Fish and Chips, a Sunday Roast and a Cream Tea: England’s Three Meals

English food gets a bad reputation from people who ate it in the eighties. The country now feeds a family better than most of Europe, and three meals are the ones to plan around.

Fish and chips first, from a chippy, not a restaurant. A chippy is a takeaway with a counter, a fryer and a queue at six. Cod or haddock in batter, chips cut thick, salt and vinegar shaken on by the person serving. Mushy peas if you are brave. Eat it from the paper on a bench by the sea, or in the park in London. A portion feeds two kids.

The Sunday roast is the meal to build a day around. Roast beef or chicken, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, vegetables, gravy over everything. Every pub does one from noon on Sunday and the good ones sell out by two. Book. Kids get a smaller plate and the same Yorkshire pudding, which is the part they came for.

The cream tea, and the argument

A cream tea is a pot of tea, two scones, clotted cream and strawberry jam. In Devon the cream goes on first. In Cornwall the jam goes on first. Families have fallen out over this. Order one anywhere in the west country and let the kids decide. They will choose cream first, because it is more cream.

Full English breakfast at the hotel once, then never again, because nobody can move after it. A bacon roll from a cafe is the daily version. Pasties in Cornwall, pies everywhere, sausage rolls from the bakery chain on every high street that every English child grew up on.

Pubs welcome children until about nine in the evening if they serve food. A pub garden on a summer evening with the kids on the grass and a plate of chips is the England I would put on the itinerary before any museum.

Planning England with kids? Start with the full England family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.