For centuries people around the world have mocked and ridiculed English cooking and English food.
It was said the reason why we had an empire was that we were desperate to find a decent meal!
Virginia Woolf once said “What passes for cookery in England is an abomination. It is putting cabbages in water. It is roasting meat till it is like leather. It is cutting off delicious skins of vegetables. A whole French family could live on what an English cook throws away.”
That was certainly true of the cooking I experienced at my English boarding school, but I can assure you, if you dig just a little bit, you’ll find a different story. From north to south, region to region and county to county there are treasures hiding around every corner and in every oven.
English cuisine is not limited to warm beer, cold toast, boiled-for-weeks vegetables and meat that you only assume once came from an animal. In the same way American cuisine is far richer than Bud Light, Big Macs and Twinkies, food from England can lift your spirits on a wet and windy winters day or make that summer day out to the hills a truly memorable event.
I’ve been lucky enough to travel all over the US and have enjoyed spicy breakfast burritos in Texas, crab cakes in Maryland, clams in Massachusetts, gumbo in Louisiana and pinot noir in Oregon. Now, by opening up the Salt Pot Kitchen, my wife and son are bringing a little piece of England to Virginia. I come from an area of England known as the West Country and the food they’re serving you is from that region. Good, simple and fresh food that can be eaten any time of day and tastes awesome, hot or cold.
