As is to be expected, there are certain food items he misses from home, that he has been unable to find since moving here... until now.
A while ago I purchased a LivingSocial deal for a place called The British Chip Shop, in Haddonfield, NJ (South Jersey). FYI - Chip shop = a place where fish & chips is sold. It's only like a half hour away, and near the Cherry Hill Mall, which I like to go to every now and then. I figured we'd certainly make it there at some point and I'd just take him to the chip shop as a side trip. The website's pretty meh and there aren't any pictures or anything, so I really didn't think it was going to be that great. Stephen Starr, famous restauranteur in Philadelphia, opened up a restaurant called Dandelion not too long ago, that Tim reaaaally wanted to try. Starr likes to open restaurants with various different types of cuisine - French, Japanese, Cuban, American Soul Food, etc... and now British. They were going to have roast dinners on Sundays and serve other various British food and drink staples. Well… neither of us heard anything good about this place, only bad, so Tim lost his desire to try it. So I didn't hold out too much hope for this little place in South Jersey… but it was a huge success! The place is nice and new, and right on the main strip in Haddonfield. It's such a cute area! We both decided within like 2 minutes of walking down the street that we could live there… except for the fact that it's a dry town. Yeah, no bars, no alcohol. What's up with that?? Anyhoo… I refused to tell Tim where we were going right up until we were on the main street and I pointed to the British flags. He was like, "A CHIP SHOP?!... I love you." with, I swear, sparkles in his eyes. We walk in, more sparkles. It was a really nice place actually. It looked like a traditional pub, with wooden tables and wooden paneling and things like that, but so that you wouldn't mistake it, there was English paraphernalia EVERYWHERE. Beatles posters, "Mind the Gap" signs, We sat down and more sparkles as he looked through the menu. There was HP brown sauce on the table. I'm pretty sure that was his favorite part. He constantly talks about how we don't have "brown sauce" here. Which, I'm not entirely sure what it is. Think consistency of ketchup, but smell of worchestershire sauce? I don't know, I haven't tasted it, only smelled it. The waiter came to the table and told us they didn't have Coke or Pepsi products, all they had were teas and soda imported from the UK (which is total garbage, because you can totally get a Pepsi or Coke from the UK, but whatever). We ordered a pot of tea (his favorite, PG tips, which he's been having his mom send to him), two fish and chips, and mushy peas. So this was the first time I tried mushy peas and I just don't get it?? I mean, they taste fine, but I just don't get it… why mush them when they taste perfectly good non mushed? The fish was DELISH. I am not a fish fan, but for some reason, I like it fried. And with half a bottle of ketchup. Tim has been telling me for weeks now that we're going to his favorite "chippy" (aka chip shop) when we go back to England (in just two weeks now!). When we had this fish, he said it was just as good as his favorite place! It was really, really good. So in conclusion, we found a great place to go when my BH needs his fix of British food, drink, and brown sauce. Oh, right, AND they do roast dinners on Sundays (very traditional English thing). Looks like we'll be back.
Tim with his face in the pastry display.But wait, there's more! We walked outside and across the street, owned by the same people, is a place called The English Gardener Gift Shop. Now, in case you didn't know, I'm a bit of an anglophile. I like British things. British Husbands especially, but in general anything that has a UK flag on it or says "London" must be mine immediately if not sooner.
So we walk in the store and I'm in heaven. It's like a nice tourist shop in London... but in South Jersey. We continue to walk in and find that they not only have little souvenier things that you could fool someone with and tell them you went to England when you didn't at all, but they have UK food products. Brown sauce, staring him in the face. Cadbury bars, PG tips (tea bags), special sodas, mushy peas in a can (so wait, they even mush them for you??), and even refrigerated products like English meats and cheeses. WHOA. I thought for sure BH was going to go crazy and want to buy everything, but he didn't. He didn't buy anything, actually! He said since we're going to England so soon, he'll just get some things over there and bring them back. I tried to tell him to save the weight/space/possible leakage in his suitcase to just get it here, but he wouldn't have it. Said he wanted to get a much bigger "squeezy" bottle of HP brown sauce (which sounds gross to me). He also said we'll be making plenty of trips back, though, when he runs out of PG tips... and brown sauce. We may just have to live in Haddonfield yet.
-C
xxx
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