Studying abroad brings so much fun, but also many challenges and experiences one may not expect. During my semester abroad, the goal is simple: experience as much as possible. Every couple of weeks, I’ll challenge myself to find something new, do something different, and create a new experience to share what study abroad really has to offer other than just our normal classes on a different continent.
So… What Am I Eating Today?
As of writing this, I’ve officially been in London for a month, which is kind of crazy to think about because it simultaneously feels like I just got here and like I’ve been here forever. One of the things I’ve probably been having the most fun with, though, is food.
If my family is planning a trip somewhere, one of the first things they’ll ask me is where we’re eating. I genuinely love finding restaurants and figuring out what I want to try, especially when I’m somewhere where there’s food that I wouldn’t normally get at home. Even if something is completely outside of my usual palate, I’ll probably still want to try it just to see what it’s like.
Naturally, living in London has been very fun for me.
At home in Tallahassee, I have the usual places that I know and love. I know what I’m getting, I know what I like, and I’m usually not thinking too hard about where I’m going to eat. London is completely different; there are so many different types of cuisines basically everywhere you look, and I feel like I could eat somewhere different every day and still have a million places left to try. Honestly, not to brag, but I haven’t really had bad food here yet.
I think part of what’s made this especially fun is where the FSU London campus is. We’re pretty much in the middle of everything, so there are restaurants, cafés, bakeries, and random little food places constantly around me. I’ve started using food as an excuse to explore different parts of the area, and it’s actually been one of the easiest ways for me to get more comfortable with London.
For those who were wondering, yes, of course our lovely university provides us with food vouchers as part of the program cost! I’ll get more into how those work throughout this article, but they’ve genuinely been so helpful during my first month here. Especially in terms of making it a lot easier to try different places without spending a ridiculous amount of money every time I get hungry.
London Food
I like taking risks almost as much as I like food, so naturally I had to combine the two during my stay. I asked one of my British friends to plan out what I should eat for an entire day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were officially out of my hands for the day, and my only job was to actually go out and eat whatever he told me to eat.
This sounded like a great idea, until I remembered that I can be kind of picky about certain things. Still, I was curious. If I’m going to be living in London for a semester, I feel like I should actually let someone who grew up with English cuisine introduce me to some of the things I probably wouldn’t think to order myself. So, here’s what I ate.
Breakfast: Facing The Beans
I started my day with my Tudor England class, and during our break I stopped at Elwin, the quaint café right outside the study center, for an iced latte. The coffee wasn’t part of my assigned menu, but I have a caffeine addiction, so I’m counting it as a necessary detour.
After class, it was finally time for my actual breakfast: an English breakfast from Salt and Pepper. Beans on toast, sausage, mushrooms, a fried egg, and what was basically a ham-type meat.
I’ll be honest, the beans on toast scared me a little. I do slightly lean on the more negative side of the scale when it comes to the concept of baked beans, so the first bite was definitely a leap of faith for me. The more I ate it, though, the more I could get behind it. I still don’t know if I actually liked it or if my brain just convinced me I did, but either way, I finished it.
I also used the time to get some reading done for my Shakespeare class, which meant eating an English breakfast while reading Hamlet. Very British, very academic, and very me.
Lunch: Orlando vs. London
For lunch, I went to Fishoria, which was also just down the street from the study center, and got fish and chips. This wasn’t part of the FSU food voucher plan, but that’s the art of exploring!
My only previous experience with fish and chips was at Harry Potter World in Orlando, so I was curious to see what the actual London version was like. Luckily, I already am a fan of fish and fries (yes, I call them fries, sorry), so this wasn’t exactly a huge risk.
It was good, but it was also a tad expensive. Still, I was really full afterward, so I’m choosing to believe my money was well spent. Part of studying abroad is getting to actually try things, and sometimes that means accepting that London is going to hurt your wallet a little.
Dinner: The Kebab That Never Happened
Dinner was supposed to be a kebab. Keyword: supposed to be.
Time was a limiting factor for dinner, so instead I decided to freestyle and do another very British thing: go to M&S for groceries. I picked up some rigatoni and a Spanish chili pesto, which was definitely not the kebab I had been assigned, but it was significantly cheaper.
Budgeting is honestly one of the biggest things I’ve had to figure out here. London is expensive, and groceries can be tricky when we’re traveling almost every week because you don’t want to buy a ton of food just for it to go bad while you’re gone. Still, I’ve realized that you really don’t have to spend a lot to eat well here. Once you venture a little further from campus, there are plenty of cheaper options, and after a month, I genuinely haven’t had a bad meal.
So, no, I didn’t follow the menu perfectly. I did eat an English breakfast, fish and chips, and an M&S dinner in one day, though, which feels pretty British to me.
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