Motorway Services Online

Motorway restaurants were rarely seen in a good light.

Egon Ronay (1915 - 2010) was a food critic whose guides to British restaurants became well-circulated in the 1950s, with many attributing his reviews to a vast improvement in the catering standards at the time.

By the 1970s Egon Ronay regularly featured motorway service stations in his reviews. Often creatively written, he rarely had a good word to say, and operators blamed much of their poor reputation (which stuck for the following 30 years) on what he had to say.

In response, service station operators argued that he was reviewing them as if they were a fine-dining restaurant, yet by this point service stations had found most customers just wanted a cheap and quick meal. He would complain about their use of frozen and convenience foods, and draw comparisons with transport cafés as if that were a bad thing. Customer satisfaction was never as bad as his comments would have you believe. Although seeing as he had visited every service station several times over, there is no doubt that he also had to digest a lot of terrible food.

His reviews formed part of the government's Prior Report into motorway service area regulation in 1978, which concluded that the quality of service area varied dramatically, but not all were as bad as their reputation would have you believe.

In 2000, Egon Ronay worked with Welcome Break to create a new menu for Food Connection, after remarking that their all-breakfast tasted like they had been hanging around all day. His advice led to the creation of Coffee Primo. In doing so, he managed to raise customer satisfaction to an impressive 70%.

Positive Review

In 1961, Egon Ronay wrote about the new Newport Pagnell services. After his first visit, he wrote:

Stop with confidence. Sensibly devised dishes which you can eat at the counters in full armchair comfort served as if you sat at a traditional restaurant table. The other room was neat and appetising whenever I ate there and has tables too. Charges are very reasonable.

Occasionally good words were spoken. In 1990 Ronay said that Trusthouse Forte were "the stars", while in 1972 he spoke highly of Harthill and Tebay. In 2000 he again spoke highly of Tebay, as well as Magor.

1995 Sample

By the 1990s, Egon Ronay's criticisms were at their harshest, and service areas had almost become resistant to it.

He complained that he had to spit out a Yorkshire pudding at Sedgemoor because it was "pigsswill", and among the worst food he had encountered for 30 years. He described Gordano's steak and kidney pie as "having the consistency of axle grease".

1977 National Review

As an example of his work, Egon Ronay's 1977 service station reviews are included below:

Services	Verdict	Notes
Anderton	poor	"the atmosphere is pleasant even if the food is not"
Aust	appalling	"tomato soup had a striking resemblance to gloss paint"
Birch	poor
Bothwell	appalling	"no obvious effort had been made at presentation"
Burton West	appalling
Burtonwood	acceptable
Charnock Richard	poor	"not fit for human consuption"
Corley	poor
Exeter	appalling	temporary facilities
Fleet	acceptable/poor
Forton	appalling	"an insult to one's taste buds"
Frankley	acceptable
Gordano	poor
Hamilton	poor	original building
Harthill	poor/appalling	original building
Hartshead Moor	poor
Heston	poor
Hilton Park	poor
Leicester Forest East	borderline acceptable/poor
Leigh Delamere	acceptable
Keele	appalling	"the public wisely fixed their own boycott"
Killington Lake	poor	original building
Knutsford	acceptable/appalling	"food is not arranged with any idea of presentation"
Medway	poor
Membury	just acceptable
Michaelwood	appalling
Newport Pagnell	just acceptable
Rownhams	acceptable	temporary facilities
Sandbach	poor	"doughnuts like a cannon ball"
Scratchwood	poor
Southwaite	poor
Strensham	acceptable/poor
Taunton Deane	poor
Tebay West	poor	"all is pleasant until you get to your food"
Toddington	acceptable/poor
Trowell	good/acceptable	"food is almost good on occasion"
Washington	appalling	"tea like dishwater"
Watford Gap	poor	"peas nasty"
Woodall	moderate/poor
Woolley Edge	poor