On your travels, you have probably passed a number of Little Chefs...

The above quotation is from a Little Chef advert (circa 1980s) in which a gijinka/homunculus of every terrible and obnoxious BRI'ISH political cartoon ever drawn drives an automobile down a path flanked by the aforementioned "Little Chefs" and is endeared by the lukewarm, microwaved food-like concotions presented to him.

What is Little Chef?

I'm glad you asked. It was a chain of roadside restaraunts that once dotted the roadsides of the cursed isles upon which the sovereignty of the United Kingdom lay. It was founded by Sam Alper (pictured below) the photo of the middle aged-white man himself, brandishing his teeth that melted into a mess of emalgamated enamel that was the result of prolonged exposure to microwave radiation. The chain served the BEST scrambled eggs (that were prepared by the ready-scrambled eggs in frozen bags being microwaved upon request) and dry mechanically recovered mystery meat! [Citation needed] It was based on the business model of roadside diners that became widespread in the United States following World War 2, with ol' Alper the Alper seeing them in his visit across the pond and deciding to bring this concept eastward, across the atlantic.

He was totally not an Americaboo.

Probably.

The man, the sculptor, the viticulturist, the Microwave Messiah himself-Sam Alper. Notice that his teeth weren't quite as seamlessly fused at the time of this photograph being taken.

Little Chef seems to be fondly remembered by humans who were young in the 1970s, recalling it was where they stopped off with their families to eat microwaved food matter on the way to their "'OLIDAYS IN GRIMSBEH" and fondly reminiscing about their soggy microwaved pancakes and waterlogged scrambled eggs. That said, I also recall reading and hearing a number of accounts about the chain being terrible value for money in being often at-best mediocre, overpriced food (earning Little Chef the over time increasingly common derisive moniker of "Little Thief"). This was a reputation that only became more and more perpetuated as the years went on.

It was popular until about the late 1970s-early 1980s onwards, when more fast food-orientated competition like McDonald's began to take hold. Somehow despite the reputation it gained, which only grew on it like a yeast infection upon a perennially-damp ball of flesh and (some) fat and muscle in the years that followed, this chain somehow held on until it finally went out of business in 2018. This was after many failed attempts to revitalise the brand, perhaps most notably of all including a documentary series about Little Chef hiring a well known British (actual) chef (whom is famous for making dishes often regarded as subversive, such as bacon and egg ice cream and snail porridge) to rescue the failing chain. Suffice to say, it didn't work.

The mascot, Fat Charlie, was instantaneously banished to the realm of discarded plastic cake toppers and brine-soaked sand (which happens to be where the consciousness of amphibians that overwinter astral project into) upon the closure of the final Little Chef branch. The microwaves had finished their onomatopoeic hums for the final time, as the once perennially miserable roadside restaraunts became their sepulchres...that is of course not the case for a surprising number of former branches becoming sex shops, due to their ideal remote locations (please know that this is completely true and I am not making this shit up).

I went there a few times as a kid (in the early 2000s, mostly) and it was one of the best worst things I experienced from that time. Retrospectively, that is.

Things that were memorable about Little Chef to me, the Bugfox lecturing you on this shit!!!!

• It had a distinctive smell that felt oddly comforting but also depressing??? Like a combination of freshly washed and dried laundry, cooking aparatuses and ambiguous bodily fluids of some kind????
• I remember as a larvalkit, my dad and I were together one evening and he offered to take me out for dinner to a restaraunt of my choice as a treat, so I suggested Little Chef with a great degree of enthusiasm (I don't even recall why). He adamantly refused because he hated it and because the nearest branch was located at a service station on a major motorway road and we'd have to drive out there...understandable, in retrospect. Nonetheless I was somehow very disappointed with my dad not wanting to go there!!
• Everyone there always looked extremely unhappy; not just the staff members but the customers somehow moreso, considering they at least got to leave when they finished and paid for their "food" (okay, if they finished their microwaved fries and burger, I realise that's a big "if" though). That said, given how overpriced Little Chef was...yeah okay, I can see why the customers all seemed profoundly unhappy. Dismal, mildewy hell.
• The toilets were always encrusted in shit and never cleaned. At all
• They had a promotional tie-in campaign for the 1999 film adapation of the E.B. White book Stuart Little (and another in 2002 for the sequel released that year). I recall it being advertised on television when I was a tiny larvalkit. For this reason I have always associated the aforementioned movie with my mind emulating the smell of a typical Little Chef branch, with a hint of salty, oily fermentation overlaying it.
• Of the few times I went to a branch of Little Chef, I recall in the final instance I ate the driest, most desiccated "chicken burger" that could ever plausibly exist. Also there were steak cut chips (the only mildly enjoyable part of the entire meal) and coleslaw that tasted unpleasant.

Thoughts about the mascot, Fat Charlie

I always thought he was a rotund, plump ghost, for some reason. What else do you want me to say about him?