Meal # 51 - England

England is known for many things - castles, rain, soccer hooligans - but quality food is not among them. Its traditional cuisine consists primarily of batter. Even in cosmopolitan London, the restaurants are famously awful. In fact, when a survey was held recently to decide upon England's national dish the Brits were so ashamed of their own traditional cooking that they voted for Chicken Tikka. Knowing all this in advance, it is something of a mystery that we still went to:

The Snooty Fox

1457 Mt Dandenong Tourist Rd, Olinda

One of the many restaurants and cafes dotted along the winding roads of the Dandenong Hills, the Snooty Fox, with its quirky name and Olde Englishe Inne style sign, is unashamedly marketed at the tourist trade. Like many of the eateries in the hills, it appears to be aiming for an English countryside ambience, at least on the outside.

By the time we'd coordinated our efforts to get out to the hills and find the place, we were significantly late for our booking. We needn't have worried. Inside it was quiet, near empty. The decor was twee, livened only by a number of toy foxes...

...and more toy foxes...

...to the point where they became a little creepy. Uncomfortable in their buttony gaze this week were Rami, Sai, Gene, Naomi, Caroline and Nick.

We took our seats with a sense of foreboding. The other clientele were mostly older, often accompanied by younger relatives with get-me-outta-here expressions to match our own. Being young and unattended by a surly older relative is not a good idea in the Fox – we soon found ourselves the target of disapproving glances.

Oh well, chaps, we thought, keep those stiff upper lips. We've been to some strange locales before in our quest for the cuisines of the world, we could soldier on through this little bit of oddity too. And then one of the staff (who, incidentally, were neither snooty nor foxy!) finally ambled over with a menu...

The Meal

Looking over the menu was the equivalent of looking at your wardrobe and realising that, even though it is technically full of clothes, you can't actually put together an outfit. There was nothing that appealed. Perhaps this was because we were after something English, and the menu was full of bog standard generic cafe fare like Arancini Balls and Thai Prawn Salad. There was fish and chips, which they'd tried to make sound more English by calling it "Shark and Tatties", and a Steak and Kidney pie but that was about it. As we weren't in the mood for paying nearly $20 for either of these run of the mill dishes, the best we could do was:

Steak sandwiches with giant onion rings

Potato and bacon soup

Roast lamb

Chicken satay

Potato and cheese pancakes with mushroom sauce.

The soup was the only decently priced dish on the menu, but it managed to still be a rip-off by coming in a very small bowl. It was watery and unsatisfying. The roast lamb was okay, not particularly memorable, and the chicken satay was about the same. We can not express how sad it makes us to have to order chicken satay on a culinary tour of Europe.

By comparison, the potato pancake seemed more English than it otherwise would have. It was maybe one of the better meals, but dependent on the (optional) buttery mushroom sauce. Probably the closes to a satisfying English-style meal were the steak sandwiches. These were gigantic and fried to within an inch of subliming into pure oil. Even the bread was fried. The deep fried onion rings were gigantic and the closest the meal came to a highlight.

Verdict

On the charge of being greasy - Guilty.

On the charge of being over-priced - Guilty.

On the charge of being served by disinterested staff in a bland environment - Guilty.

And authentically English? We offer People's Exhibit A: the Chicken Satay. And with that we rest our case.

Dessert

One of the few authentic items on the menu was the Spotted Dick for dessert but after our mains we couldn't face any more of the Fox. So instead we set out to sample another English specialty of note - the Devonshire Tea. Of the many Devonshire Teas clamouring for attention in the Hills, we chose to try Brother John’s Heavenly Scones in Sassafras.

This place was just plain weird. It was an old church that has been converted into a café with pew seating, white tables, a Santa Claus dummy dressed in a robe to look like a monk, presumably Brother John himself, and, obscurely, a disco ball. Out the back is a garden for wedding photos, complete with a white limousine. We sat in a conservatory overlooking the wedding garden where we were treated to surly and patronising service. A couple who wanted to share a plate of scones between them, rather than ordering separately, were treated as if they’d asked if it was alright to hold a Satanic mass at the table. The tea was made with teabags. As for the scones, if that's a taste of heaven then save your effort and be an atheist. They were okay but not worth the hefty ($9) price tag.

The Verdict 2
All in all, the meals, both main and scone, were a disappointment. They did however, give us plenty to whinge about, so in a perverse way we had an authentic English experience after all....