Little Chef wipes Heston's dishes off menus pioneered in Hampshire

The British restaurant chain has reportedly struck his quirky-style cuisine off their menus because they claim their customers could not stomach his fancy food.

Despite being awarded three coveted Michelin stars – the highest accolade of the gastronomic world – Heston’s creations have just proved too extravagant for the chain.

In 2008 he filmed Big Chef, Little Chef, a documentary for Channel 4 which focused on his efforts to revamp Little Chef’s restaurant on the A303 at Popham, between Winchester and Basingstoke.

The restaurant chain allowed him to change the menu and the decor, which saw the introduction of new dishes such as ox cheeks and breakfast options such as strawberry and orange flower-water yoghurt.

He added a twist to fish and chips by serving the dish with a small bottle containing essences of pickled onion and the interior was redesigned with urinals that played recordings of Spike Milligan reciting nonsense verse while in use.

The changes were later introduced in other locations but Little Chef says the experiment has not proved a success and wants to bring the focus back to its traditional dishes, such as their famous Olympic breakfasts.

A spokesman for Little Chef said: “The problem is that no one wants his food. None of his dishes are popular.

“As of Monday we’ve dropped all his dishes from the ten restaurants where his food was available.

“He’s been wiped off the menu.”

A spokesman for Mr Blumenthal said: “His ideas were well received and the Popham Little Chef concept was extremely successful, incredibly popular with the public and was awarded a listing in the British Good Food Guide.”

The success of Popham saw his ideas rolled out to other locations, but a lack of investment was blamed for failing to reach the standards Popham achieved and soon after Heston ended the advisory role he had taken on three years after making the documentary.