The Cornish pasty was maligned by a UScritic in 1999. My fury is unabated
I will not stop until the honour of this local delicacy is restored. And this summer there was progress, when my American wife declared the dish ‘quite nice’, writes Arwa Mahdawi
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Arwa Mahdawi2 Sept 2026, 10:13 amUpdated 1h ago3 min readOpinionOpinion
Opinion — Arwa Mahdawi
The Cornish pasty was maligned by a US critic in 1999. My fury is unabated
I think maybe an OBE is in order. Or some sort of message of thanks from the king. While I have not definitively established causation, I am fairly certain my presence in the UK has something to do with the recent rain. The landscape was yellow and parched thanks to weeks of drought when I flew into Heathrow in late August. As soon as I landed, it began to pour and didn’t really stop.
But that’s as it should be: nature is healing. I am part Cornish and spent my childhood summers shivering on wet beaches in the south west, and trudging through muddy fields. This year I brought my US born-and-bred daughter over from Philadelphia to Cornwall for the first time so she too could experience the joys of a British summer holiday. Continuous sun would have ruined the authenticity.
As my five-year-old learned to appreciate eating soggy chips in gale-force winds while fending off aggressive seagulls, I introduced my American wife to the local delicacy that is the Cornish pasty. “What do you think?” I asked after she’d taken a bite. “Sort of like an empanada but needs more seasoning,” she replied, sounding a bit dubious. I immediately instructed her to keep her voice down (difficult for Americans) to avoid another diplomatic incident. Back in 1999, William Grimes, then the food critic for the New York Times, caused an uproar when he compared the pasty to a doorstop and wrote : “Cornwall, England, probably suffers more bad food per square mile than anywhere else in the civilised world.”
This was a declaration of war and the UK press came together to fight back. The Plymouth Evening Herald put the story on its front page with the headline: “Lay Off Our Pasty.” The Times of London wrote that Grimes “and his bumptious comments may be dismissed”. It added: “He is merely overpaid, overfed and over here.” Meanwhile, citizens mobilised. The owner of a pasty shop in Helston burned the US flag and instructed her teenage son, Fergus, to avoid beefburgers until Grimes apologised. He did not apologise , so I imagine poor Fergus has been a vegan for the past 27 years.
My wife ended up finishing the pasty and declared it “quite nice” and “extraordinarily filling”, which I think counts as praise. I hope the OBE people are taking note here. It’s not just the rain you can thank me for. I’m also restoring the honour of the Cornish pasty, one American at a time.
But that’s as it should be: nature is healing. I am part Cornish and spent my childhood summers shivering on wet beaches in the south west, and trudging through muddy fields. This year I brought my US born-and-bred daughter over from Philadelphia to Cornwall for the first time so she too could experience the joys of a British summer holiday. Continuous sun would have ruined the authenticity.
This report is published with credit to The Guardian. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on The Guardian →
Source: The Guardian · Arwa Mahdawi. Published 2 Sept 2026, 10:13 am.
