First Day in the UK, tested the most casual thing I could think about. Your English Breakfast is awesome!

There's been a real boom in roasters over here in the UK over event years. No idea how you like your coffee but I love Roaring Stag up in Ballater, Scotland. They so online delivery, if you like a real dark roast their Dark Lochnagar is great.

Good coffee shops are becoming more common over there, but still a long way from the US, France, Italy, etc, where there's two cafes on every corner.

On a full English? That feels blasphemous.

Yeah, the UK does back bacon, while the US and Canada seem to love streaky bacon. They're both the same area IIRC, but the back bacon just includes a chunk of meat along with the streaky fat part. This can be challenging when cooking, as the fat and the meat cook at different rates. When you fry it you have to render the fat at a very low heat, then raise the heat gently to cook the meat. If you do it just right you can get crispy fat and tender, chewy meat on the same piece. Typically in commercial kitchens they just oven cook it, which is easier to achieve a more consistent result, but I love doting over them in a frying pan.

You do need to be a little careful what you buy. Most bacon is cheap and injected with brine by an automated production process, whereas Dry Cured bacon is done by hand. It's a little more expensive, but generally much better quality. The gold standard is that one little old butcher's shop that has an old hand crank machine to slice you fresh, thick cuts of bacon - if you find a place like this, try their pork pies, especially when they're fresh.

To be fair if someone asked me for 'brown sauce' I'd probably turn it down too. Enjoy your stay.

Brown and mustard for that meal

Black pudding not just because of the name, but because blood sausage is a much wider category that black pudding is only one part of. Would be a bit weird to get Korean blood sausage with your full English

I've lived in the UK for 42 years and see no benefit to having beans

As a veggie, just wanna say I bloody love this response here. And as a UK person, welcome! I remember you saying you were due to move here, in that thread about wholesome communities recently. Hope you settle in fine!

(We don't do Tesco or Aldi so can't help you with specific brands of things, but the UK is very veggie-friendly so honestly you'll be able to pick up some decent stuff wherever you shop. Experiment and you'll soon find your new faves. Oatly is pretty widely available here too)

Oatly should be widely available, otherwise most supermarkets now make their own brand. Personally I'm a soya milk drinker, so can't really recommend any though.

As for meat replacements - there are a lot, you can pretty much replace anything now from nuggets to donner to roast (like roast "chicken" or "beef", either whole or in pieces) to cold cuts. It's hard to say which you would like because they vary in texture and flavour, so I'd just start trying them out!
Some brands I personally enjoy - Squeaky Bean, Oumph, Vivera. But most supermarket own brands to really good stuff nowadays, even Iceland (if you don't have a store close by, they all deliver).

BAH GAWD THAT MAN HAS (pig) FAMILY!

Oatly is widely available, even in the little convenience shop round the corner from me.

However, FUCK Oatly: "Oatly sues UK oat milk maker over trademark" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57425162

Btw, Oatly lost.

Hey, welcome! While I'm not a native, I've lived here for a few years now and would be happy to share some info!

I have to say I've been pleasantly surprised by the amount of vegetarian stuff you can buy in most supermarkets here. My go-to for just adding a meat replacement into a dish is any of the "Quorn" branded stuff. I will say though that normally it needs quite a bit of salt added to it. Especially the mince is great though if you want to do something like a stir-fry or burritos. Their cold-cut looking selection is also pretty decent (the vegetarian ham slices etc), I prefer the vegetarian over the vegan options though, I think they taste a bit better

Other than that, there is a brand called "Linda McCartney", their stuff is pretty nice as well and on offer quite a lot.

I haven't been to Aldi and Lidl in a while now, not sure if they have any off-brand/own-brand options that are decent but I think it's worth a try. Anyway, welcome :)

And be careful when you're in traffic, people here are terrible drivers

Edit: oh and I forgot to say about oat milk: you can get Oatly at Tesco, Sainsbury's etc, there is also a nice brand called Minor Figures, they have it at Tesco and Lidl sometimes. Otherwise Asda (another cheap-ish supermarket chain) and Lidl have their own brand of barista-style oat milk, can't remember the name off the top of my head but it's easily as good as Oatly and much cheaper

Mate here has 3 months of post on !veganism@lemmy.ca