The Camberwell Arms, London
Google British food and you will likely get pictures of fish and chips, pork pies, scotch eggs and, tellingly, the occasional chow mien or chicken tikka masala.
Telling because British food is either not from here or something that people don’t really eat that regularly. A pork pie a day definitely does not keep the doctor away, after all.
In Italy, ask people what they eat day to day and they will probably tell you they eat roughly the same thing they have been eating there for generations. Some pasta, vegetables, meat, olive oil, that kind of thing. Ask a British person what they are eating and they are much more likely to say Thai green curry as they are pie and mash.
It is an oddity of this country that it has such a poor reputation for its own food and yet seems to embrace world cuisine almost better than any other place. Try ordering Chinese food in Spain and you’ll quickly see what I mean.
And yet people who visit here still want to try British food, whatever that is. Relatives and friends who visit the UK for the first time will often ask for recommendations for fish and chips, causing me to blank mentally, having long since forgotten the last time I ate it. I tell them – half seriously – than no one really eats fish and chips here that much. Maybe on a day out at the seaside or something, but I’m not meeting my friends for a catch up in a greasy chippy on a Tuesday night.
High tea is another case in point. When was the last time you went for high tea? I vaguely remember my mum making sandwiches for us as kids and calling it high tea, but we weren’t exactly scoffing scones at Fortnums or the Ritz. High tea feels like a thing people think British people do, without realising that they don’t.
The exception to this is Sunday roast. Tourists think this is a thing and somehow it actually is a thing. If I go to my parents’ on a Sunday my mum will cook Sunday roast. I know plenty of people whose parents will do the same – including one who will cook one on any day of the week by default if she has to feed more than three people. Sunday roast is a cultural institution, and it is one that continues to live and breathe today.
Which brings me, conveniently, to the Camberwell Arms. A cool pub in a cool area near where I live that does, for my money, the best Sunday lunch in London. Since going for the first time on my birthday last year I now try to book it almost every time there is a guest in town who I want to impress with proper British food.
At its heart, a Sunday roast is a simple thing. Some roast meat and potatoes, veggies, maybe a Yorkshire pudding and, preferably, enough gravy to drown the lot so all the individual items start to float and bob around like a little village after a devastating flash flood.
Yet somehow the Camberwell Arms manages to elevate these elements. Moreish meats, potatoes that are crispy af, veggies that are vibrant and tasty and, yes, a proper decent gravy. They also do a quite incredible beef and ale pie, which is the kind of stuff dreams are made of, with a buttery flaky crust with just the right ratio of soft chewy bits to golden crispy bits, not to mention a delightful marrow bone piping hot air out of it like a little chimney.
So however good and faithful the adoption of foreign cuisine, or however much I moan at the low culinary bar here, there will always be a place for British food at the table. Just as long as that table is at The Camberwell Arms on a Sunday afternoon.
