This Side of the Pond

I feel the need to defend my people, for the entire planet is currently mocking our relationship with the humblest of pantry ingredients: rice. I knew I’d stepped into a parallel world when I moved to Wyoming – a place where everything is just different enough to be confusing – but every so often something still stops me in my tracks.

There’s a video doing the rounds of the internet by a Malaysian comedian called Nigel Ng, who lives in London and goes by the persona of “Uncle Roger”. In this video, he is watching a British chef as she cooks a version of egg fried rice in a segment produced for...