Green tea trifle with bacon and eggs? Ah, it must be the new Little (Michelin) Chef

Tom Whipple

Graphic: the new-look Little Chef breakfast

Heston Blumethal is the three-star Michelin chef famous for creating bacon-and-egg ice-cream, quail jelly and snail porridge. Little Chef does all-day breakfasts, burgers and chips and chunky syrup-soaked pancakes topped off with a vaguely disconcerting feeling that the 1970s never ended. They were never the most likely of culinary pairings.

Yesterday, though, the Popham branch of the struggling chain of roadside restaurants relaunched itself with a new menu designed by Blumenthal.

Standing at the door of the restaurant’s kitchen, a few feet away from the westbound A303, he was keen to reassure customers of Little Chef, which has been feeding Britain’s motorists for 50 years, that with this project he was sticking to the basics. “People always associate me with snail porridge,” he said. “I do lots of other stuff: this is Little Chef, not Little Heston.”

Yet, the fried bread and hash browns are gone. “I had to make some bold moves,” Blumenthal, 42, said. And there is more than one taste of his molecular gastronomy on the new Little Chef menu. The trifle comes soaked in green tea and topped with popping candy, the muffins are filled with cream cheese, and braised ox cheeks make perhaps their first appearance in a roadside diner. The fish and chips, meanwhile, arrive with a perfume dispenser labelled “The smell of the chippy”. It is in, fact “the liquid contents of a pickled onion jar”, Blumenthal proudly explained.

Blumenthal, the head chef of the Michelin-starred Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, was brought in to help to revive the chain after more than a decade of chronic underinvestment was followed by near-bankruptcy in January last year.

The restaurant’s decor has been revamped by Ab Rogers, a designer who worked on Tate Modern, and the lavatories have undergone radical reimagination in the hope of attracting those customers who pop in only to use the loo. Kitchen noises are piped in around the stalls, synthetic coffee aromas are pumped in and rousing musical tunes are played whenever customers arrive.

“The coffee smells like Bakewell tart,” a confused man in the next urinal tells The Times, before he triggers a sensor and is drowned out by a musical rendition of “food, glorious food”.

If successful, the new-look Little Chef, which is be tried only at the Popham branch, near Micheldever, Hampshire, could soon be introduced across all the chain’s 177 diners. The restaurant chain’s new owners hope that it is a change that will raise its fortunes nationally.

The sign outside says “Little Chef has changed, pop in and see us”, but there is still a hint of the Little Chef of yore: the reception stocks AA road maps and bags of Minstrels. The interior is retro diner chic, rather than high-end gastro pub. The all-day Olympic breakfasts, a staple that Blumenthal described as “the least broken part of the menu”, remain.

But where once the talk was of monster portions and extra sausages, the scrambled eggs now come with smoked salmon and the keywords are “organic” and “sustainable”. The bacon is Wiltshire cured, the eggs free-range and the black pudding is Ramsay of Carluke. “My idea was to caress the original menu and just make it better,” Blumenthal said. “One of the hardest parts though is the compromises – keeping the food under budget. We don’t have that problem at the Fat Duck.”

He was also briefed that all main meals must be served and finished in 25 minutes – half an hour if the customers have dessert – something that the restaurant failed to achieve on launch night.

Peter Ward, whose investment company R Capital now owns the chain, hopes that the changes could attract a younger clientele. “People have a lot of affection and nostalgia for Little Chef, but there is a lost generation,” he said. “Some people haven’t come here since the mid-1990s.”

A Channel 4 spokesman said it has been making a documentary about the project, entitled Big Chef, Little Chef, which would be broadcast in January.

Also on the menu

Scottish mussels £4.95 A pot of rope-grown Scottish mussels in a white-wine sauce, served with brown bread

Healthy strawberry yoghurt and granola breakfast £4.85 Organic, fat-free pro-biotic yoghurt layered with strawberry nm compote and crunchy granola

Braised ox cheeks £9.75 Slow-cooked for 72 hours, served with mashed potatoes

Trifle £3.75 A layer of green-tea soaked sponge, blackcurrant jam, custard and fresh whipped cream, finished with sprinkles of chocolate rice crispies, popping candy and crumble

For more information on Little Chef click here