Top Chef’s Gail Simmons on US Vs UK food

Thanks for the article. I wonder, though (sorry about my ignorance), if a Cadbury Crunchy is proper chocolate, what makes it crunchy? Can someone please describe its composition?

Nestle Crunch bars in The States are thin, waxy, mildly flavored milk chocolate with bits of Rice Crispies scattered throughout. Really sweet, too. Great as a kid, but that was a long time ago.

Well, it was interesting although I disagree with a few things she said, such as: My go-to benchmark is a box of eggs. In the States, they’re about $8 to $9 (£6 to £7) a dozen, which is crazy. I'm not sure where she was staying but where I live, I can find a dozen eggs for around $3.50-4.00 (and that's even with the Avian Flu increase). At Costco, I can get 18 eggs for $4.00.

Cyn, according to their ad, the Cadbury Crunch is a chunky, gold bar of delicious honeycomb, smothered in thick Cadbury milk chocolate that shatters into mouth-watering crunchy pieces. However, the list of ingredients is interesting - sugar, glucose syrup, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, skimmed MILK powder, whey permeate powder (from MILK), palm oil, MILK fat, emulsifier (E442), flavourings, coconut oil.

Yuck! Especially the palm oil. Not that American chocolate is any better ingredient wise, but at least it's not worse. I'm curious, though, where the "honeycombed center" comes from - I don't see honey or honeycomb listed as an ingredient, so is it just a name for the flavor?

In re: Eggs,

Gail says:

In the States, they’re about $8 to $9 (£6 to £7) a dozen, which is crazy.
She must have been shopping in New York City, while the avian influenza was hurting the price.

Out here in Chicago, for $8, I get eggs from pastured heritage layers. In varied colored shells. For $6, I get really splendid eggs from birds free to roam pasture. With Instagram ready yolks (according to their old ad copy), which are a match for anything I've seen in Britain (their eggs were very good, which has as much to do with the birds as it does their feed and treatment. Side note, the intensity of the color of the yolk is more about the diet of the bird than the flavor of the egg. Feed the chicken something high in carotene, like red peppers, and voila, even your regular layer will lay with bright orange "Insta ready" yolks.

Regarding Pies:

“I spent my London summer eating pies, which is probably not the
season to do it, but I’ll eat a meat pie wherever, whenever, any which
way you give it to me. Shepherd’s, cottage, fisherman’s, steak and
kidney – so comforting, so delicious.

“Savoury pies are not a thing in the same way in America. We have
quiche, we have tarts, we have chicken pot pie, where a layer of
pastry is thrown over a chickeny, stewy thing, but in the US a pie is
still a fruity dessert. British pie culture needs to cross the pond.”

Is there a wrong season to eat meat pies? If there is, I don't want to be right. She is spot on here, British Pie Culture needs to cross, big time.

In re: Sri Lankan. Sure, because they have Sri Lankan immigrants. We have Mexican food across the country, like no one in Britain has really dreamed of. From random taco trucks. I will never forget the spicy AF pork tacos I got from a truck recommended by the vintner at a wine tasting in Napa. Told us where to go and what to get, and just a random truck of EXPLOSIVE flavor beyond the heat. We have our immigrants, and their cuisine, London and Britain as a whole, has theirs. They might have more, but the sun never set on their empire, did it... right up until it did.

In re: Sunday Roast: YES! Though Sunday Sauce and old school Sunday Dinner here is it's own thing and it's own wonder. If your yorkshire pud is tasting buttery, someone cheated. Should be flavored with drippings and that amazing substance they refer to as gravy.

I don't see honey or honeycomb listed as an ingredient, so is it just a name for the flavor?

It's likely all about geometrics and not ingredients

FYI......Cadbury bars sold in the U.S. are not made by Cadbury. In fact, British made Cadbury bars are not allowed in the U.S. It's part of the agreement between Cadbury and its U.S licensee.

The name of that licensee.......Hersheys.

BTW, Cadbury UK is owned by Mondelez foods. That's their new name. Their old name.....Kraft Foods.

Honeycomb is just sugar and baking powder. It kind of puffs up when the sugar is melted and then solidifies as it cools (I have watched a lot of Bake Off). A Crunchie is a rectangle of honeycomb coated in chocolate.

The new Cadbury UK chocolate bars are nasty I don't know if it's because it's a different company now but the flake bars don't taste half as good. KitKat bars seem to be my go-to now if I buy chocolate in the UK.

Yes Cadbury’s now is not nice. It’s because the company got taken over by Kraft a few years ago and production was moved to Poland. They promised to keep the factory near Bristol open (Bristol is the home of Cadbury’s. The city was built on the triangular trade of slaves, sugar, cocoa and tobacco) but as soon as the takeover went through they shut it down.

