your room key card in a slot by the door. When you leave, and take your key with you, automatically the power in the room is shut down. It would be hard to do that in the other, older places we stayed, as the room keys were actual keys in those places.

Fire Safety: There's a lot of attention to fire safety, perhaps because of past fires, perhaps because it can be hard to install sprinklers in a historical building. Each place we stayed in had visible fire extinguishers and placards about fire procedures.

MISCELLANOUS

Cars: Although cars were bigger in London than elsewhere in England, overall they're still smaller than in the US. We never saw a pickup truck or a minivan. I once saw a Hummer-like vehicle, and maybe occasionally a compact SUV. We did end up seeing maybe half a dozen Teslas, mostly in Oxford and London, and we did see electric vehicle charging stations.

Contactless payments: Contactless payments are everywhere, even for things like donations and pay toilets and buses and the Tube. I know Europe as a whole adopted the technology more rapidly than the US when it first came out, but I think COVID accelerated the push towards making that kind of payment universal. There were places where you could not use cash, like the gift shop at the Globe Theater. As I assume most of you know, if your debit/credit cards aren't tap-to-pay already (or even if they are), you can also register the cards in Google or Apple Pay, and do contactless payments with your phone.

Me tapping on at the Tube

Donation box at the Tate Modern with tap to pay option

Dog-friendly: England seems to be a dog-friendly and dog-loving country. Many hotels and restaurants/pubs explicitly welcome dogs, and dogs were welcome on trails in the Lake District. On our climb of Catbells, we ran into one guy who was resigned to carrying his resistant little dog up, so they could go up together. Some garbage cans specifically reminded you they're for dog poop, too.

Tidiness: Generally England seemed pretty tidy, certainly in the early tourist destinations we went to. In London, we saw more instances of litter, but overall things were pretty tidy. There are also hedges lining many of the country roads, that clearly are trimmed regularly. It boggles the mind thinking of all the miles and miles of hedge trimming going on! The hedges added greenery, but also made it hard to see around the bend on narrow country roads...

Punctuality: We only have one small instance here to go on. We were going on a 1:30pm tour of York Minister. We showed up at 1:28pm and clearly everyone else was there already. The guide impatiently checked her watch and decided that was it and started us all walking on the tour. I checked my phone and it was only 1:29 still. Too bad for anyone actually coming at 1:30. Maybe her watch was running fast...

Driving: There's all sorts of things one could say about how driving is different, and not just because the sides of the road are switched. I'll just mention one thing: it's often acceptable that cars park on the edge of the road in such a way that actually intrudes halfway into the driving lane. You're just supposed to go around them, watching out of course for oncoming traffic as you veer into their lane. In general, there seems to be a higher expectation that drivers need to be on their toes. 

The car on the left is in a legitimate parking space 
(indicated by the dashed lines) but there's not room
left for two cars on the road at the same time...

Next Post

The next post will be about the food we had in England, particularly English breakfasts. I'll also mention our favorite meals, and our very occasional foray into grocery shopping.

FLYING HOME: COVID testing, security, Greenland

Happy to see this sign on the way into Customs at SFO

Sun 29 May (written mostly on Sunday)

We're home! Back in Menlo Park. So many feelings... a lot of happiness and relief that things went so well. On the road, one always has a low level of background tension: tracking your stuff so you don't lose anything, navigating in new surroundings, making sure you make all your connections, hoping you don't get sick or have an accident. In a way, it's part of the excitement of traveling; you have to have a heightened sense of alertness. 

I'm very glad we never had a major mishap. We never missed a connection, we never showed up at a reserved hotel or b&b only to find they had no place for us, we didn't get COVID! Although Doug did get a sore throat, which bogged him down some the last week. The weather was amazingly cooperative. Although we had some overcast days, the most rain I remember was on our long driving day up to the Lake District, and we were in the car. We had many lovely, sunny days.  Thank you O travel gods, for being kind to us on this trip.

COVID testing

Our last day in England was basically devoted to getting ready to fly home. In the morning we went off to our COVID test appointments at 9:40am at a DAM testing facility. Doug had booked us there when it appeared that airport testing was going to cost £150 (though a friend says you can actually get it for £35), and also because Allison had mentioned you could get tested in London. Doug had looked for a place that seemed legit and did antigen testing, plus one that wasn't too expensive (~£23) and wasn't too far from us. The place he had settled on (and booked on Tuesday, our first night in London) was in Fulham Broadway, just 2 stops away from our home base of Earl’s Court. We left our hotel at maybe 9:15 and were back by 10:30ish, including getting a breakfast snack; Doug think the process itself, without the breakfast snack, probably only took 45 minutes. 

When we got to the testing location, it wasn't very busy but it was encouraging that there were at least some other people there on a Sunday morning. A family with kids was checking in ahead of us, and some folks followed us. Doug had already done the basic registration, but he needed to add a photo of me, so we took one there. The test itself went quite quickly; Doug believes that the test used was exactly the same as the home test kit he’d used on Wednesday, when we had the COVID scare. The only difference is that someone else is doing it, so presumably it’s harder to fake results. We left right after the test (they e-mail you results); we were only at the testing place for maybe 15 minutes total.

Since you're not supposed to eat for 30 minutes before testing, we hadn't had breakfast yet. We saw a Pret a Manger on our way back to the Tube  stop, and we had some quick breakfast snacks there. By the time we got back to our hotel, Doug had gotten the results by e-mail already, and we were both negative, as expected, yay! Doug still had the scratchy throat, runny nose, and cough that scared us on Wednesday, but we haven't had any further health changes, so we expected to pass. It would have been a major drag not to be able to fly today, but since we were pretty sure we’d be ok, we didn’t spend much time figuring out what we’d do in that case. We figured we’d cross that bridge when and if we came to it... (I found out later Doug had done a little bit of thinking about it; his backup thought was that if we needed to stay longer, he could book us at a less expensive Travelodge location.)

