To not care about little chef and think out of all the T.V cooks Heston is the worst one for this job???

[Kimi]

Poor man, Jamie has his unemployed, Huge has his chickens, Phil has this morning, Gordan has his F word, poor old Heston gets stuck with this heap of tripe.

Jamie would have motivated the existing staff while raising the quality of the food, Gordan would have screamed some self respect in to them, Hugh would have got them rearing chickens out back.

Heston i a very accomplished cook, a bit of a mad genius, but not the man to pull a greasy spoon off the bankrupt heap.
18 stone lorry drivers don't care if their eggs have been brushed with tyme oil for crying out loud.

I hate little chef anyhow, tacky places, poor food, rude staff, and this show just makes me hate it more.

lol. yanbu. I don't like little chef - mcdonald's type food but at double the price and with slowish service.

LC has gone down the pan IMO for quite a while - as Heston says in the past it was a good place to eat but the management have not made changes the places are just run down, tatty, filthy loos, crap food and service. There are clearly staff who have been there ages and must be totally dis heartened by what they see and mgt is clearly to blame. The places are in good locations and they need to be tidied up - put on simple good quality food fairly basic food - which is what Heston is advocating. I just wouldn't trust the MD as far as I could throw him - awful person. Maybe Heston isn't an obvious choice but he's pretty much on the same path as the OP says but maybe in a different style. A few years ago we did eat there after an early morning ferry trip back from France - thought it would be a treat for the DCs - how wrong we were - never eaten in one since but have had to do pit stops to use their "facilities" which are grim.

I agree. I haven't seen the programme, but caught one of HB's promo interviews on the radio. First off he didn't seem very convinced about the format anyway. And second, he doesn't fit the place or the style.

Also agree that LC facilities are horrible. I often stop at one just to go to the loo, and they are GRIM.

ridiculous programme. There's no way that combination is going to have any effect at all. Thought the MD was a nut-job too

I think Heston was properly stitched up on this one,I feel it was a marketing ploy on LC behalf.
I wouldnt trust the MD either,I actually don't see the point of bring Heston in ,if they had already preplanned the new menu

Little Chef just need to sell the basic British fast food, but with decent quality ingredients. I am sure that is what HB will end up telling the MD. When I am on a long journey, I would be quite happy to have an all day breakfast. However, I would like decent quality sausages, bacon and eggs. I would like the option of some basic lunch staples like spag bol, which my children will normally eat. Veggies need to be remembered too. I would also forget the Hawaian burger! I was stunned by the lack of cooking equiment (stove and pans) the chefs have to cook with.

People definitely need good tea/coffee and perhaps some nice cakes (for the laydees!).

YANBU

I am sick of seeing TV chefs repeatedly on 'crusades', for the benefit of us, the ignorant British Public

Can't bear any of them

I'm quite interested in it, but I feel three one-hour programs is spinning it out a bit; Gordon solves these issues in an hour on Kitchen Nightmares. I like Heston, and I find his cooking interesting, but agree that he's not the right chef for this project, as his inventiveness and creativity is stymied by the constraints of LC's customer requirements. Gordon would probably have been a better candidate for this project.

The MD of LC drives me nuts with his ridiculous management speak. He has been shifty and evasive, and if I were Heston I'd be rightly annoyed at him.

That CEO has no intention whatsoever of changing the whole of Little Chef to go with Heston's ideas; he's doing it purely for the publicity. Obviously Heston is not the man to overhaul Little Chef as, very predictably, he doesn't seem to grasp the concept of the food being PDQ as it's a roadside eatery, nor does he seem to quite understand what it is their clientelle want to eat. He's been chosen because he's well known for his 'exciting' ideas and the CEO obviously likes that sort of thing (being rather into management speak and all things flash/trendy by the looks of things). Sadly I think he's likely to find his name all over the new Little Chef menu which will have nothing to do with him and that he's been, unwittingly, hitched to the Little Chef publicity wagon.

BTW, am I the only one who was getting a strong urge to take that CEO by his ears and shake him until his teeth rattle? One more peep about 'blueskies thinking' and I think I might just flip ...

Nekabu and poshwellies are spot on, for my money. Ian Pegler (the LC MD) is getting three hours of publicity for his brand and has zero intention of letting Heston's menu be rolled out across the country.

When he refused even to allow the modified breakfast menu to be trialled in some other Little Chefs, it became utterly clear what his agenda is.

And the man's an idiot anyway - he wants fireworks and the Heston magic, and more wacky, way-out stuff - but his customers want decent quality food. Of course it would make far better tv to watch Heston trying to put Snail Porridge or Egg and Bacon icecream cooked in dry ice on the menu, and filming the resulting catastrophe in the kitchen and the restaurant.

Cynical - moi??

I thought the same, ,mummypumpkin, just back out quietly, I'm sure nobody has noticed.

I think the same , but the new one at Popham got a fab review in teh sunday times last week

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/eating_out/article5390168.ece

I'm really not a fan of Heston's food, tbh.

I don't like Little Chef, either, but I'd rather a full English there than friggin' thyroid in soup or oysters in Lancaster hotpot or scrambled eggs with all kinds of stuf I'd just rather not eat.

TheButterflyEffect, please let him know that people have the urge to throttle him when he says things like "blueskies thinking" for the nth time ...

Oh, and another good reason for choosing Heston is that most of LC's customers wouldn't think the CEO was a git for not implementing his menu as Heston (very predictably) promptly used ingredients like sweetbreads, tongue & oysters, at which an awful lot of the GBP would go "EW!".

So, 3 hours of publicity (+ trailers), one LC that's had the treatment and is getting good reviews (and lots of press attention) and the rest of the LCs carry on as normal but with Heston's name attached to their new menu. The CEO may be obnoxious but (unless the LC customers are repulsed by the lack of culinary ability shown by their kitchen staff) I'd say it looks like he's done what he set out to achieve.

We watched it last night poor Heston, he is being set up, there just using him to market little chef.
Little chef is crap greasy spoon food,i agree with pp saying they dont care what is being put infront of them as long as its fast and full of crap.

thebutterflyeffect,dh came home with a corker of management guff from his manager last week..

manager " I need to cascade you some information"

dh "Sorry!?" ..then realises boss means he's going to email dh.

CEO reminds me of that-

heston was a bizarre choice for this project and wass such a blatant marketing ruse that he deserves to end up with (snail) egg on his face.

Big cook, little cook is better fun!

Heston Blumenthal and motorway services. Hmm, not an obvious combination. I didn't see the programme, but I get the gist of it from what has been said here. It's all marketing guff.

LC has been crap for years. It is massively overpriced and grotty.