Stocking the Larder: Thanks to the Web, Brit Expats Go Hungry No More
Rightly or wrongly, English food has gotten a bum rap.
Still, if you grow up with a cuisine, or sample it while living or traveling in another country, it appeals to you. Your senses fondly remember those tastes and you crave them.
British expats living in the U.S. or elsewhere in the world for years had to rely on specialty retailers or care packages from friends at home. But thanks to the Internet, the English corner grocer is as close as their laptop.
A quick Google search finds several such sites, like JollyGrub.com (http://www.jollygrub.com/), BritishHomeMarket.com (http://britishhomemarket.com), and BritishDelights.com (http://www.britishdelights.com/).
All of these online retailers have a friendly, straightforward approach to selling. Rather than concentrate on high-end gift baskets, these sites take the route of offering a wide variety of packaged goods one would find in their local U.K. grocer, ranging from sauces and tinned meats and fish (Prince Pilchard in Tomato, anyone?), to sweets like Curly Wurly and Flake bars, to health and beauty products like Fairy soap (an Ivory-like brand).
The descriptions and bells and whistles on all three sites are minimal. One gets the feeling the sellers know that if someone has come to their site and is browsing the “aisles,” they have some idea of what they’re looking for, and don’t need to be distracted by flash and glitz. Customers looking for a deal on shampoo are going to go to Target, not surf online for a U.K. brand typically sold in Tesco, just for the heck of it. And likewise, those looking for fancy English soap are heading to Crabtree & Evelyn, not the online version of Sainsbury’s.
That’s not to say seasonal gift items aren’t available – the sites offered a range of Easter eggs that would likely delight those looking for a sweet taste of England.
A more high-end shop is Scottish Gourmet USA (http://scottishgourmetusa.gourmetfoodmall.com/). The site, which also has a print catalog counterpart, is decidedly more gift oriented, with lavish gift assortments of sweets, salmon, cheeses, biscuits and other Scottish goodies.
The products ranged from the expected (whisky fudge) to the unexpected (chocolate chili mustard), with items like bowls emblazoned with lines from Robert Burns’ “Ode to a Haggis” thrown in for good measure.
But despite the more posh quality of the products, the site is still fairly straightforward in nature. I think my Scottish grandmother would have approved.
