What Do Brits Living In The US Miss?

[Leeds2]

I am going to visit my DD in New York in July. She has lived in the States for a number of years. I like to take her something from home, usually food, but am running out of original ideas! I usually take tins of baked beans, baked beans with vegan sausages, Bounty, Galaxy, Yorkie etc but would like to take something new. Any ideas? If I ask, she just says it doesn't matter but she is always pleased to receive! I know you can buy a lot of British produce out there, but stuff seems very expensive.

As a PP said Branston Pickle was my normal request. Most things can be found somewhere but I never saw Branston other than in an overpriced British store. DH used to ask for marmalade until I pointed out that Wholefoods sold his favourite brand. It is hard to find good bread, we could only really get it in the Italian bakeries in Boston. Large chocolate easter eggs don’t exist, even in fancy chocolate shops they looked at me as if I had two heads when I asked about them.

You can get most things on Amazon, like Yorkshire tea, hobnobs, Ribena; or Zabars carries things like marmalade, proper cheddar, butter that tastes of something. Even Trader Joes will sell Kerry gold (for a bomb! it all costs loads more. It's ten dollars for Tiptree marmalade.)

You cannot get clotted cream, custard, non-sweet bread - but this is all stuff that's hard to bring.

I take Marmite, cliche that I am, and parkin.

The thing with the cheese is that cheddar is a method, not a PDO cheese. Their "cheddar" is generally from Wisconsin and they use a "cheddaring" process to make it. It doesn't taste like our cheddar at all, the texture is completely different and there's often no crystals even in the most "sharp". So you just have to take it on its own terms and not compare it to our cheddar, which is a different thing with the same name. (A bit like biscuits or flapjacks or jumpers.)

Not really the point but if your daughter is in New York the Irish shops in Yonkers sell loads of British products. Things like lucozade, gravy granules, salt and vinegar crisps

@Daisydiary come on you know bread isn't good in the USA. You can spend $15 and still get crap bread. I have even had bad bread at Jean Georges. It all tastes of sugar. They've fucked up bread. It's a wonderful country full of marvellous things, but none of those things are bread.

Yes. Defensive

Decent cheese - Costco sell Coastal cheddar (or they did)

Panera?

Panera, lol, boke.

They can do bread related products. Bagels are so good in NY. Pizza is good in loads of places. But just your plain daily bread. No. It's a huge fail. Here, take it from a US citizen:

A PP claims Wholefoods sell good bread - no. They sell good sourdough, but while that has its place it isn’t everyday bread. They sell better than wonder bread bread but it is still sweeter than Europeans are used to. They have a great selection of cheese though. I didn’t find it hard to find good cheese in Boston.

I bought a bread maker and made my own.

Ah, normal every day bread.

Nope.

Never found any in my near decade in the states.

I gave up.

Don't take any UPF junk foods (eg biscuits, cakes, chocolate, crisps etc) - they have more than enough of that sort of crap already!

I suggest you might consider taking some homemade jams and marmalades and some decent loose-leaf teas.

Defensive of what? That’s my lived experience. Maybe I made the effort to find decent bread/cheese etc. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist if you haven’t looked and hence haven’t found it!

I would love to know out of curiosity whoch brand of every day sliced bread you found that didn’t taste of chemicals and sugar. Likd the pp - I never found one. They were all disappointing and unpleasant.

I used to take Ribena, but it’s dreadful now it’s sugar free. There are some more obscure varieties of blackcurrant cordial that are similar to the old Ribena though.

Tea. Buy then my family get through industrial quantities.

@Leeds2 - does your daughter live in New York City or is she further out in NY State?

If she’s in or near the city there is actually a (proper, authentic) British Fish & Chip shop near 14th St Subway station called ‘A Salt and Battery’. I used to go there when I fancied proper chips instead of skinny French fries…they even have curry sauce and mushy peas. There is limited seating at a small counter at the window - you can get Boddingtons, Irn Bru etc. to drink too!

www.asaltandbattery.com

Right next door is a proper English tea room (which also does a Sunday roast) and they have an annexe attached which imports lots of chocolate bars (many are on your list) biscuits, Christmas & Easter chocs, squash, tea, jam, marmalade, salad cream etc. from the UK:

www.teaandsympathy.com

There is also a traditional British grocery store in the West Village where they make sausage rolls, meat pies, HP sauce and authentic pork sausages!

(Mostly I found that sausages are Italian style and can be quite ‘sweet’ and have a tougher texture….only around St.Patrick’s Day is it sometimes possible to get Irish sausages in a few places like Trader Joe’s)

www.myersofkeswick.com

However….none of these places are what I’d call inexpensive but it’s nice to get a ‘fix’ of something British. To be honest it’s reasonably easy to find chocolate bars in and around NYC as there is quite a large British expat population.

I would take things from M&S (own label) or maybe Waitrose which she definitely wouldn’t be able to find in NY.

If you’re checking in a suitcase into the hold it’s fine to take in cheese as it’s really cold in the hold! My friend used to take in British cheeses to Singapore (on the Equator…so super hot) and the cheese was fine on arrival. Perhaps you could take a ‘selection’ box of British cheeses eg. Red Leicester, Wensleydale, Double Gloucester, Stilton: I’ve seen them in places like Sainsburys.

Ironically I used to sometimes find ‘Coastal Cheddar’ from the UK in Trader Joe’s or Costco - mature cheese and delicious, crumbly and with salt crystals and so much nicer than American cheese. I’ve moved back to the UK and live in Dorset…I was delighted to discover that it’s produced just 25 minutes from my home!

The bread is a hill I will die on 🫠

Since we’ve been here, I think I’ve tried every type of bread readily available in regular supermarket, and the more bougie, baked in-store at Trader Joes and Sprouts etc…..none of it even remotely resembles U.K. bread.
Found out recently that if standard US white bread was sold in France, they wouldn’t legally be able to call it bread, because the ingredients are so different to what the EU’d food standards constitute as bread 🫣🫣
I’ve become mostly a lunchtime wrap girl because I just can’t get past the weird texture and sweetness.
Also….it doesn’t go off?!! Not much bread gets eaten in my house these days, so I’ll buy a loaf and it can sit in my pantry for weeks without going stale or growing any fur 🫣🫣🫣😵‍💫

https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/category/sliced-bread-14

This is the kind of thing I mean but I don’t eat white sliced bread so can’t comment on that. I also used local bakeries/Wholefoods. Appreciate there may be variation regionally and some of the TJ’s breads use honey as a sweetener so still sugar in some form, but there’s a decent enough choice if you want to pay for it.

At least one person has said the Trader Joes brand was is all sweet, so I’m not sure what linking to their products proves? I never found bread I really liked in any mainstream supermarket in Boston.

Try this from Bread Alone

Lots of items are available there now but at a cost.

Still asked for

Marmite
Branston pickle
Chocolate from here because we don't have the high wax content they have - even their Cadburys is different to ours.

Decent tea bags and Marmite. And proper chocolate!

I missed Ribena, Oxo cubes, and family.
I forgot brown sauce.
I could buy most everything else from Cost plus world market

That’s interesting. When did you live there? Some TJ’s stuff is sweet, some isn’t. There is a lot of regional variation with their stuff though so who knows? The link was to show that there’s a huge variety and a lot more than some posters here would have you believe.