For those wondering what a Crunchie is, and what “honeycomb” means in this case, here’s Wiki with details and some pictures:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crunchie

Crunchies are second only to Daim bars in the amount of sugary stuff you have to pick out of your teeth after eating them.

Home grown eggs here in Oklahoma range from $3 to $6 a dozen. I have 2 sources that charge $3 delivered, and another that charges $3 if you go to her house; $4 if she delivers.

My regular guy's grandmother pushed him into raising his price to $4, but he kept it at $3 for his previous customers.

I say she is wrong about the eggs (covered in detail above), the chocolate, and the cheese.

If she cannot find excellent chocolate and high quality cheese in the US, she is shopping at the wrong store. There is much more to US chocolate than Nestles ( which isn’t American) and Hersheys. Our local Kroger-affiliated chain grocery store has shelves full of various kinds of artisan chocolate, made by small companies, often from fair-trade sourced cacao. One local favorite in Seattle, Theo, is made from cocoa beans, cane sugar, and cocoa butter, period. That honeycomb stuff she likes, with the ingredients Mardee listed, sounds disgusting.

As for cheeses, here on the west coast we have lots of hand-crafted cheeses from small local producers. These are a far cry from Kraft processed cheese, but not priced into the stratosphere either. She should be able to find something similar, maybe made in Vermont, on the east coast. She just hasn’t looked.

Actually, after seeing that ghastly lavender dress she is wearing, I cannot trust her opinion about anything.

This is a fluff piece to promote a TV show. It's for a UK publication. What is she going to say.....food is better in America?

She lives in NYC and she can't find decent decent cheese, chocolate, eggs, food halls, etc.? Seriously?

One thing is true, food prices in U.S. supermarkets are higher than in the UK. When I returned to the US in January, after spending three months mostly getting food from UK supermarkets and cooking, I was shocked at the prices.

But at least we don't have a shortage of fruit and veg:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/business/uk-fruits-vegetables-shortage.html

As for cheeses, here on the west coast we have lots of hand-crafted cheeses from small local producers.

She does acknowledge that there are good cheeses available but you won't find them in your average supermarket and she's right, I've been shopping in US supermarkets up and down the country for the last 15 years (Covid hiatus exception) and the quality of cheese available is incredibly poor, if you do find a good cheese (typically imported European) then it is very expensive.

though, where the "honeycombed center" comes from - I don't see honey or honeycomb listed as an ingredient, so is it just a name for the flavor?

There's no honey in honeycomb. It's called that because it resembles honeycomb. It's also known as hokey pokey or cinder toffee in the US.

She does acknowledge that there are good cheeses available but you won't find them in your average supermarket and she's right, I've been shopping in US supermarkets up and down the country for the last 15 years (Covid hiatus exception) and the quality of cheese available is incredibly poor, if you do find a good cheese (typically imported European) then it is very expensive.

The next time you're in the US, find a Wegman's supermarket. They're a regional supermarket chain that is growing. They have an amazing cheese department with trained cheesemongers. Prices are reasonable.

JC, what you say about US cheese in supermarkets was true 10-15 years ago, and still may be in many parts of the country (middle and south).

But here on the west coast, in California, Oregon, and Washington, there are small producers making award-winning cheeses from local pasture-raised cows and goats. These cheeses are readily available in the local markets. I wish I could post a photo here of our local supermarket’s cheese selection—a whole array of the local cheeses,, separate from the imported ones from France, Italy, and Spain.

In terms of cheese and chocolate I agree - but I also agree that Cadbury's is a very poor example of chocolate.

I looked very hard for good cheese and chocolate in SF and Fort Lauderdale last year. Couldn't find it. I was in a large supermarket both times - didn't have time to go to Farmer's markets - so just comparing what I could get at home, in Australia or the UK - and the cheese selection was very poor. No decent camenbert, blue cheese for example.

The chocolate was worse - Hershey's isn't chocolate - sorry I does it even have cocoa beans in it? The best hope was a German or Swiss brand - but there was little choice.

These days, I'm only buying Kit Kat Chunky bars (48g) for snacking and Valrhona Jivara 40% Milk Chocolate (3kg) for both baking and snacking.

I brought about 7lb of cheddar back from England in January, not expensive and all very good. I couldn't find any McLelland Cheese, which used to be cheap and is excellent.

Balderson is a very good cheddar made here in Ontario, though it's a bit pricey. Cabot Extra Sharp Cheddar (Vermont) across the border in Tops is cheap and decent.

I buy chocolate in a Polish store close to where my children live, the brand is Warwel – the dark chocolate is as good as Lindt's and is cheaper.