Influence of travel

The experience of British travellers over the centuries has helped the inclusion of so many other national dishes in our food culture. It has been further influenced by migration into the UK, particularly in the last century. To use curry as an example, British recipes for curry date back to the 18th century and the UK’s first ever curry house was opened in London in 1809 – the Hindostanee Curry House in Portman Square. In the 20th century, the first curry houses in the North West of England started in the 1950s to feed the men who had come from the Asian sub-continent to work in the region’s textile mills.  Manchester’s Curry Mile – the UK’s biggest concentration of curry restaurants – started to spring up in the 1960s and is more popular than ever today.

Convenience culture includes food from around the world. The influence of other countries' foods and dishes is particularly obvious in where we choose to go out to eat and what takeaway and convenience food we buy.

The UK, as with many other countries, has a convenience food culture - our lives are getting more busy and hectic, meaning that we often have to eat quickly. This is matched by the availability of ready packed and takeaway meals, most of which have their origins in cuisines from around the world – Italian pasta and pizzas, Indian and Pakistani curries, and Chinese dishes are perhaps the most popular, followed by Mexican, Thai and Japanese.

Where do we buy our food?

Supermarkets

We also like convenience when we are buying our food – the so-called ‘big five’ supermarket chains in the UK now account for about 70% of the food retail market here. This isn’t surprising given that on average a store such as Sainsbury’s offers tens of thousands of different items on its shelves.  Sales of convenience food were worth £11bn in 2001 in the UK and are estimated to grow by 33% in the next ten years.  Customers are also offered incentives such as reward schemes, easy parking and long opening hours (in large cities 24 hour opening is common) to fit in with busy lifestyles.

Local shopping

However, the other 30% of the market is made up of local shops such as Farmers Pride in Longsight, Manchester.  They offer a good range of fresh fruit and vegetables, cured hams, cooked meats, and Irish groceries – Longsight has an Irish community dating back to immigrants coming to work on the Manchester Ship Canal and so some of the customers of Farmers Pride are older people who are very loyal to Irish products.

The owner Paul Gregson has been in the food business since 1972 when he started working for a local Manchester chain of supermarkets called Liptons.  Since then he says that the variety of foods available has increased tenfold and there has been a disappearance of seasonal food – now fruit and vegetables can be imported at any time of year.

When asked about competition from supermarkets Paul said that small shops have had to specialise in order to keep their customers and get new ones and the quality of the food is often better as a result.  This doesn’t mean that customers get a more limited choice – on the day the picture was taken Farmers Pride had potatoes from Lincolnshire in the UK, Cyprus, Egypt and Ireland for sale.

Smaller more specialised shops also often offer better service to customers – they are more likely to have skilled staff who know about what they are selling and how it can be prepared and cooked.

• Put the numbers from the box into the sentences below.

18th

two

four

11

400

1809

70

1960’s

1. Big supermarkets sell ……….. percent of all food.

2. Most people still think British food is “meat with ……….. veg”.

3. The area of Manchester called “Curry Mile” started in the …………….. .

4. There are ………… countries in the UK, which produce …………… types of cheeses.

5. There are recipes for curry in the UK which are as old as the …………… century.

6. The first curry restaurant opened in London in …………. .

7. People spent £ ………… bn on convenience food in the UK in 2001.

• Answer the questions:

1. What is the common opinion about British food?

2. How varied is the cuisine of Britain?

3. How popular is traditional British cuisine now?

4. In what way was the food culture in Britain affected?

5. When does it become evident?

6. What is ‘convenience food culture’? Give some examples.

7. Where do people buy food nowadays? Why?

8. What selling techniques do supermarkets use to attract customers?

9. How do small shops manage to stand the competition?

10. Where do you shop for food?

11. What food / cuisine do you prefer?

• Find a word or phrase in the article, similar in meaning to:

1. having very little flavour or taste

2. the style of cooking that is characteristic of the place (country or district)

3. very different from each other

4. to preserve, not to let smth grow weaker or stop

5. a list of ingredients and a set of instructions that tell you how to cook smth

6. to suddenly appear or start to exist

7. very busy, hurried and slightly exciting

8. the sale of goods in stores direct to the public in small quantities

9. a single thing in a set, group, or list

10. something that encourages you to work harder, start new activities

11. a number of different things of th same general kind

12. to remain firm in friendship or support for a person or thing, faithful

13. a group of stores, hotels etc. that are owned by the same person or company

14. a situation in which people or organizations try to be better or more successful than someone else

• Summarize the text.

• Retell the text.