I pretty much lived on Chinese takeaway on my first trip to Britain in 1979. They were often the only places I could find to eat in the evenings. The fast food places like Wimpy's (I think McDonald's and KFC had also already been imported) that existed in the bigger cities didn't exist in smaller towns. I was too intimidated to check out hotel dining rooms (of whose existence as an option for non-guests I was basically unaware, anyway), and while pubs would serve dinners, nobody was ever eating it. The couple times I tried it, I felt creepy being the only person there eating.

Over subsequent decades things became easier, but they still can be tough. The kind of casual dining roadside restaurant that's ubiquitous in the US is still basically unknown in Britain. On our drives back and forth between London and Wales, my brother and I found ourselves stymied in where to have lunch. If we got off the motorway, we couldn't find anything, even in big towns, outside of the impossible-to-get-into (because of traffic, and bad road signage) central cities, and were forced into the truly vile options at the motorway rest stops, where at least we had a lot of company.