I don't care if the Chef is Little, he's still awful! (Little Chef)

Member Name: i_am_joy

Product:	Little Chef
Date:	25/08/09 (135 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A lovely waitress

Disadvantages: Expensive, appalling food, uninspired decor, terrible service after my food complaint

It's very rare I eat in Little Chef as I find the prices to be extraordinarily high for such a basic restaurant chain, considering the meals aren't even anything special I do baulk somewhat at paying restaurant prices for café food. However, a couple of weeks ago my sister received some complimentary vouchers for Little Chef so after shopping we decided to pop in for a bite to eat on the way home.

I wasn't impressed at all, not one little bit. While the restaurant was clean, the food I felt left a lot to be desired and the restaurant was woefully understaffed with the same girl having so many different jobs to do that I felt quite dizzy watching her flying around!

We both ordered a starter, main course and dessert from the main menu. Little Chef also have a breakfast menu which is served until 11am and a children's menu which is available daily.

My prawn cocktail was very nice, I must admit. While small the prawns were juicy and flavoursome, served in a tangy Marie Rose sauce with a slice of brown bread on the side and a small side salad. I thought the dish was equal in quality to any I've had in a pub restaurant, although I don't let this fact blow me away as it's not exactly the height of culinary supremacy to be able to mix some prawns and sauce together and pop it into a bowl!

I have had bad experiences with Little Chef steak in the past so steered clear on this visit, opting for gammon instead. This is where the problems began. The first gammon steak brought to me was so rubbery that I struggled to cut it let alone chew it so I sent it back and asked for another. To give her her dues, the waitress was very apologetic and agreed with me that my meal was completely unacceptable. After a wait of around ten minutes (during which time my sister had finished her meal) another meal was brought over - only it wasn't a new meal, it was the same gammon steak which by now had been almost cremated as the 'chef' (I use the word loosely) tried injecting a little life into it by warming it through a bit more. And before anyone asks how I knew the gammon was the same piece, well, it was elementary my dear Watsons - the piece I had cut out was still missing and there were various score marks on the meat which I had made previously in an attempt to find a bit of edible gammon! Disgraceful and, yes, more rubbery than ever!

I gave up on the gammon and asked the harassed waitress if I could change my order to scampi and chips as I find that's usually a relatively safe bet in most eating establishments. When it arrived it was pleasant enough, rather non-descript in eating out terms and nothing I couldn't have prepared to a nicer standard at home. The meal just felt like it has been too hastily prepared; the scampi was probably frozen and deep fried as needed, the peas weren't of the best quality and while the chips were tasty and fresh they were exceedingly greasy and left unappetising drops of grease on my plate. It was an average scampi meal, that's all.

I'd requested a side order of coleslaw and was pleasantly surprised by this. I had initially been taken aback at a pile of coleslaw costing 95p, but it was worth every penny and as sad as this may seem was actually the highlight of my visit! Large pieces of shredded cabbage, onion and carrot were beautifully married together in a creamy dressing. The dressing had been spiced somehow but I cannot quite put my finger on what the magic ingredient was, although I'm sure I spied some mustard seeds as I was eating so very possibly it was simply a spoonful of this condiment stirred through to create this very yummy side order.

For dessert I went for Bread and Butter Pudding and, like the scampi, this was nice enough but nothing special. It was obviously home made, the problem was that the person who made wasn't terribly skilled in the art of comfort puddings. The textures of the pudding were all good; crispy sugar on top, soggy bread and a creamy sauce, but the flavour simply wasn't as well rounded as it should have been and this left the pudding resembling (flavour wise at least) something taken out of the freezer and reheated.

My sister had Tomato & Basil soup, fish and chips and the same Bread and Butter Pudding as me for dessert. I didn't sample any of her food but she commented several times about how dull and uninspired the fish was and also left a good half of her dessert - which is most unlike my sister as I have very rarely seen her refuse anything sweet in our lives! She did say how tasty the soup was and it certainly looked thick and creamy, perhaps Little Chef should rebrand themselves as 'Starters Our Forte' as this was really the only course they really excelled in during our meal!

It's not even as though Little Chef is a cheap establishment to eat in, in fact it's more expensive even than eating in a nice pub restaurant. Our main meals were around £8 each, the starters roughly £4 and our lacklustre dessert was £3.95. By the time our drinks were added we were faced with a bill of over £40 - and this in what is essentially a greasy spoon with a more pleasing décor! Honestly, we have a pub restaurant locally where we sometimes eat and this costs us just half of this amount for far better freshly cooked food and a much nicer atmosphere.

Speaking of which, isn't the setting of a Little Chef restaurant so, well, sterile? Most branches you go into will all have the same dull neutral colour scheme, the same cheap furniture and practically identical staff - and there are never enough of them working! The waitress during our most recent visit was absolutely lovely, nothing was too much trouble for her and I don't really envisage her working there for much longer. She was openly critical of the way the restaurant was being run and seemed genuinely embarrassed by how appalling my gammon was and the way my complaint was dealt with in the kitchen.

Of course, this review is based on just one visit to Little Chef but honestly I have visited dozens of different branches of the chain over the years and have always been disappointed by the food and also the cost involved with visiting such a run of the mill establishment.

This was the final straw though and Little Chef has now been added to the list of 'life is too short to eat at.....' restaurants I keep in my head.

Summary: An appalling experience in Little Chef - not for the first time unfortunately.