Nostalgia ’n’ mash hot on the menu

My skepticism floats away with a bite of takeout the night I arrive. We eat Indian and Bangladeshi dishes from Tiffins Club that use subtlety, heat, and blissful flavor combinations to change my perceptions in a heartbeat.

More surprising is the resurgence of traditional English food. Typical offerings like bangers and mash (sausages with mashed potatoes) and fish and chips are ceding their spots on the menu to food prepared with a respect for tradition and an eye on the modern day. Hopping back and forth between the eastern and western ends of the city, ethnic and traditional come into a unifying whole.

At his West Kensington home, I pose the question of how to learn to love British food to Simon Hopkinson, former chef at London’s groundbreaking Bi bendum restaurant and author of several cookbooks, including the much-acclaimed “Roast Chicken and Other Stories’’ and the just released “The Vegetarian Option,’’ and he smirks. “The smell of my mother’s rabbit pie in the old Aga stove. She’d pick wild rabbit up for a sixpence and braise it for two hours until it was falling apart and serve it with red currant jelly,’’ he says. “I couldn’t wait.’’

Nostalgia, it turns out, is a mixed bag. “There are a lot of boiled things and things at grammar school called dead man’s leg and suet jam roly poly. That’s suet, flour, and bicarbonate spread with jam wrapped in muslin and steamed,’’ Hopkinson says, grinning in a way that suggests he knows it’s hard to appreciate. “It had a cousin called apple hat with sliced apples, brown sugar, and flecks of butter where all the apples go gooey and soft,’’ he says, his eyes going to a happy, faraway place, accompanied by a big, happy “Hooo . . .’’