Tell a Japanese person you're British and there is a 90% chance that within ninety seconds, before they've asked your name, they will pull a face like you've confessed to a crime and say "British food... not delicious, ne?" And then I ask the only question that matters. "Have you ever eaten any?" And the answer, every single fucking time, delivered with absolute serenity, is "no."

No. You haven't. You have an opinion the size of Mount Fuji about a national cuisine you have never once put in your mouth. You are standing in a country where convenience-store egg sandwiches are treated as a cultural treasure, telling me, an actual British person, that my food is bad, based on nothing. Based on the void. Based on whatever pickled nonsense your brain absorbed from a telly programme.

And I know exactly which telly programme, because I've seen the format a hundred bloody times. Some grinning presenter gets flown to Scotland, is handed a plate of haggis specifically so the camera can catch them recoiling, fails to scream "oishiiiii" or "umaaaai" the way they're contractually obliged to do for literally any food produced within Japanese borders, and on the strength of that one rigged segment the entire archipelago concludes that everything from Cornwall to the Shetlands tastes of wet socks. One sausage-shaped offal product, mate. That's the evidence. That's the whole prosecution.

Why the Japanese think British food is bad (and why they're wrong)

Here is the thing that actually winds me up about the British food reputation in Japan. It is not the opinion. It is the confidence. It is delivered with the same smug certainty as everything else here, the same tone as the bloke at the bank explaining for twelve minutes why your perfectly normal transfer needs a second visit. They are not afraid to say it directly to your face, which, in a country that has elevated not saying what you think into a national sport, is genuinely impressive. The one time these people locate their honne and fire it like a harpoon, it's to inform me my mum's roast is a tragedy.

So let me set the record straight for the back row. British food is the absolute bomb. We invented the chicken tikka masala. We invented the Madras as Britain knows it. We have, within walking distance of any high street, the genuinely good food of about forty other countries because we actually went out into the world and brought it home. London is one of the best eating cities on the planet and that is not up for debate by someone whose hottest culinary take was formed by a man eating black pudding for ratings.

And what, precisely, is the comparison being held up against us? Sushi. Great. Wonderful. Little identical bite-sized rectangles that, once you've dunked the lot in enough soy sauce and wasabi to strip paint, all taste of soy sauce and wasabi. You need roughly fifty of the fucking plates to feel anything resembling full, you've spent four thousand yen, and you leave hungry enough to stop at a konbini for one of the egg sandwiches they're so weirdly proud of. That's the rival cuisine. That's the masterpiece I'm meant to bow before while my own gets slandered by people who've never crossed the Channel.

Yes, I'm being bitter. Of course I'm bloody bitter. But the ignorance on this one is off the charts and it's aggressively off the charts, which is the bit that gets me. I've lived here long enough to eat humble pie about plenty of things. The trains are better. The toilets are a religious experience. Fine. But I will not sit in a six-seat ramen shop and have my entire food heritage dismissed by a shower of complete clowns who think a Greggs sausage roll is a rumour and a Sunday roast is a war crime. Try it first. Then we'll talk.

Until then, with the deepest possible respect: eat my entire arse, and a proper Madras while you're at it.