Heston!

I've been starved for chef Heston Blumenthal's presence on TV since the end of his last BBC series, "In Search of Perfection". Imagine my excitement when I saw that Blumenthal is returning to the Food Network Canada tomorrow night with a new program, "Big Chef Takes on Little Chef".

At first, I thought the show looked like a copy of Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares" but it's quite distinct in its format. Instead of revamping a different restaurant every week, Blumenthal will be trying to revitalize a dwindling chain of roadside diners in the UK called Little Chef. I suppose the Canadian equivalent would be rescuing Tim Horton's if it had gone into decline. Little Chef was a childhood favorite of Blumenthal's. In its heyday it was ubiquitous and well known among the the Brits; today it is disappearing into obscurity and its cuisine has much left to be desired. See here the intro to the new series, in which Blumenthal samples the latest that Little Chef has to offer:

Big Chef takes on Little Chef from Neil Pollock on Vimeo.