(Not so) light food

Yet another article from Fodor’s - this one about eating cheap in Europe. I know, maybe a little late for all the OBOWers that have recently been to the Continent. To this list I would have to add my favorite $5(equivalent) lunch in Britain: the delightful Cornish pasty (rhymes with fastly, not hasty) which are widely available. They are by far the cheapest lunch in Covent Garden. They’re basically a portable pot pie with no utensils required.

Update on June 3, 2010 by Frank@OBOW

Covent Garden is served by this chain which is actually quite good. The takeaway prices are much cheaper than dine-in. Less appetizing are the cold pasties you can pick up in some bakeries or butcher shops. Best had hot. And do be sure to drink some porter (if you can find it) at Covent Garden where, as legend has it, the ale was invented. It was said to be a favorite of the many porters who served the market there when fruit and vegetable wholesalers predominated.

Comments

[Alan Birnbaum]

If you are in London, near Victoria Station, there is a small shop that specializes in these, on Buckingham Palace Road. Sorry I can't provide a culinary review. These seemed a bit much for breakfast, particularly for my wife, and we were never in the area at lunch time.

[Paula S]

When these were invented for the Cornish tin miners, the rolled rim was a lot thicker, enabling the miners to hold the pasty while eating only the middle filled part, then they'd throw the rim edge away. Tin miners had a lot of nasty toxic stuff on their hands.
Nice picture........now I feel hungry!

[Andy]

Eating cheap in Europe is done the same way you eat cheap in America. Buy food at grocery stores and make it yourself. Even if you buy premade food in grocery stores, it's still cheaper than eating out.

For example, I never spent more than £2/day in London on food because I bought it all at TESCO.

Do you miss out on culinary experiences by only eating in? Definitely. My advice would be to eat out on the road as often as you eat out at home. Most people don't eat every meal at a restaurant, and you shouldn't do the same thing on the road.

[Dan]

Reminds me of shepherds pie. YUMMY

[DannH]

If you don't make it to Europe but do travel through the Black Hills of South Dakota stop by King's Grocery in Lead (pronounced Leed) S.D and get one as close to the original Cornish version as you will find in the U.S.

Hey.. you can go to Leed and eat pasty's think of it as a poormans European vacation ;-}.

[Paula S]

>>>"My advice would be to eat out on the road as often as you eat out at home."<<<

Er, in that case I'd never eat out on holiday.
We shop at Waitrose, Sainsburys or Tescos and always raid the food hall at Marks & Spencer.
Can't stomach eating at restaurants all the time, it makes me go off food quite quickly.
We do enjoy have impromptu picnics though, especially on beaches, in parks with lakes where we can feed the ducks or on the hotel bed watching a good Britcom on the telly.

[Buzz]

And while you're in Lead, you might as well go down the hill to one of the casino's in Deadwood and see if you can win enough money to afford a real trip to Europe.

[Monte]

We walked past a West Cornwall Pasty Co shop in Glasgow's Central Station last Fall and I said., Who'd wanta eat there". We will stop next time.

When on trips overseas we eat two meals a day, breakfast and an afternoon supper. Breakfast in the hotels keeps us going for quite a while, and sometimes we make an extra sandwich or take an apple, etc. dpeneding what the local custome looks like. Supper is usually a bar meal or a small resaurant. Maybe s healthy snack in the room later. We do as Paula does and raid the Marks & Spencer food floor. I've even bought several bottles of their store brand whisky. Small shops sell good food and we don't use meals as artisic experiences.

[Paula S]

I'm really looking forward to my Marks & Sparks fix in August/September. As soon as we arrive in York and check into our apartment, we're off out again straight to the M & S food hall to pick up a load of goodies. As my husband has type 2 diabetes, he has to eat three meals a day to keep his blood glucose levels steady, if we get out of kilter he goes into a hypoglycemic crash.
There are several restaurants that we like visiting whilst based there, one is a small olde worlde pub. Russells, who do a carvery and very nice roast beef and yorkshire pudd and a fish and chip shop.
I like a nice Ploughman's lunch in pubs, some are terrible but the genuine ones are excellent and fantastic price for what you get.
M & S do a Cornish pasty but I've never found them to be that tasty and a little too dry.

