Is food better in Canada or UK (An Honest Review)

People in Britain have asked me plenty of times whether food is better in Canada or the UK. Food is one of my favourite subjects, so after eight years living here I had a lot to say about it. My answer, when I filmed this in August 2024, was the UK. I love savoury British food, and I miss it when I go back to Canada.

That probably sounds harsh coming from a Canadian, but the familiar lists of Canadian food don’t describe what I ate growing up in Southern Ontario. The food I look forward to when I go home is much more about visiting my family than ticking off famous national dishes.

Poutine wasn’t my childhood dinner

Poutine is one of the dishes people outside Canada tend to know. It’s fries, gravy and cheese curds, and I will eat it, but I don’t really enjoy it. It wasn’t part of my childhood. My mom wasn’t serving me poutine after school on a Tuesday night.

I had fabulous bagels when I visited Montreal, but those weren’t my everyday bagels either. Growing up, I had fast-food Tim Hortons bagels. If my dad made us breakfast on a Saturday, the bacon with our eggs and toast was streaky bacon, rather than the peameal bacon that appeared on the Canadian-food list I was looking at.

Other suggestions were even further from my experience. I’d never been to Nova Scotia, and I’m allergic to lobster, so a Nova Scotia lobster roll wasn’t going to be a familiar favourite. I’d never had a Halifax donair or a French Canadian tourtiere either. None of that meant I could describe those dishes from experience, and I couldn’t pretend they represented the meals I grew up with.

The food I actually look forward to at home

When I go back to Canada to visit my family, I love having a barbecue. We cook hot dogs, burgers and chicken that way, and it feels like a treat because I didn’t have a barbecue at home in England when I made this video. That was something I hoped we might have after a future move.

We also have pasta, homemade pizza, chicken salad, sushi and ramen. Those don’t give me one neat answer to ‘what is a Canadian meal?’, but they are what I eat when I’m there. I love all-dressed chips too. They are a favourite, though a bag of chips wasn’t really the meal comparison people were asking me for.

Tim Hortons brings out a different kind of loyalty. I don’t think the food is especially good, but it’s nostalgic. I tried to budget for a visit home once a year, and going for an Iced Capp and Timbits as part of seeing family and friends felt special. It was a treat attached to being home.

That’s why I wasn’t thrilled by Tim Hortons opening more places in the UK. I understood why British people might enjoy trying it without travelling to Canada, but for me the expansion took away some of that specialness. People sent me messages about new branches and told me I should go. I wanted to keep that particular treat for my trips home.

Savoury British food suits me

The British-food list was much easier for me to recognise. A roast with the trimmings, fish and chips, shepherd’s pie, a full English, bangers and mash, haggis, a ploughman’s lunch and Lancashire hotpot all felt like recognisable British dishes. I’d eaten every one of them, which I couldn’t say about the Canadian list.

Savoury is king for me. I’d happily eat shepherd’s pie, steak and ale pie, fish and chips, bangers and mash, a roast or toad in the hole. Marmite is the exception. I’ve tried, but I can’t get there. A lot of the classic meals I like are heavy, with meat and carbs, and those are precisely the things I enjoy.

Haggis surprised me because I hadn’t expected to like it so much. I remembered it having plenty of flavour, and its savoury, meaty taste suited me. I’d also cooked British dishes while making videos, including spotted dick, Victoria sponge and toad in the hole. Trying the food had become part of finding out what life here was like for me.

My vote goes to the UK

People make fun of British food for being beige, and a lot of it is, but I love it. A Sunday roast, a full English and bangers and mash immediately make me think of the UK. I like having those recognisable meals, and I think they’re great food as well.

I still look forward to the barbecue and the nostalgic treats when I visit Canada. But British savoury food gets my vote, and when I’m back in Canada I find myself missing it. By the time I made this comparison, I’d made it my mission to try as much British food as I could.

Watch my video, Is food better in Canada or UK (An Honest Review).