“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”― Virginia Woolf

The staple of the Sunday roast, the humble Yorkshire pudding is loved all over the United Kingdom. So it was easy to see our disappointment when we ordered our first Sunday roast.  Unlike the name, there is nothing pudding like in the carbohydrate at all.  In fact, I thought that I must be missing something.  Why would anyone choose to eat carb calories with no immediate, obvious gratification?  If it doesn’t rise more than 4” it isn’t even considered an authentic Yorkshire pudding!  Let's start with a food that is being judged not on its flavor, but instead, its rise.

​So, for those of you who have never had proper Yorkshire Pudding, I would describe it as an utterly flavorless, hollow, puff pastry. Using the word PUFF is “giving it unintended interest”.  I suppose some would say it is a vessel for one to eat gravy. AKA brown sauce.  But that argument doesn’t hold mustard for me because you can put the brown sauce on the vegetables or the meat (or veggie nut loaf in my case) … and once again, there is no need for a flavorless calorie hog like Yorkshire pudding when you might want to try your luck at an Eton Mess after the meal!

What might gain the most entertaining observation is the reaction we get when we ask a server or a British person if they “like” Yorkshire pudding.  Unanimously, their face lights up, as if we had asked them something more intimate like: “Tell me about a special family memory that gives makes you happy”.  If we had asked that question, we would understand the body language relaxing, the bright smile forming on their faces, even their eagerness to tell us all about their memory.  But instead, all those body changes happen, and they say with crazy  enthusiasm something so unfathomable such as: “Oh, yes, Yorkshire pudding is one of my favorites!  There is something about it that everyone loves.”  Then usually it is followed by some, giddy, innocent, OMG, eye roll, and then they tell us,  we "just need to try it".  And again, we order it.  I do not want to give the impression that we didn’t give it a fair shot.  We have ordered it on multiple occasions just to make sure we were eating it from an establishment that is known to have good Yorkshire pudding.  The conclusion is the same.  Please, do not take my word for it, you MUST order it, just to see why it’s so anticlimactic.