Olympic feast: UK shows off changing food culture

British food is no longer something to be ashamed of – instead, the daring creativity and eclectic mix of cultures that is modern British cuisine is being positively celebrated. And in summer 2012, there is no better showcase than the Olympics: not the burgers and sandwich stalls inside the Olympic Park, but a chance to show the rest of the world what London, and Britain, is all about.

Jamie Oliver believes British food is going through a complete renaissance. Now figurehead of a global food revolution, he says the British were always good at cooking for the rich, but over the last 10 years or so, there has been a transformation in our relationship with food. “There’s a new appreciation of our history, old recipes, true artisanal values.”

He is particularly excited by the explosion in great quality street food: “It’s full of really clever people with no rules, just passion, their own area, and science. And the quality has just gone up, up, up.” It is a spirit which he thinks is beginning to permeate the restaurant scene too: the hottest new places are not elitist or grand, just passionate about good food.

There’s a new appreciation of our history, old recipes, true artisanal values. Jamie Oliver

And no better place to start than the casual informality of the new dining scene in London’s Soho, where a clutch of restaurants are trying to recreate a slice of downtown Brooklyn, or a Barcelona-style tapas bar, to demonstrate how far our food culture has moved on.

At Spuntino, where punters are content to queue for well over an hour for one of the 27 seats at the horseshoe-shaped bar, there is no name on the door, no phone number, and definitely no reservations. Chef Rachel O’Sullivan says it is just as much about the ambience, the music, and the cocktails. “You don’t have to know a lot about food to come here. We just want people to enjoy themselves.”

No more rules

Tim Luther, at nearby Copita, says sponeneity is the whole point: “It doesn’t stop the flow of a night out. It isn’t like you’ve booked somewhere, at a fixed time, you can come here, have some food, have a drink, go on somewhere else, whatever you want.” For Rory McCoy, at Ducksoup, where a handwritten menu is pinned up on the wall and changed twice a day, all this reflects a sea change in the way people think about a night out.

“What we’re doing here is trying to get away from the traditional British mentality of a formal, three course meal. It’s all good quality, carefully sourced food, but with the informality of a bar, where you can just turn up. It’s just what happens in other countries, so why not here?”

Ah yes. That achingly cool vibe of New York’s Lower East Side, say, which has been carefully etched into every inch of Spuntino’s distressed-plaster walls. The energetic crush in the narrow sliver of space that is Sam Hart’s Barrafina which could almost be El Raval. But beyond the well-defined pockets of London’s hipster cool, is the rest of the city changing too?

I caught up with chef Mark Hix at Destination Hackney, an event optimistically trying to sell the merits of east London as a tourist hot spot. He described London as a place which was proud to show off a hundred different cuisines, unlike lots of other major cities around the world. But he admitted that it was rather more of a challenge to overcome Britain’s dowdy reputation.

Our splendid short seasons, where nature writes the menu for you. Fergus Henderson, St John restaurant

“I gave a talk in America four or five years ago, and people who’d never even been here were asking: ‘Is British food really as bad as everyone says?’ But nowadays, London is up there with New York as the gastronomic capitals of the world.” His advice to Olympic visitors? “Just walk around the markets or the local food shops and you can see how things have changed. I think you’d be pleasantly surprised.”

In fact Hackney council has invested serious time and effort in promoting what it has to offer. A pop-up space near Liverpool Street station has been busy pushing the best of local design, fashion, e-commerce, and – yes – food, from artisan bakeries and micro-breweries to community kitchens and roof-top bee hives.

Embracing the nation

Some of the country’s leading chefs believe that Britain is finally embracing what it has to offer. Fergus Henderson, of St John, applauds “our splendid short seasons, where nature writes the menu for you”, while Marcus Wearing says he’s discovered a new relationship with small farmers and local suppliers, who can bring superb ingredients direct to his door.

Jeremy Lee, of Quo Vadis, says that after the second world war, the pleasure had been knocked out of British food: little wonder, then, that people turned to the Mediterranean and its vibrant cooking “to create a bit of sunshine in their lives”. But now there’s a delight in rediscovering old traditions, and turning family recipes into top quality restaurant food.

And for Jamie Oliver, too, there has never been a better time for the nation to shake off that decades-old reputation for terrible cooking: leading by example, and inspiring the next generation to learn, to cook, to eat together. “Most of Britain has forgotten about Britain,” he says. “But every country has amazing food, you’ve just got to find it.”

Felicity Spector writes about food issues for Channel 4 News