u/DrinkNWRobinWilliams

I’ve wondered about this for decades. My wife and I have travelled to the UK from the US since the early ‘90s on multiple occasions on holiday. We most often stay at country house B&Bs or in pubs where they serve breakfast. In every case I can think of, when breakfast was served the toast always came cold in a cute little rack.

I’ve never understood why you’d want to eat toast that isn’t warm enough to melt butter but I never wanted to ask any of my hosts as I didn’t wish to imply something was wrong and seem ungrateful. Each time we encountered this, I figured it is one of those cute cultural differences and I just scraped on as much unmelted butter as I could manage and soldiered on.

But with this subreddit, I see my chance to lay the mystery to rest without making my host feel uncomfortable. Can some Brits help me on this one? What is the appeal of cold toast? I’m especially interested now that I’ve acquired a Marmite addiction; I can’t fathom eating it without a good puddle of well-melted butter to go with it.

Edit: To say thank you to everyone replying to my question. I learned a lot!

It has always seemed to me that hot toast with melted butter was a universal good. In my world, toast is a melted butter delivery system. I never thought of it as ‘soggy’ unless it was over buttered and allowed to get cold; allowing toast to get cold always seemed a universal bad to be avoided at all costs. It shows me how we are all bound to and by our cultures.

Alas, there are people who like their toast on the cool and crispy side, almost like a cracker, and who enjoy their butter thick enough and unmelted enough to show teeth marks - I had no idea!

Nor did I suspect that that classism might be afoot in this preference for toast racks and cool toast, that it had history among the more fortunate in society, that it marked one out as above a commoner.

But you Brits, like we Americans, are not a monolithic group and preferences skew both ways. To be expected, I suppose.

Again, many thanks for your responses!

It’s been since May of this year that we disembarked the Celebrity Edge in Honolulu after an 18 day voyage from Sydney, Australia to two wonderful stops in New Zealand, three stops in French Polynesia (that I will never get out of my mind), and onto Hawaii.

On Monday, the Edge reverses course and begins its voyage from Honolulu to bring its very lucky compliment in the other direction, back to Sydney. For all of you reading this who are about to enjoy this cruise, I want to assure you that I am just green with envy!

This isn’t a complete recounting of our voyage over the International Dateline and across the Equator, it’s more an affirmation that nearly five months on since we disembarked, not a day has passed that I don’t think about what an exceptional cruise it was for us, and how it revitalized our love for cruising.

The food was very good in the restaurants, the Mast Grill, and in the Oceanview Cafe. We avoided the speciality dining. Most important to us, the level of service we experienced was without parallel from our steward, Renaldo, who would often arrive at our door before we did to let us in, to Constance who brightened our mornings at the washy-washy, to the Jamaican Coffee-Coffee-Coffee Man who filled our mornings with cheer in addition to filling our cups with coffee, to Raquel who served us ice cream with a smile before we retired to our cabin each night and, in spite of the hundreds of orders she’d fill each day, knew my preferences after the first serving.

Any list of mentions would be terribly incomplete without a mention of our ship’s naturalist, Celia Garland, who could speak clearly, passionately, and in-depth on a variety of subjects (all while referring to no notes and seemingly without taking a breath) for 45 minutes leaving her audience utterly enthralled. She was a big part (read: BIG PART) of what made our cruise great.

We’ve been on several other cruises where the smiles begin to wear thin over the course of a few days and the service slips; it never happened once on this, our first Celebrity cruise. The smiles were as warm and genuine on the last day as on the first. Further, it’s just a beautiful ship, lots to do, and plenty of places to relax.

Throughout our cruise (and often since), I found myself replaying that line from *Field of Dreams, “*Is this heaven?”