A destination restaurant, as popularised by the Michelin Guide, is usually one that warrants a special trip while travelling by car in France. The compilers of this year’s Good Food Guide have identified a uniquely British version of the phenomenon: an establishment offering the finest food and you don’t need to leave the motorway to find it.
Gloucester Services, nestled into the hillside on both the north- and south-bound carriageways of the M5 between junction 11A and junction 12, last week achieved the unlikely distinction of becoming the first-ever motorway service station to be included in the guide. On an incognito visit, one of the guide’s compilers sampled the hot wrap with roasted mushrooms and goat’s cheese, accompanied by a crisp salad and followed by the home-made chocolate brownie. The rest is motoring history.
If the early vision of motorway service station pioneers – of a sophisticated, relaxing experience akin to the roadside cafes of 1950s Italy – became sullied by the recessionary Britain of the 1970s and 80s, when service stations were ports of call for coachloads of football hooligans rather than elegant travellers, could it be that Gloucester Services is returning our weary travellers to a happier place, with other operators sure to follow?
“We saw the sign on the motorway: Farmshop,” said Mike Nurse , who was driving to Exeter with his wife Leonora. “It’s an intriguing combination that demands your attention. When we came to pay, I thought ‘Well, that is quite expensive’, but when you’ve had it, it’s well worth the money.”
Connie Payne, on her way from Suffolk to the Forest of Dean with Brian Skilton, was treating Gloucester Services as a mid-trip destination restaurant. Having chanced upon it three weeks ago, she planned her latest trip to include a stop. “It was wonderful because it was different,” she said. “We don’t like unhealthy food and we don’t like service stations. If this was local, I’d shop here.”
As much as the undeniable quality of the food, 80% of it locally sourced, visitors are struck by the distinctiveness of the experience: there is no ambient music, no slot machines, no view or sound of the motorway, no franchises, and the shop includes a fishmonger and a butcher. “It takes people a few moments when they come through the door because they’re used to seeing brands,” said operations manager Mark Chamberlain. “Even this morning I heard someone say, ‘There’s no Starbucks!’ ”
For Chamberlain and Westmorland Motorway Services, the company that owns both Gloucester Services and the Tebay Services on the M6, local is a key part of the plan, with a third of the 400 Gloucester staff made up of local long-term unemployed, and the produce policy generating £1.5m worth of orders with local food producers in 2015, the first full year of operations.
Dr David Lawrence, an associate professor at Kingston University and the author of Food On the Move: The Extraordinary World of the Motorway Service Area, sees the arrival of the high-quality service station as the product of changing lifestyles as well as a rekindling of the history of what one reviewer of his book derided as “emblems of boredom, inertia and placelessness”.
“We are more than ever on the move,” said Lawrence. “There’s a significant percentage of Britain on the motorway somewhere at any one time. The more aware service station operators are realising there’s an opportunity to give people better quality time. Service stations are beginning to become somewhere it is acceptable to stop. It’s about some kind of renaissance of the wayside places similar to the coaching inn.”
Gloucester Services has almost become a community in its own right. Fishmonger Frank Phillips – “I’m the world’s first motorway fishmonger” – says that 50% of his customers are local people. He is not sure that he understands the other 50%. “All that fish is off Cornish boats,” he said. “It amazes me that we get people stopping here saying they’re on their way to Cornwall and they take the fish with them.”
Butchery manager Gary Bolger has similar tales to tell. “It’s crazy,” he said. “We get a phenomenal amount of repeat business. I had a man from Wolverhampton who stopped and bought some meat on his way to Cornwall six weeks ago, then he bought some on his way back, and this week he made an order for £200. It’s mad, it blows me away. At the end of the day we’re in a service station.”
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