This Liverpool cafe serves a decades-old recipe of a local favorite: scouse

Here within the U.S., regional nicknames are commonplace. If you hear the phrases Hoosier, Buckeye or Tar Heel, you doubtless know precisely the place that individual is from — and doubtless which sports activities staff they root for too.

Regional nicknames are much more prolific within the UK, the place a single city could have half a dozen totally different monikers. Liverpool, the northwest England residence of this 12 months’s Open Championship at Royal Liverpool, has a nickname with an origin that’s arguably extra distinctive. Liverpool locals proudly establish as “Scouse” or “Scousers.” Where on this planet did that identify come from? Food, naturally.

The hearty, stew-like dish, “lobscouse,” was a favourite throughout Liverpool’s heyday as a premier port metropolis, and it stays a local staple to today. Iterations range, however foundational elements typically embrace potatoes, carrots, onions, a root vegetable like rutabaga and a protein like lamb or beef. Some describe the dish as a mixture of conventional Irish stew and lapskaus, a meat-and-potato-based Scandinavian stew, which additional helps scouse’s historic maritime connection.

It’s a dish that may be each tough to explain and maybe a bit polarizing. Tour participant Tommy Fleetwood, who was born about 20 miles north of Liverpool, in Southport, is considerably ambivalent in regards to the dish.

“I’ll eat scouse, yeah,” he stated at this 12 months’s PGA Championship at Oak Hill. “Scouse is all the good stuff of the leftover dinners, and you put all that together in a pan. It’s kind of a stew.”

As as to if he’ll search it out when he’s at residence, Fleetwood demurred.

“It’s not something I necessarily have, but a lot of people do.”

For Liverpool locals and guests looking for out a meal of conventional scouse, there’s one institution that stands out among the many relaxation: Maggie May’s, a café within the coronary heart of Liverpool that’s been a mainstay on the town for almost 30 years.

The recipe supervisor Andrew Lea’s workers makes use of at Maggie May’s is courtesy of his grandmother, and is thus stored near the vest, however Lea describes the key as extra in regards to the course of than the elements. For residence cooks trying to replicate the scouse at Maggie May’s, Lea did provide one tidbit of knowledge: Proper scouse takes time.

“After you’ve made it, leave it overnight,” Lea says. “The second day is what makes it. You want it to thicken up, where the potatoes sort of break down, the meat breaks down. It brings you back to when you were a kid and evokes those memories. It’s about passion. The love for your city and the people. The connection that people have for each other. It’s unique.”

With extra reporting by Angus Murray and Jack Hirsh.

Golf.com Editor

As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of feminine varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everybody on the masthead. She can out-hustle them within the workplace, too, the place she’s primarily answerable for producing each print and on-line options, and overseeing main particular tasks, reminiscent of GOLF’s inaugural Style Is­sue, which debuted in February 2018. Her origi­nal interview sequence, “A Round With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in each within the journal and in video kind on GOLF.com.