I think this goes to show that British cuisine, like the people and culture, is made up from ingredients and influences from all over the world, mixed together and interpreted in our own peculiar way. Perhaps a true British tapas would include something from just about every cuisine you could think of.

I’m hungry now…

Pickled stuff: gherkins, eggs, walnuts, onions. Ham and piccalilli, also roast pork and roast beef. Pickles help people to drink more. Cold beef and Colman’s mustard would, too.

Tiny little lamb chops on the bone, one bite to each of them, with mint jelly. Delicious even when cold. Baked beans with a dash of Lea & Perrins, also delicious cold. Eat them with a teaspoon out of a little dish.

Somebody mentioned chips: I was in a Belgian bar last night that brings a side dish of fresh fries with your beers, nothing could be so moreish.

Now that smokers are out of British pubs, the time has come for food to make a real entry. Great native snacks, good beers, no Eurofizz and no Breezers, the pub could become part of the culture again.

Crackling in general.

Sandwiches, cut into triangles, sans crusts.

The Charterhouse restaurant – a mini-Flatiron shaped restaurant in Smithfield Market – originally announced itself to the world as doing ‘British Tapas’ and my gastronautical memory tells me they didn’t do too bad a job of it. I actually went there again last week, for the first time since the last dotcom boom when I went there quite a lot. The menu has reverted to a standard starters/mains/desserts structure now, and it seems to be falling into faded glory mode, quiet except for a couple of mums with toddlers and another solo businessman with Blackberry like me.

Mmm, wartime Sunday tea.

Disappointingly one of the ex-pat pubs he visits has tapas of … yup, sausage rolls, bridies and pies.

They don’t, as yet, do Big Softies.

The Gregg’s baby, in a buggy covered in flaky pastry…. ;)