To wit: British food supposedly sucks, only when I visited England a couple of years ago the food was just fine – including the “pub grub.” Potential answer in comments here, which is riffing off of this webcomic: the stereotype is archaic, as it originated when England was: dealing with WWI & WWII food shortages; in the middle of a century of deliberate cheap food subsidies; and/or hadn’t joined the Common Market yet. In other words, there’s a general consensus that they’re all much better now, but there’s a certain ideological flavor (or ‘flavour’) to the discussion over why.
All I know is, bacon looks weird over there. Still tastes fine, though, which is really the important thing.
Pub cheese, although having a vaguely disturbing name, is wonderful. They sell it at WalMart, of all places.
English bacon isn’t made from the pork belly like our bacon is. I believe that it’s usually made from the backstrap (loin) with more of the nearby fat than Canadian bacon, which is the other bacon you’ll regularly get made with the backstrap.
As an aside, bacon of any sort is pretty easy to make, just get the appropriate meat, cure (most country grocery stores will have a few kinds, not sure in the great urban northeast, but amazon definitely will have it), and a little sugar, and then let it cure in the fridge for a week or two, then smoke if you have a smoker. You’ll end up with a much better product than you get at the grocery store unless you’re buying really expensive bacon because most store-bought stuff has had the cure injected into it rather than immersed or rubbed on, to speed up the process.
During the two years I lived in England (2001-2003), I was quite pleased with the quality of British cuisine. Definitely towards being “hearty”, but that suited me just fine.