Big Chef, Little chef..

Agreed, Ian Pegler was a idiot. His views were all over the shop - a typical failure of senior management who are well past understanding what the real customers want.

Asking for £6 dishes that return a profit, yet with the ingredients and flair that Heston puts into his amazing dishes for £125 a head at The Fat Duck? Might as well rename it to Big Chef, Utter Failboat.

So are Heston's menus in Little Chefs everywhere now?
 
JoeMama said:
However, I don't know what Heston was thinking trying to introduce such an off-beat menu to a place like Little Chef. Surely he would be better off sticking to classic dishes cooked properly and maybe with a small twist; something that the greasy spooners that seem to frequent Little Chef wouldn't immediately frown upon. His two chefs also came across as unnecessarily arrogant.
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I agree with this point.
But at the same time, they picked Heston for the job, so they're going to get his style of cooking at the end of the day.

Ramsay definitely more suited :)
 
Although i agree "off-beat" isn't really for little chef, that seems to be what the plonker in charge of the company wanted - even if it wasn't what his customers wanted. I actually thought heston's ideas were good, but they wouldn't have been suitable for the current clientele. The question is, do you really want to keep the current clientele? I mean, if someone's happy enough to eat the awful mess they have been serving up day after day, should you really be that worried about alienating them with a new menu?

Having said all that, what part of his menu was off-beat?

With regards to the pots/pans/cooking properly - that would have required a bigger overhall with the training and equipment, but i agree it's an avenue they should have explored. I'm not entirely sure why introducing water baths (which are going to cost about £1K) is feasible but pots and pans aren't - i guess it's because they are foolproof to use.

As for Ramsay - Yes, he would have come in, swore a lot and got them back to basics with the cooking and food - but what he wouldn't bring is the kind of ideas that would inject the kind of life to the brand that it needs.

Anyway, looking forward to the next few days, certainly made good TV. Oh, and how much would i like to see Blumenthal ram some blue sky thinking up where the sun doesn't shine. If he mentions those words again...
 
oli collett said:
With regards to the pots/pans/cooking properly - that would have required a bigger overhall with the training and equipment, but i agree it's an avenue they should have explored. .
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Trouble is without pots and pans, I can't see how they can turn anything out other than a roadside van.

They don't need to keep there clientèle, but people aren't going to go to a little chef for fancy stuff either. It needs to be fast basic good English food. You can order and get in minutes. you don't want to be waiting when you have to sit for hours in a car. But there cooking standards at the moment are so terriable, did you see the eggs and the chicken on the mix grill. why anyone would pay for that..

As said they got Heston, I think he is the wrong choice, however after watching the reviews of the dinners I think he might turn out what they want.

Did you see the preview, where Heston walks out the meeting. :D
But still i'm gob smacked that weezling dip **** has made a supervisor job let alone where he is.
 
AcidHell2 said:
Trouble is without pots and pans, I can't see how they can turn anything out other than a roadside van.

They don't need to keep there clientèle, but people aren't going to go to a little chef for fancy stuff either. It needs to be fast basic good English food. You can order and get in minutes. you don't want to be waiting when you have to sit for hours in a car. But there cooking standards at the moment are so terriable, did you see the eggs and the chicken on the mix grill. why anyone would pay for that..

As said they got Heston, I think he is the wrong choice, however after watching the reviews of the dinners I think he might turn out what they want.

Did you see the preview, where Heston walks out the meeting. :D
But still i'm gob smacked that weezling dip **** has made a supervisor job let alone where he is.
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I knew from the moment the program started and he stated "ever since i was little i always wanted to work at little chef" that this was going to make good TV.

Oh - and on the subject of the head chef's at the fat duck coming across as arrogant - put yourself in their position. It's hardly going to be easy is it? I was quite surprised at how restrained they were when the waiters were coming back smug because someone had returned one of the dishes!
 
They could have acted more professionally IMO. You can be self-confident without showing arrogance. They know they are head chefs of a 3 Michelin star restaurant; that speaks for itself.
 
the little chef big boss is a total idiot

his managers at some of the restraunts visited to tonight are also total idiots

the boss wants something fancy and 'weird'

the managers want something that can be made in 2 minutes

heston gave the something in the middle and they both did nothing but moan about it :/
 
This show is completely laughable; it's a bloody farce. Take one of the most left-field chefs in the world and team him with a third rate manager who has clearly no idea about running a restaurant business, put in place by a company that picked up the Little Chef brand at rock bottom price and expect success? The Channel 4 execs must be wetting themselves.

Blumenthal said at the start that if he fails it could be embarrassing, Heston mate: it already is. If one of the finest chefs of his generation thinks he can serve a hotpot with lambs tongue and sweetbreads to the Little Chef clientèle he is deluded, at best. At worst, he has sold his soul for TV money. 90% of the population would baulk at the idea of eating offal (hell, I would, and I trained as a chef for 2 years).