By noon we had checked out of our hotel, and we headed to Heathrow Airport. Our flight wasn't til 5:30, but there wasn't really time to do much, so we'd decided to go straight to Heathrow and try to do some last postcard writing there. We could get to Heathrow simply by taking the Piccadilly line there. 

Doc Check, Security

While I was finishing my last packing, from 11-12, Doug was entering our vaccination and testing status at a Virgin Atlantic "FlyReady" site. It basically collects all the info needed to document you've satisfied US requirements for re-entry. After Doug had entered all the info, in our hotel room, he got an e-mail about 15 minutes later, confirming that we were cleared. When we got to the airport, there was a "doc check" station for Virgin Airlines, where all we had to do was show the guy the e-mails and/or the app confirmation. Then he put a little sticker on the back of each of our passports, which served to show we'd been cleared for US re-entry. It definitely expedited things to have entered all our info online already. If you're curious to know more details about our COVID testing or FlyReady, Doug is the one to talk to.

After the doc check, we checked the bags we weren't carrying onboard, and then went through Heathrow security. I hadn't really thought about the fact that it might be different than security in US airports. It wasn't much different, but there were two differences: we didn't have to take off our shoes, and they really wanted all liquids/gels in a single plastic bag. They did provide bags but I hadn't taken one because I thought the clear case I usually use would suffice; I ended up doing a hurried last minute transfer into an extra ziploc bag I had. Doug had stuff in two plastic bags but needed to consolidate into one. I went through security fine, but Doug did have to go through extra screening, including a full-body pat down and some sort of monitoring device run around his shoes. Fortunately they did let him pass in the end, and we ended up with about 2.5 hours of airport downtime before boarding.

Flying

The flight home was much more comfy than the flight over, due largely to one unexpected boon: Economy was far from full on our flight—I heard a flight attendant say there were something like 100 empty seats. After takeoff, a number of people reseated themselves, including the aisle seat guy in our row, so we had the entire three-seat row to ourselves. It was great. Not only did we have more room, but with fewer people, the bathrooms are free more of the time. The sound of the announcement system was also better than on the trip over. The sound through the supplied headphones (to watch movies/TV) was still not that great; I think the best strategy if you want to listen is to bring your own headphones/earbuds.

One of the interesting things about long flights is seeing how food and sleep is managed. Our flight went from 5:30pm to about 4:30am London time. The following times are all London time, to keep things simple. We got served three meals: dinner around 7pm; a late snack, if you were awake, around 11pm, and "afternoon tea" at 2:30am, a couple of hours before landing. We also got a fruit popsicle at 10:15pm! The lights were dimmed on the plane from roughly 9pm to I think 3am. 

The most efficient flight path from London to San Francisco is to fly northward, across Greenland and Canada. We also flew at 40,000 feet, avoiding most weather system issues. Our entire flight was in daylight, so I looked forward to being able to see Greenland. However they dimmed the inside lights during part of the trip (so people could sleep), and with the Dreamliner aircraft we were on, they also dim the viewing windows (darn!). I couldn't see Greenland as well as I would like to have, but it was still exciting to see it. 

The photos below are dimmer and bluer because the window itself was dimmed. The one on the left is of the western edge of Greenland, as we go past it; the other is of ice chunks at the top end of Canada (click on any photo to see a larger version of it).

Landing, customs

We touched down at SFO at about 8:20pm California time (4:20am London time), just as the sun was setting. I remember in the past having to fill out a customs form on the plane, but things are different now, at least at SFO, and pretty streamlined. The process itself is fast, but there were lots of incoming people, from multiple flights, at the time we landed; most of the time it took was waiting in line. You are channeled into a room with dozens of little kiosks (you can't take photos there or I'd probably have taken a photo). You wait for a free kiosk; then at the kiosk, you scan your passport in, take a photo of yourself, and answer something like six questions—the kind of questions that were previously on the paper form. I don't remember all of them, but here are a few I remember:

• Are you bringing in any commercial products? (We assumed this meant stuff to sell.)
• Are you bringing in more than the allotted $800 in duty-free gifts/purchases?
• Are you bringing in any prohibited agricultural products? (The actual question spelled it out more.)

At the end you can add who you're traveling with, so we could've done it together at one kiosk, but we didn't know that. Then the kiosk prints out a little receipt, which includes a grainy version of the photo you just took, your passport number, other info, and for each question, whether you said Y or N. A woman collects your receipt. If you had N for all questions, you're done; otherwise she shunts you over to an agent to deal with you in person. After that, we waited for our bags. Once we had our bags, Doug called for a Lyft. I think that was at 9:30ish, so the customs and baggage claim took an hour or so.

It was quite chilly at SFO, waiting for our Lyft; chillier than I remember being during most of our trip. We were home by 10:10pm California time.

Next posts

For the next few days, I will continue posting some summary reflections and highlights of the trip; things I wasn't able to cover along the way, especially food and signs. I may also reflect on what we did right and what, if anything, we would do differently next time. I appreciated getting some hellos and commentary from people; please continue to do so.  It's nice to hear from people.

My friend who lived near London for several years made a few fun comments on the blog itself; if you're curious to read those, you need to go directly to the blog site itself (https://england2022.blogspot.com) or at the end of the blog e-mails, if you click on "Continue reading" it will take you to the blog website. At the end of each post it indicates whether or not there's a comment. 

Last, but definitely not least, thanks to Doug, who made it all happen, and Allison, who gave us the reason for going. ♥

On the plane.
In general, Doug was more cautious
about masking than I was. He also didn't
want to spread his sore throat germs.