THE BULGARIAN VERSION OF LITTLE CHEF (R.I.P.)

April 2024. Sofia to Plovdiv.

We awoke on Tuesday to find the temperature had plummeted from 31 to 18 degrees. Our coach driver told us joyfully that Monday had been a record temperature (by some 6 degrees), so some folk welcome their global warming doom.

Mrs RM had done a masterful job planning hotels, buses and “must-sees” on our 4 day Bulgarian adventure, and I had complete confidence the promised coach would arrive to take us east along the un-potholed A1 to Plovdiv from right outside Sofia’s St Alexander Nevski,

but less confident in the ability of my bladder to last the whole trip, mercifully broken just outside the city in “The Valley of Roses and Ancient Kings” (honest) with a stop at a Shell garage and attached “Happy” diner.

Our driver told us the stop was for our benefit, heavily implying this was our last chance of a proper toilet before the (we guessed) squat loos of Plovdiv. More likely an extended fag break; Bulgaria has the highest smoking rates in Europe outside Ebbw Vale. We must send Rishi Sunak there to sort them out.

“Happy” might be thought of as a Balkans Little Chef, but much play is made if their status as London’s “Best Restaurant”. What ? Better that the Spoons in Leicester Square and the Aberdeen Steak House.

It looked charming enough, and the one we saw later in Plovdiv was a busy as any Spoons, but we resisted the lure of the national lager (and Stella) in favour of espresso.

Food looked great, mind.

£3 for those soups; they charged 1 lev (45p) to use the loos, which were decorated in the style of a naff country pub in South Kesteven, pictures of women with tape measures over the urinals, that sort of thing.

If it was in the Good Beer Guide CAMRA would find someone to be offended by the tat and kick it out.

Goodness knows what was in the Ladies…

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

13 thoughts on “THE BULGARIAN VERSION OF LITTLE CHEF (R.I.P.)”

  1. I used to love Little Chefs when I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, going to one was a bit of a treat. Then again, I am from Wrexham.

    What’s the national lager of Bulgaria, by the way?

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    1. What’s the national lager of Bulgaria, by the way?

      The one in the photo is Каменица (which was available in the hotel in Bansko when I last stayed in Bulgaria). Looks from that WP page it is now a Molson-Coors brand. I did find (by chance) a Bansko bar advertising “Live Beer” which wasn’t too bad.

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  2. Aren’t languages great?

    I love the way that Philipopolis was shortened to Plovdivs. Are you telling me that it’s been shortened again to just Plovdiv?

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  3. So does Bulgaria represent the last bastion of the squat loos, in Europe? They’re still relatively common in Japan, or were 11 years ago, and they bring back memories – mainly unpleasant ones, of an Inter-rail trip into southern Europe (Franco’s Spain, in particular).

    I was also mightily relieved (if you’ll pardon the pun), to come across one in a Guangzhou shopping centre, back in 2019.

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  4. Have you read the trilogy of books Patrick Leigh Fermor wrote about tramping across Europe from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople in the early thirties? At the start of the third volume, he spends a few days walking from Sofia to Plovdiv, sleeping in haybarns and describing along the way an ethnic and cultural diversity that, thanks to Bulgaria’s collaboration with the Nazis in World War II and Communist rule after it, sadly no longer exists.

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