England: “Well I am swooning from this invitation” responded my friend sarcastically, but positively. I had asked a colleague from Cambridgeshire what he’d recommend to someone who had never sampled English cuisine. The joke practically writes itself….anyway…..my pal got a dreamy faraway look in his eyes and said “steak and kidney pie”.

Unfortunately, the Queen & Beaver did not serve this. So, washing it down with several pints of Fuller’s London Pride Ale, I had rabbit and potato pie. There will be a new Easter Bunny next year. It was tasty but fairly innocuous. There wasn’t anything particularly English about the patrons, watching a hockey game on the wide screen. On the walls, predictably, photos of the 1966 World Cup winning side.

Australia: today, during the deluge, I took a cab ride downtown with two Australians. I had pre-ordered meat pies from a bistro that sells an Aussie pie maker’s wares and we were on a lunchtime mission. My friends of the down under persuasion explained to me that in Australia, meat pies are about the same as hot dogs here; you get them at sports events and in the school cafeteria. And as I learned, you eat them with your hands and get ketchup on yourself. They pronounced the pie crusts authentic, but the filling good albeit a little too gourmet to be truly comfort food. All the same, it was yum served with a healthy helping of Aussie culture. No budgie smuggling was involved.