[Brad]

Paula, my wife had a great ploughman's lunch at the Eagle & Child in Oxford (the Lewis & Tolkien hangout). I've had decent haggis with neeps & tatties in Scottish pubs too. Small lunch portions can be pretty cheap. I don't remember what we ate in York - probably pasties.

[Brad]

Bakeries are good for a cheap lunch. I had good luck with those in Geneva and across Italy. And the Autogrill-type mega rest stops on the expressways can be perfectly acceptable. Had a big chunk of parmesan and prosciutto that was wonderful(ly cheap). Wash it down with Pelligrino or merlot!

[Esther]

As a vegan, I like trying vegan restaurants when I travel. When I was in London I tried a great dim sum place that had tasty vegan options. Also, I got to try all these great vegan restaurants in Paris. Even the Dutch have some tasty vegan restaurants as well. For me, eating at restaurants is a part of the vacation experience.
When I was in Edinburgh, however, I did stay in and use the apartment's kitchen occasionally. I was really excited when I was able to buy heatable samosas and pakoras at Tesco. Usually, I have to go to the Indian grocery store in Richardson when I want to buy heatable samosas/pakoras.

[Monte]

You people, yes, you people have made us so hungry with all this food talk that Sharon is making pasties today. Its raining, dank, dreary, dismal and dark. Just the day for some good working people's food. Yesterday we had homemade rhubarb pie. You are all invited if you can get here by lunch time. I'm going to catch the devil if this note leaks out.

[Frank@OBOW]

A kind offer from a real prince, or at least a court jester.

[Dan]

Esther,
Your mention of pacoras/ samosas makes my mouth
water. Nothing like eating what the locals eat .

[Paula S]

Oooooo Monte, you got me on the rhubarb pie!!!! :-) Where the heck are you? Is there any left?

I'm the only person I know around here, who eats (and home grows) rhubarb. I stew it up and put it on cereal for breakfast, have it with custard or frozen vanilla yoghurt and when I can be bothered I make a rhubarb crumble. Very cleansing is rhubarb, and on that note, I should go outside and pick my first crop of the season! ;-)

[Paula S]

The rhubarb is now stewing!

[Monte]

Paula, There's some left and in the freezer and in the garden. Genesee, Idaho.

[Alan Birnbaum]

No offense, but for for my wife and me travel means exploring new restaurants and new cuisines, almost always at dinner time. That means a very light breakfast, and generally, a vestigial lunch as well, but then a nice evening sit-down meal, in a restaurant we have researched in advance. Eating light during the day means minimizing the time to digest the food, and in turn, maximal usage of the day.

Relative to selection of restaurants, I highly recommend, if one has an iPhone or iTouch, the ELECTRONIC version of ZAGAT's, one of the best $10 in travel gear we ever spent, a program which covers virtually all of the United States, Hawaii, and many places overseas. Sure, there are printed copies of Zagat's, but it's just another thing to carry.

[Monte]

No offense. If we were all the same we would be pretty boring.

[KLW]

To me, the restaurant vs. grocery issue all depends on how expensive the area I'm visiting is and how good or interesting the restaurant fare is. I was just in Sweden, and the restaurant fare I had there was fairly bad and very expensive. I found the same in Belgium and The Netherlands, where I lived off of the Albert Heijn grocery chain. If I go to New Mexico, I'm definitely eating at the restaurants, as I would if I went anywhere with reasonable prices and/or noteworthy cuisine.

The US has fantastic restaurants of nearly every type in a city like Chicago. If I wanted a food vacation, I'd go there, and spend all the money I saved on overseas travel at the restaurants.