It's Jeremy Kyle with food, and I am more than a little disappointed in Blumenthal.
 
I honestly couldn't understand the manager that was complaining about scrambled eggs in a bag that takes maybe 3 minutes, compared the 30 second micro-rubbish. no one is in that much of a rush for food. if you can't wait 5 minutes for something decent and hot, got buy a ******* pot noodle in the petrol garage.

from the sample of employees i've seen on that show, they all look like morons. The head boss is your typical upper management nonce, who also thinks he's a food critic for the mail on bloody sunday.

Heston isn't to everyones taste, personally i don't think he suits little chef. people these days don't want nor need to drive up the motorway for tea, unless they are passing by. and the idea of turning it back into a restraunt is just ridiculous, its a diner. it should serve pub food for when there are no pubs.

Although i did like it when heston told the boss to come get a table at his restraunt for £250 a pop. shut him up anyway.
 
What a complete twit Ian Pegler is, I couldn't believe the rubbish he was coming out with.. a mixture of management babble and complete nonsensical rubbish !

Heston is completely the wrong chef for that job though, the type of food that is wanted is more in Ramsey's book, Heston is so obviously going to create stuff that costs more. How arrogant where those two chef's ? there was no need for there attitude.

Compuslive viewing though :D
 
I thought the answer to little chef's problems was pretty obvious - less food, better quality. If I ever go to a little chef again then it will most likely be for an all day breakfast. That Olympic breakfast is too big and the sausages looked awful, and the microwaved scrambled eggs an abomination. If nothing else Little Chef should take Heston's idea of boil in the bag scrambled egg - maybe leave out the tea and salmon though.
 
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MoratJG said:
Blumenthal said at the start that if he fails it could be embarrassing, Heston mate: it already is. If one of the finest chefs of his generation thinks he can serve a hotpot with lambs tongue and sweetbreads to the Little Chef clientèle he is deluded, at best. At worst, he has sold his soul for TV money. 90% of the population would baulk at the idea of eating offal (hell, I would, and I trained as a chef for 2 years).
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I agree, I respect Heston lots, but he needs to remember that Little Chef is convince food not fine dining.

scorza said:
I thought the answer to little chef's problems was pretty obvious - less food, better quality.
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I also agree. That and decent coffee and tea.
 
I think the point of the boil in the bag eggs were to find a way of making better scrambled eggs with their existing facilities, that's why they showed him trying out other methods. Improve their existing product at little to no cost.

I am of te opinion that this programme has been generated by Little Chef and HB was called in by them. It would be interesting to find out if this is true or not.

Presumably Little Chef has closed all the non-profitable stores and the only ones left are the ones that used to make them any money? The restaurants they showed seemed to have no problems packing in the numbers and the people there were happy with the food as it was. It seems strange that the upper management want to change the food radically. It seems strange the store managers can see that their clientelle are perfectly happy with what's there already but there's no communication between them and the upper management. I think we can see why the company got itself into trouble.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
I agree, I respect Heston lots, but he needs to remember that Little Chef is convince food not fine dining.

I also agree. That and decent coffee and tea.
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Exactly, people's demands have changed and most places have adapted to suit, but not Little Chef evidently. They are still a 1980 Wimpy grill. People want cappucino and latte now, not filter coffee any more. It doesn't even matter if it's dire coffee they use, people just want froth on the top.
 
AcidHell2 said:
did anyone watch this.

How the hell did that Ian Pegler ever get in a position to run a company. What a freaking idiot.. Wants fireworks on a £6 menu.
Not sure Heston Blumentha is taking it the right way either. He's right in taking it to English classics. but they don't need a twist.

get pots and pans back in the kitchen and server traditional English menus. like all day breakfast, steaks, lasagne, currys, stews, hotpots, salads and the like. Just use some decent ingredients and more importantly cook it properly.

But again that Ian Pegler what a ****** idiot..
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Took the words right out of my mouth. Myself and a mate were in histerics, that guy is a complete tool.

Everything he tried he made joies at..... Too much salt this and that, then his minions just followed. Complete tool, heston should stick a firework us his ***.

O and 5000, toooooot :D:D:D
 
Watched this last night and thought it was great seems like Little Chef needs food like what you would find in a JD Weatherspoons or Yates something like that cheapish pub food.
 
I'm just amazed that a complete idiot like the Little Chef boss can get to a senior management position - completely clueless, and did nothing but spout meaningless 'management speak'. The way he also tried to talk like a food critic when they sampled the new menu also made me cringe.
 
Jonny69 said:
Exactly, people's demands have changed and most places have adapted to suit, but not Little Chef evidently. They are still a 1980 Wimpy grill. People want cappucino and latte now, not filter coffee any more. It doesn't even matter if it's dire coffee they use, people just want froth on the top.
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er do they really?
 
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