The French (of all people!) have voted the British as the most adventurous eaters on holiday. Kevin Gould looks at how we have learned to turn our backs on the full English
Plate of snails with your cup of tea? ... the British are willing to sample local food. Photograph: Marielle/Photocuisine/Corbis
Where once we fretted about gastro-enteritis we're now gastro-tourists. We're confident enough to enter the most authentic of local joints, point at someone else's plate and mouth: "I'll have what he's having." This method is reasonably effective although sometimes the waiter thinks he "knows better". Travelling in rural Orissa, India's second poorest state, I gestured generously at the banana leaf plates and interesting sloppy curries of my fellow diners. The waiter tapped his nose knowingly - leave it to him - and 15 minutes later came back with ... chips with Heinz ketchup, and a golden smile.
Well, he had it all wrong. According to a survey by travel company expedia.co.uk, British are the most willing to try exotic foods when away. The stereotype of us packing our suitcases with Marmite, Rich Tea et al is no more, and eight out of 10 Brits say that authentic, local food and wine is their number one holiday essential. There are those at home who bemoan the lack of a national cuisine, but there's no doubt that Britain's multi-cultured society provides us the opportunity and confidence to try foods we'd once have turned our noses up at. Our French cousins have reinforced this by placing "les rosbifs" above even the Italians and their own countrymen in our enthusiasm to eat local specialities, however edgy.
How different from when I first worked there in the late 70s when much droll pantomime was made by waiters that certain foods contained - horror of foreign horrors - garlic. Nowadays, its Tripes A La Mode de Caen, escargots in soup and pigs' trotters a go-go for us, while les grenouilles are packing into McDo. With this year's fashion item being the large slogan T-shirt, expect to see lots of British leisurewear loudly proclaiming "I Ate The World".
In Europe, our idea of local food can be at odds with the locals. Looking forward to a traditional Piedmontese wedding, I fondly imagined the village to be decked with communal tables, tablecloth-tucked-into-the-shirt, great plates of pasta and flagons of rough wine. Instead, the wedding party did the fashionable thing and repaired to the local Chinese. (Mind you, the best meal I had on a recent trip to China, after a week of wall-to-wall snake, bullfrog, chicken knees, cured ducks tongues and smoked tripes, was a room service steak, chips and salad. Ah, well.
Expedia's survey also suggests that we Brits are keener than ever to forage for, or otherwise kill our own food while on holiday. Most of this is in the form of choosing fish or crustacea from tanks in restaurants - how wonderfully authentic to know that your seafood is fresh. If you're doing this in France or Spain, however, the chances are that your choice will have come from Scotland. Yes folks, tankers full of sea-water queue up on Scottish quays to transport live crabs, langoustines and lobster to your charmingly local holiday eatery. Still, at least the creatures get to see something of the world.
