In defence of English Cooking...the birth of a paradigm

I'm standing on the shoulders of a giant here, but it needs to be said.

At school today (a new one) I got chatting to the Kyoto Sensei (Vice Principal) about a variety of things, for example, whether or not England uses the Euro. He was surprised to learn that she doesn't, and I can understand that gap of knowledge - manners monetary bypass me deftly.

Something that has come to my attention frequently however, is how revolting English food is perceived to be. He approached me conspiratorially,

"Chris, I've heard that English food really isn't nice at all..."

I then went on to describe the joy of Shepherds Pie and the necessity of a gas oven.

The list is interminable. Who can beat a full English Breakfast? Yorkshire Puddings sailing across a sea of gravy to a continent of beef? Cheese & Pickle?

Japanese isn't a cuisine which uses herbs - maybe a shiso leaf underneath a piece of raw squid, but the emphasis is on the purity and freshness of ingredients. There, the cannon is loaded for a common volley. The perception of English food, much like one I've heard about curry, is that condiments and flavourings are used to disguise the taste of food, which in its basic form is unpalatable. English folk (vegetarians aside) know as well as I do, that a nice bit of chicken is only made nicer by a bit of Rosemary.

Boiled meat has noses turned up from all across the world, but I'm not sure that the Kyoto Senseis' opinion of English cooking stems from that, as Shabu Shabu, one of the pricier dishes over here, is high quality meat boiled in a tofu & seaweed stock.

Invariably, when two cultures meet, differences are talked over, and food is an obvious choice. I've yet to meet a Japanese person who isn't deeply suspicious of English food, despite being unable to name a dish apart from Fish and Chips.

Once an idea begins to put down roots, it's difficult to prune it without access to the right information. Rumours about the low quality of raw ingredients, requiring a list of condiments that themselves may be off-putting to the uninitiated (brown sauce?!) coupled with minimal opportunity to provide the accused with a fair trial, results in the poor image English cooking receives.

Then characters like Jacques Chirac denounce English cooking as second worst in Europe after Finnish. Proving, indubitably, that whatever our problems internationally, it's all the fault of the French.