An undiplomatic history of British diplomatic dinners

In poor taste

US Ambassador Matthew Barzun attracted the ire of chefs for complaining that he had been served lamb and potatoes too often since arriving in Britain. Some others who have landed in the oxtail soup after complaining about British food:
— At a summit in 2005 former French President Jacques Chirac was said to have joked with world leaders that his country’s problems with Nato originated from being persuaded to try haggis by its former secretary-general George Robertson. He went on to say of the British: ‘one cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad’.
— A lawyer acting for former Liberian president Charles Taylor, now serving a 50-year sentence for war crimes in a prison in County Durham, listed British food as one of the reasons Mr Taylor should be allowed to serve his sentence in Africa.
— US company boss Bernado Hees attracted complaints in 2011 when he told an audience in Chicago that he remembered two things from time he had spent doing an MBA in the University of Warwick: that British girls were unattractive and British food ‘terrible’.