English Breakfast: The Appetizer Sampler

The Museum of Natural History is directly across the street from one of BU's London dorms. | Photo by Joel Kahn

A new semester means a new crop of eager students shipping off overseas to participate in some of BU’s many diverse Study Abroad programs. At 326 students, BU’s London program is this semester’s most popular, and I (Joel) will be alternating with Quad food writer Deb Singer to bring our take on these three and a half months in jolly old Londontown.

This weekly column, entitled “English Breakfast”, will chronicle our time abroad, and focus mainly on the culinary adventures therein. Sadly, London does not have the kind of language barrier that Annie White often humorously commented on in her “An American in Paris” series last fall. (There are, however, many words that mean different things here. To Brits, “pants” means “underwear.” Do not tell a bartender that you like her pants.)

But I digress.

One week is obviously not enough time to survey an entire metropolis and all of the diverse cuisines it encompasses, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try.

BU has three dorms in London, each with communal kitchens for every 10-15 students. I got lucky in that my kitchen only has seven people using it. (Though I have to share my bathroom with two girls. Who planned this layout?) The kitchens come equipped with dishes, glassware, silverware, pots, pans, and some of the dullest knives I’ve ever encountered. If any administrator from the BU London program is reading this, please replace the knives in all the kitchens. Sincerely, Joel Kahn, cutlery-safety activist.

Our first night here, some friends and I went out for Indian food near our dorm in South Kensington. We chose the wonderfully named “Kwality Restaurant” and were shocked to find out that British people are considerably quieter than us boisterous Americans. Some people actually moved their table to get away from us. It hurt. But not enough to make me stop eating all that naan and mango curry. After that first night, we specifically sought out restaurants that would be able to tolerate our unrefined American volume levels.

For our first home cooked meal, Deb (of The Quad fame) made a mushroom, cheddar, bacon and arugula quiche with a rosemary-infused crust. After experiencing Ms. Singer’s baking ability first-hand, I can only attest to the fact that she is a Super Baker, and any recipes she has posted on this fine website are highly reliable.

My second home-cooked meal is one that shall go down in abroad infamy. My friends and I cooked spaghetti with marinara sauce. (Nothing worth writing about, though we did put Taleggio cheese into our salad.) The good part came when I tried to place the large bowl of pasta onto the table, and ended up spilling the near-boiling sauce and noodles all over my hand. I awoke the next morning with second degree burns (I shan’t go into detail here) all over my left hand, and still keep it in my pocket at all times so as not to offend anyone who may accidentally see my mutilated appendage. It should heal soon.

The sweet fruit salad pancake (top) and savory chili con carne pancake (bottom) from My Old Dutch Pancake House. | Photo by Deb Singer.

Since that accident, I have not really been able to cook myself. However, restaurant meals in London are expensive, so I’ve been managing. The trick is to balance in-dorm meals with ventures out into this exciting city. For Sunday brunch, I had a savory (or as they say here, “savoury”) pancake at My Old Dutch Pancake House. These pancakes are very large and thin—about the size of a medium pizza, but each serves only one person. They’re used more as flatbreads than as sweet pancakes, though this restaurant had options on both the entree and dessert side.

Of course, I have seen many sites as well—Big Ben, Portobello Road, some corgis in Hyde Park—but those mentions are for a very different type of travel blog.

I will leave, however, with one final tip: beware of pubs with inauthentic menus. As my friends and I scavenged Notting Hill looking for a fish n’ chips place, we stumbled upon a delightful old-timey pub. We had mediocre fish n’ chips, and upon returning to our dorm neighborhood, noticed that another nearby pub had the same menu and logo—though a different name. It seems as though these pubs have been conglomerated into a T.G.I. Fridays-esque british kitsch house of lies…and were kind of expensive to boot.*

*In the UK, “boot” refers to the trunk of a car.

About Joel Kahn

Joel is currently a film major at BU. He hails from South Florida, and started at The Quad writing about food. He is now the publisher of The Quad.

View all posts by Joel Kahn →

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