Modern British cuisine

It is a style of British cooking which emerged in the late 1970s, and has become increasingly popular since. It uses high-quality ingredients local to the British Isles, preparing them in ways which combine traditional British recipes with modern innovations, and has an affinity with the Slow Food movement.

It is not generally a nostalgic movement, although there are some efforts to re-introduce pre-twentieth-century recipes. Ingredients not native to the islands, particularly herbs and spices, are frequently added to traditional dishes (echoing, perhaps not always intentionally, the highly spiced nature of much British food in the medieval era).

Much Modern British cooking also draws heavily on influences from the cuisines of the Mediterranean and, more recently, South Asian and Southeast Asian cuisines. The influence of northern and central European cuisines is significantly slighter.

The Modern British style of cooking emerged as a response to the perceived poor quality of British cuisine following the Second World War, and the resulting popularity of foreign cuisine in Britain in the decades that followed. Changes came, with people like Elizabeth David touring the continent and discovering fresh flavours, ingredients and techniques and publishing her findings.Modern British cuisine has been very much influenced and popularised by television personalities such as Fanny Cradock, Delia Smith, Gordon Ramsay, Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver.

A major influence has been the Food Programme, made by BBC Radio 4, and since it was originally presented by Derek Cooper in the 1970s an important input into the debate.

Top Class Modern British Food

One top class chef and food writer is Anthony Bourdain who runs St John's British food restaurant and proves that when British cooking is done well it can be very good.

Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for example requires a lot of skill to cook properly because the timing of the dishes must be very precise.

And who could forget Jamie Oliver, housewife's favourite and saviour of British school dinners.

Fresh Ingredients

Britain offers a wonderful selection of fresh ingredients - fruit and vegetables, meat and fish.

Fish is particularly important to cooking in the UK. Being an island surrounded by some of the best fishing coasts in the world, many species such as haddock, plaice, cod, turbot, lobsters and oysters form the core of British cooking.

It is in utilising the many diverse and fresh national ingredients that chefs such as Gordon Ramsey, Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson and most recently Oliver Rowe have invented what is now known as Modern British food.

Best of British

Traditional dishes such as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding together with Cornish pasties, steak and kidney pie, and fish and chips remain popular, as do comforting desserts such as bread and butter pudding, treacle tart, and fruit crumble.

However, Modern British cuisine draws from a great multicultural mix of influences.

Modern British food can be sampled at stylish Modern British restaurants across the capital. London restaurants are the ideal place to sample this innovative cuisine as they are home to most of the pioneering chefs who implemented such welcome changes.