19th. July. En Route to Bolton Priory.
Stopped at the OK Diner in Carlton-on-Trent on the A1M for lunch. The placed looked vaguely familiar inside, and I recognised it as a remodelled Little Chef which had been a convenient toileting stop. There are a few Ok diners in the UK now, and they seek to model themselves on 1950's American diners of the 1950's. Check out their website at
http://www.okdiners.com/ . Basically the website tells you that you will have an American diner experience.
The appearance is an immediate fit to expectations, and the fitting are like the films and media, a spatting of typical road signs, and there is also 1950's rock music as a background.
Now, over the past 30 years, I have eaten at many American Diners in the US ranging from roadside stops, to big city breakfast type diners, and the American experience in OK diners stops at the appearance. The food is definitely British, and the quality and quantity and pricing bear little relationship to the American experience. As I did not want a burger or hot dog or hot wings, I ordered the breakfast bagel with scrambled eggs and smoked salmon at £5.95 (I have never paid that much for much more in US breakfast outlets even in dollars. In fact I have never spent more than $5 per person in a diner (based on 2012 prices) and have usually staggered out full enough to not need lunch.
As you can probably tell from the picture, the egg was dry and somewhat overdone. I suspect a microwave egg here. The bagel was dry and no butter was offered (you usually get sides of butter and jelly in American American diners) and the portion size was indifferent. A very un-American experience at UK motorway prices. The plethora of positive comments on the website suggests a consensus view that does not match mine. The service was OK, but the thing is, if the staff don't have American accents, then it just does not feel right to be addressed by the local Lincolnshire voices. Food was therefore mod satis but only just, and service was ok, but no better. The moral of this story is 'I would rather starve than eat at motorway stops'.
Gets a 7 on the CHOF scale.
May I just say it is not a remodelled Little Chef at all, it was actually built there and no the staff dont have American accents, nor do they have Lincolnshire ones either as most of the staff come from Nottinghamshire which is where this diner is situated.
ReplyDeleteKind Regards
Former Supervisor
Thanks for your feedback. I stand corrected. I could have sworn it was the ex Little Chef, as the layout seemed the same, including where the toilets are.
DeleteOn the location, yes, I see I got the location from the website, and chose the wrong one.
I still maintain that importing the concept is limited by the fact that the American Diner experience cannot be duplicated elsewhere. See my piece in October about Denny's versus Ihop, and Bobby Jo's later on.