Ben Mervis doesn’t hesitate to say British food is the cuisine of his dreams. For the Philly native, the fare presents comfort meals made from wild foods of the island nation, rich in histories of migration, innovation and preservation.
For Mervis, the founder of Fare Magazine and lead researcher for Netflix’s "Chef’s Table," his time as an impressionable international student in the United Kingdom sparked a quest to chronicle the nation’s food culture — one that led him to savor sausage rolls with English mustard in a “ritual-like calm” and eat his weight in fresh fish and langoustines.
In his new cookbook, "The British Cookbook," Mervis leads a culinary tour through the U.K. — from crowdie (a soft, spreadable cheese traditional to Highland Scotland) to mulligatawny soup (the Anglo-Indian dish that landed in British cookbooks as early as the 1800s) — which he hopes is “the first port of call” for those looking to dig in to British food.
The culmination of years of work and travel through England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, the massive red book is a collection of 550 deeply researched recipes, including classics like shepherd’s pie, lesser-known dishes like Dublin Bay prawns, British histories like haggis, and icons like curry goat. The Philadelphia Inquirer spoke with Mervis about the misconceptions of British cooking, what it means to be a food researcher, and where to find a Bedfordshire clanger in Philly.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: What does it mean to be a lead researcher for "Chef’s Table"?
A: I absolutely love this docu-series even before you get into the fact that it’s about chefs and food. My job is to serve as a bridge between the (food) industry and the production of the show. I work with the director of each episode, leading the research on the chef in advance of production and filming and creating the research document to help structure the narrative.
Q: What is British food? Why explore it now?
A: British food is about what’s growing and what’s grazing up and down the country. It’s really about making the most of very little and knowing how to preserve certain flavors through the year, biodiversity — the sort of things that people here have fallen out of touch with over time.
Typically, you’ll find that a British cookbook is a kind of region-less British food — food that’s not tied to a particular area, whereas this book has regional dishes from Anglesey and Shetland (Islands) and the Hebrides. It’s genuinely a deep dive.
I also worked with an expert from the British Caribbean community, a British Pakistani woman, a British Indian woman, and British Nyonya (descendants of early Chinese migrants who settled in Penang, Malacca, Singapore and Indonesia). I asked them about the recipes that are important to them from their communities, the ones born in the UK or significantly adopted. It was super important that because this is their experience and their reality.
Q: What are the misconceptions people have about British food/cooking?
A: I say this in the introduction (of the book) but if picked out your last meal, I think there’s a good chance that the sort of dishes that are coming from this book would make it into consideration. Maybe people have had a bad impression of British food in the past because they’ve had someone cook it poorly, or they are going to a chain restaurant or something like that. There are so many contributing factors that led to people losing touch with traditional recipes and a lot of homogenization of the ones that remained.
