The master of molecular gastronomy is swapping haute cuisine for motorway munchables in an attempt to help one of the nation's most iconic eateries in Big Chef Takes on Little Chef. Charlie Cottrell travelled to the flagship restaurant at Popham to meet up with Heston, the night before his new menu hit the kitchens
The fish and chips comes with a 'smell of the chippy' atomiser of the juice from pickled onions so, when you spray it, it's like you're eating in a chip shop. We've also overhauled the loos. They used to be terrible. People used to come in to the restaurant just to use the toilets, then leave. We want to capture them so they come into eat as well. We're pumping the smell of roast coffee into the loos, and we've got kitchen sounds going in there too.
I've got a team of eight staff here and the idea is they'll train the new team. People are going to all head to Little Chef and the staff have to be able to cope with that.
When I said I was doing this people said, 'Why on earth are you doing that?'. If I'm totally honest, my excitement going into this was too ideological. I thought I'd get a perfumier in, a lighting technologist, sound engineers. It was like climbing Everest when I should have been taking one step. The practicalities of running a place from 7am to 7pm, seven days a week meant having three shifts of staff, that's 24 chefs per day. The cost of that meant we couldn't do it without driving the price of the dishes up and it was key that we kept the menu about the same price.
The online fans are hardcore! But there are not enough of them. We have to strike a balance between getting more people through the door and not peeing off the fanbase.
[Laughs] One minute I'm creating a 4½ hour dining experience at the Fat Duck, the next minute I'm having an intense debate over whether to serve tomatoes or baked beans with the breakfast. The amount of man hours that went into that decision is amazing.
In the end we went with tomatoes. If you want beans on the side you can have them.
I've learnt a lot. Like, how difficult it really is to run a restaurant like this. There comes a point where you have to use the 'compromise' word. At the Fat Duck, that word doesn't exist.
The scale is so different - it's a different world. Suddenly I'm working with two tonnes of fish batter. And dealing with big companies has been a learning experience. I called someone back at this one supplier and they said 'Sorry. He doesn't work here'. I said, 'I just spoke to him 20 minutes ago!'.
Actual, pit-of-the-stomach sick. Throughout the project, there have been genuine, sleepless nights getting it done because of the sheer enormity of the task.
It might be romantic but I'd like people to decide to come here as a restaurant not just be somewhere they stop off at because it's there.
No. When we finish filming I won't have any involvement practically and no financial involvement. But I don't want to walk away and the whole thing fall apart. I give them the model and they take it from there. There's a chance they might say, 'We want the old Little Chef back, thank you very much!'.
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