Heston Didn’t Save Little Chef

Today we drove from Manchester to Bognor to attend our Butlins ambassador weekend break. We managed to drive most of the way with no complaints but about an hour away from Butlins, as we were driving down the A34 the girls and hubby started to complain about being hungry.

We spotted a service station ahead and decided that it was a good place to stop to fill our bellys and change drivers.The services had a Little chef so we were under the impression that we could get some nice wholesome food for a decent price.

The services itself were like stepping back in time, all of a sudden we found ourselves back in the 1980’s. The toilets hadn’t been updated since then and neither had the flooring or layout.

We were impressed to find that the children could eat for £1 with each paying adult and thankfully so as at over £4 for a plate of macaroni cheese it would have ended up costing us a fortune.

Unfortunately things went from bad to worse as we were told we couldn’t have the lasagne or pie as the oven didn’t work but they could do a jacket potato. That alone should have raised my suspicions but by this point the kids were becoming impatient so we quickly ordered.

When Elizabeth’s planet spaghetti arrived I was surprised to find that it wasn’t meatballs as per the menu but was a small portion of what looked suspiciously like tinned spaghetti bolognese. Now don’t get me wrong Elizabeth likes tinned spaghetti bolognese and when she has demanded spaghetti for the third day in the row I am not adverse to feeding it to her occasionally but that is my choice. I do not expect to pay for that sort of thing in a restaurant and I certainly wouldn’t expect to pay over £4 for the pleasure. Alison’s macaroni cheese was no better. I was unable to determine if it was frozen rubbish or tinned crap but whatever it was it certainly was not fresh. I mean really its pasta and cheese sauce, it is one of the quickest and easiest meals you can cook so I would never expect anything less than fresh no matter where I was.

As we discussed the girls food we sat and waited an additional ten minutes for ours. The burgers were nice and the salad was well dressed but the meal was let down by the jacket potato. I put some margerine in mine and wondered quietly to myself why it hadn’t melted. I thought no more about it. That was until I tried to eat it. My jacket potato was about the same temperature as a fridge, Hubby’s was the same.

After some investigation it turns out that the jacket potatoes are bought in frozen, they are then microwaved before being served. If I had known that I would never have bought one. A jacket potato should not be frozen. It is a potato it doesn’t take any amount of skill to cook so why don’t just cook them onsite?

We ended up paying over £27 for a cup of coffee, two cokes, a water, 2 children’s (tinned/frozen)meals, 2 burgers and 2 frozen jacket potatoes.

I think I know why everything is bought in premade. The only thing Little Chef cares about is their profit margins, unfortunately you won’t make any money if you keep losing customers through such poor quality food and ridiculous prices.

I for one will never stop at a Little chef again and I would recommend that you don’t either.

Heston tried to help you and he would have succeed if you listened to his advice to simplify your menu, use fresh ingredients and actually cook food on site.