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Al Fresco Dining – A Terribly British Pastime

Feature

There’s nothing us Brits love more than an excuse to get outdoors.  This is the country where we pull on a pair of shorts at the first sign of the sun, where trains pull to a standstill in temperatures above 20C and where we’ll huddle under an umbrella wrapped in a blanket because when we’re having a barbeque, we’re having a bloody barbeque.

So when the sun comes out we’ll sit on any pavement, make any meal in to a picnic and pay thousands of pounds for gear that will give us an outdoor ‘dining experience’.  Is there any other country that spends as much time gardening as the UK?  Probably not.  And once the garden is up to scratch we, as a nation, spend millions on accessories which mean we can sit out and eat while we admire our planting handiwork.  And all for what?  A couple of weeks warmth on and off, tops.
 
But we don’t need a garden of our own to enjoy al fresco dining.  We’ll frequent anywhere which offers us a taste of the outdoors.  We’ll sit on pavements by main roads, choking on exhaust fumes while we sip coffee and nibble cake, we’ll squeeze on to the smallest patio in London, elbow to elbow as we saw our steaks, hell, even eating a burger in McDonalds car park becomes a special evening out.  Yes, we know there are plenty of places to enjoy a meal when the sun peeks out from behind those clouds – city centre cafes, riverside terraces, seaside cafes, and we’ll risk any number of wasps to use them.

Bugs aside, there really is nothing more lovely than a meal outside, whether in your own backyard or at a restaurant, bar or café.  Does anything conjure up images of the British summertime more than a indulging in a Ploughmans and a shandy in a pub garden?  Or rolling out a tartan rug and getting sand in egg and cress sandwiches on a beautiful but windswept beach?  Even being able to eat a pre-packaged sarnie in the local park on our lunch break has a certain charm.

And now we’re more food-aware more of us are eating seasonally and global warming, for all its downsides (and they are, of course, many), is allowing us to grow and eat crops never before produced in Britain.  From locally caught shellfish, previously unable to survive north of the Channel Islands to never before seen experimental crops of avocadoes and thirst quenching south coast produced wine.  Our love of the outdoors is giving the nation a whole new al fresco image that definitely doesn’t include steak and kidney pud in front of a roaring fire
Laura Heaps, MyVillage 27th July




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