Steady, replacing carefully brewed beers that require as much skill as making wines with eurofiz bland mega Corps rubbish that has to be served ice cold or it’s disgusting.
I started my beer-drinking career in Germany, that’s probably what put me off beer in the UK as a student. I don’t like French beer either. And certainly not Eurofizz.
English beer is my favourite go for when I pay my rare visits to the UK. What a pleasant change to have a full bodied pint of ale instead of the pale fizzy crap masquerading as beer over here.
With respect, that was probably a fair while ago, and nowadays there are locally made craft beers and lagers available in pretty much every pub in the UK.
The big breweries like Whitbread, Watneys and Bass Charrington that used to dominate the market have disappeared - of course international brands like Budweiser, Corona and Stella Artois have come in, but these days it’s pub chains like Greene King, Youngs, or Mitchell & Butlers that brew a lot of the beer, supplemented by “guest beers” from local independent breweries.
Oh totally, my memories of English beer are about 40 years old ![]()
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We ventured into Saumur last week and I found myself trying to decide which of the two restaurants we usually favour was my favourite. Lunch on the menu du jour (including coffee and a glass of wine - a well-regarded bio Saumur Champigny - plus two aperos) was 85€.
Even 5km outside our own town, we have a place whose menu changes monthly (and a plat du jour): there is always a meat, fish and proper vegetarian dish.
But in the town, it’s pizza and kebab in the main.
I do miss Spanish cooking.
Lucky you! We LOVE our local town for its choice in terms of supermarkets, DIY places, good doctors, pharmacies, bread shops. It’s a town of 10,000 and growing. It does not have a single good restaurant. Not even a single mediocre restaurant.
Our closest LeClerc serves better food than most of the restaurants.
this thread does make me laugh.
I’m rather pleased that OH and I enjoy tasty french cooking in smallish/medium restaurants where ever we happen to find ourselves at “peckish” time. ![]()
Out with French friends, we let them choose the place and we’ve not been disappointed. In fact only real disappointment was at Bergerac when an American friend raved about a resto and invited us for a meal. It was obviously tailored towards foreign/visitors and not as delicious as it should have been…
but, as he was paying.. we smiled and soldiered on.
Mind you, over the years our restaurant visiting habits have totally changed.
When we first came here 18 years ago the euro was 1.40. We had money in the bank and were exploring the world we’d moved to. We ate out practically every week and found local restaurants serving fixed price menus to workers to be “such good value” (note, no emphasis on the quality of the food).
We spent the money in our bank account on our “money pit”, the exchange rate moved, but not in a good way. the local “menu” had become unbelievably boring, and driving any distance just to eat ordinary food lost its attraction. So, we became much more selective, only ate out on anniversaries and loved the “French experience” of truly great cooking in a wonderful environment. Then Covid hit, and of those few restaurants we frequented half went out of business or the owners chose the moment to retire and any new owner (if at all - some are still shut) came without skills built up over many years. Some of those have already gone.
Our part of France Profonde cannot support good quality restaurants, there isn’t the money and the local farming community is unbelievably conservative in what it is prepared to eat.
I wonder @vero if your good fortune in your small locality is because you are within the catchment area of Bergerac, where there is the demand?
We had some wonderful food in the South West of Ireland this autumn. A highlight was this place in Bantry. Wanted to put a link to their website, but it’s inoperative.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/WwquvigUWgRoTBVY9
Hackett’s bar in Schull was also very good for food and atmosphere.
Baltimore was pretty bad for food, apart from this place which was expensive, but gorgeous.
Our last resto meal was the New Years Eve set menu in our local favourite. Wines were all natural and matched to each course.
Show off!
Making the rest of us jealous. ![]()
That’s pretty much when real beers were appearing throughout the UK. Before that, crap keg beer was king. I was luck at the start of my beer career in the late 70’s to have a few decent properly brewed beers to choose from although the vast majority were keg.
Note that despite the French being masters of haute cuisine we still have words like toasté, chips, haddock, and crumble being used. ![]()
Are “aiglefin” or “églefin” not used to describe haddock, as my dictionary suggests?
Or is the chef a Brit without access to a dictionary? ![]()
British real-ale type beer is my favourite and is now widely available all over the UK . Although the actual number of pubs in existence is, worryingly, decreasing, I read.
I have a friend in the UK who is an aficionado of proper beer. He makes regular away day (or overnight) visits with his son, to places like Edinburgh, York, Glasgow…and keeps me informed via a virtual pub crawl on whatsapp.
I have found the tastiest French beers (available in shops rather than bars/cafés) are far too strong for quaffing , as well as being rather expensive.
British ales tend to be under 4%. Perfect for sessions. Ah, I remember them. ![]()
I blame Hergé.
A restaurateur told us that it’s aiglefin when fresh and haddock if it’s been smoked.
One of our two local micro breweries actually makes a beer called ‘Session IPA’; it’s 4.5% proof, so perhaps French sessions are shorter than UK ones…
Quite!
