Britain and Ireland at the Table: From the Sunday Roast to Seafood Chowder

Fish and chips with mushy peas, tartare sauce and a wedge of lemon. Photo: Charles Haynes, CC BY-SA 2.0.

For decades, from the post-war years until the 1990s, British and Irish food meant dry roast meat and soft-boiled vegetables. That reputation is out of date. Wikivoyage's travel guide describes a revival that has produced restaurants and chefs to rival the best anywhere, and cooking styles from around the world, as in most European countries. It adds a caution: it may be more challenging to find consistently great local food at a reasonable price than in neighbouring continental countries, though this is changing.

The islands are best known for dairy (cheese and butter above all), for beer, especially the traditional "real ales" of English pubs, and for cider, where England leads the world in both making and drinking it. Scotland and Wales are celebrated for whisky.

What to eat

Fish and chips is the dish nearly every visitor wants. The fish is usually cod or haddock, battered and fried, with thick, rough-cut chips made from real potato, dressed with salt and malt vinegar and often with mushy peas, tartare sauce, curry sauce or gravy. The guide's advice is to buy it at a dedicated takeaway "chippy", which can be spotted by an illuminated fish sign and often has a punning name. Most are takeaway only, so the classic way to eat is out of the paper on a bench by the sea, with an eye out for gulls. Sit-down chip shops are mostly at the seaside and in tourist areas, and the guide is wary of them.

The Sunday roast is a weekly family tradition: roast beef, lamb, chicken or pork with roast potatoes, vegetables and gravy, and Yorkshire pudding, a batter pudding baked in a very hot oven that goes traditionally with beef. Most mid-range restaurants and pubs that specialise offer one.

Cream tea is a fruit scone with clotted cream, strawberry jam and milky tea; clotted cream comes from Cornwall and Devon, and the authentic version is hard to find outside South West England.

Cream tea with scones. Photo: Jeremy Keith, CC BY 2.0.

Curry is treated as a British food. Britons have embraced Indian cooking so thoroughly that most towns of any size have a curry house. The guide says chicken tikka masala is widely believed to have been invented by a chef in a Glasgow Indian restaurant, though the story is disputed, and that balti cooking was born in Birmingham, the balti capital of Britain. Chinese takeaways trace back to post-war immigration from Hong Kong; their Cantonese base has been heavily adapted, giving dishes such as crispy duck pancakes, salt and pepper chips and sesame prawn toast.

Regional specialities

British cheese deserves its own mention. The British Cheese Board counts over 700 varieties. Cheddar is named for the Somerset village, Wensleydale for a North Yorkshire valley, and Stilton, a blue cheese the guide says rivals Roquefort or Gorgonzola, is named for its village but now made elsewhere. The guide's advice is to buy a regional cheese in its own region, at a local market rather than a supermarket.

Blue Stilton cheese. Photo: Ryan Snyder, CC BY 2.0.

Sausages, which contain breadcrumbs or rusk as well as meat, are a point of regional pride; Lincolnshire and Cumberland are the ones the guide recommends trying in a pub. The classic pairing is bangers and mash.

Ireland's own list is built on potatoes and the sea.

Seafood chowder with pieces of fish. Photo: Benreis, CC BY 3.0.

• Seafood chowder, a must, with every restaurant making its own.
• Boxty, potato pancakes; champ, mash with spring onions; colcannon, mash with cabbage.
• Coddle, a Dublin stew of potatoes, pork sausages and bacon.
• Irish stew, lamb and potatoes with carrots, celery and onions.
• Irish breakfast, a famously filling "fry" of bacon, eggs, tomato, sausages and white and black pudding, usually served well past normal breakfast hours.

The day's meals

A hotel's "full English, Irish, Scottish or Welsh breakfast" can include juice, porridge or cereal, bacon with a fried egg and grilled tomato, perhaps mushrooms, baked beans or black pudding, and toast with tea or coffee. A continental breakfast is lighter: cereal, fruit, yoghurt, toast, cold meats, cheeses and pastries.

Lunch is eaten between noon and 2PM. The ploughman's lunch, a quintessentially English cold plate, is bread with cheese, pickle or chutney and often ham, pickled onions or salad, washed down with ale or cider.

A ploughman's lunch. Photo: Glammmur, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Afternoon tea is the formal version: a pot of tea, crustless sandwiches, finger cakes and scones with clotted cream and jam, served on a three-tier stand between 3PM and 5PM in upmarket hotels and cafés. It will usually replace lunch, and often needs a booking. In Scotland and northern England, high tea is an early-evening meal of a hot dish followed by bread and cakes. Dinner, the main evening meal, is mostly eaten between 6:30PM and 8:30PM, though some people call it tea, and in some usage "dinner" means a midday main meal, with the evening meal then called "supper".

Where to eat, and what to drink

Eating out costs more than in the Mediterranean parts of Europe but less than in the Nordic countries and Switzerland. Takeaways, cafés (many of which close mid-afternoon), pubs and chain restaurants all offer reasonable food; the guide notes that chain pubs are dependable if unexciting and publish standard menus that suit travellers with dietary restrictions. Motorway service areas vary in quality. Food safety scores are published for almost every place that sells food.

The pub is the heart of drinking. Traditionally pubs served travellers with food and a bed, so in some rural towns the pub may be the only place for a meal. You order and pay at the bar. Gastropubs serve seasonal British food with table service. The guide warns that some city-centre pubs near nightclubs can get rowdy on Thursday to Saturday nights.

British beer ranges from bitter to stout, porter and mild, with a growing supply of IPAs and craft beers. In Ireland, apart from Guinness and a few brands, selection is narrower and real-ale cask culture is not as strong. Cider here is always alcoholic; the American "hard cider" is simply "cider", and the non-alcoholic kind is called apple juice. Perry, its pear cousin, has a particular heritage in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire.

Scotland had 126 whisky distilleries in 2017, and Ireland 18 distilleries; many offer tours. England has joined in, with 61 distilleries listed on the English Whisky Map as of April 2025. Tea is drunk everywhere, usually black with milk, and iced tea is almost unknown. Tap water is safe and should be free in restaurants if you ask for it. A sugar tax on soft drinks began in 2018, at 24p or 18p per litre, and the guide says it pushed makers to cut sugar and made diet versions sometimes cheaper.

Shopping for food

Supermarkets sell ready-packed food, a wide range of ready meals and good own-brand ranges, and many cut the price of that day's bakery and chilled items in the evening. Tesco is the largest chain. Independent shops and markets are still worth seeking out: Grainger Market in Newcastle upon Tyne was built in 1835, and the guide calls Swansea Market the largest indoor market in Wales.

Sources

• Wikivoyage contributors, "Cuisine of Britain and Ireland" (https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Cuisine_of_Britain_and_Ireland), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; condensed and rewritten in hubnx's own words (changed here: summarised and restructured; chain lists, prices, opening hours, links and maps left out). Photo credits and licences are in the captions.