So many fond memories of driving past an McChunkys and my daughter in the back seat chirping up "Daddy, can I have a Casserole Happy Meal?" I'd almost always give in. Loved digging the toy out from the gravy.
I had my 8th birthday in a Brown Diamond, they gave me a small pair of clogs and the cake was a shepherds pie with candles on. I'm dead now unfortunately, so those happy memories are lost to time.
@@iamrobertkrogh sadly my current metaphysical state prevents me from existing, reminiscing or accessing the earthly realm in any way. All I would say is, why would I lie?
This takes me down memory lane. There used to be a Big C next to where I grew up! I always associate the smell of industrial-grade beef stock with Monday morning, when it was delivered. All gone now--when the firm contracted in the Nineties it was replaced with a walk-in Cobbles clinic. Then, when that went bust because no-one with Cobbles can walk, it became another branch of Synthesizer Patel Electronics, and now you have to walk right into town to the Brown Diamond for a decent casserole....I miss those days.
I grew up on the West coast of Scotland, me and my mates would always pop into our local McChunkeys for a Casserole on they to school in the morning. God we were so fashion conscious back then....
During a visit to the Big C Casserole restaurant, I was surprised to find Pauline Quirk, the renowned actress, dining there. As she sat down, a waiter mistook her for a new staff trainee, leading to a series of discrepancies. Pauline played along, turning the evening into an unexpected theatrical delight for everyone present. In fact, she buried herself so deep into the character, when I returned to that restaurant around four years later, she was still serving casseroles.
You may have run into what casserole scientists call chav paradox. In layman's terms - all London peasants looking acting speaking and smelling the same, resulting in all London peasant women resembling Pauline Quirk. And vice versa. Peasant men of course looking like Jim Davidson.
On a family holiday to France many years ago my parents took me to a Bidet’s - the French equivalent of McChunky’s. They had all your familiar favourites except over there a Big Chunk is called “Le Chunque” and a Bisto McShake is a “seau de boue" Quite remarkable for a country whose language doesn’t even have a word for casserole!
I was always fascinated by Easter Island, so you can imagine my glee when we got our first Imhotep Casseroles branch. We used to go every Monday, Thursday, Wednesday and Tuesday.
The Casserole Veranda was by far the best casserole restaurant of the lot. True there weren’t as many options or new additions to the menu but in my opinion, their casseroles were the most authentic. Plus they had respect for their customers and didn’t sacrifice on quality or change the recipe in order to cater to newer “trendier” customers.
Don’t blame the public for changing tastes! Cassie’s - once a humble mom and pop business in Brighton which eventually became the south coast’s biggest casserole chain - managed to adapt to the times with its veggie and gluten free options. Sadly that wasn’t enough to keep the health inspector at bay and, well, I’m sure you remember how the “cholera casseroles” scandal of ‘98 ended.
Only a handful of casserole joints made it over here to New Zealand. I think my favourite was Beefys on K Road in Auckland. Ian Botham himself flew over to officially open it if I recall.
In Australia the chain casserole restaurant we went to was Cazzas. As well as the standard choices of marsupial or marine, you could always rely on the Cazza pie-floater to make you "full as a goog!" (egg)... a jumbo sized pie filled with casserole floating in a bowl of casserole. And for the people who didn't like casserole then there was a separate stew menu to choose from! Even today, I still long for the taste of Cazzas signature herring-and-kidney casserole meal deal with chips, coke, and a dessert bowl generously filled to overflowing with artificial whipped cream. "Hey kids whatsa wazzas? Get you and yez mates downa Cazzas!" (their jingle still doesn't make sense even today)
Well once we saw you Australians enjoying BBQ grilled casserole at home it inspired us to do the same in Britain. CasseQ or BBrole really became the fashion trend to get involved with.
😂😂😂👏👏👏 I’m so glad to be the kind of guy who has this kind of video pop up in my algorithm. I guess all those years of watching SNL and Monty Python have come to fruition. 😂
On a recent trip to New Zealand I was surprised to see they still have Big C casserole fast food outlets. Of course the technology has moved on since they featured on Look Around You, and you now order your automated casserole 'online' with WiFi - or even have it delivered to your door by using an 'App'.
Clive Pounds there in the days before his marriage fell apart and he was driven mad by the force of gravity and things falling over, spilling and getting knocked out of cupboards. I'm Greg Evigan, goodbye. I made this.
When we saw Australians enjoying BBQ grilled casserole at home it inspired us to do the same in Britain. CasseQ or BBrole really became the mass market fashion trend to get involved with.
Oh yes the Casserole Massacre of '87!! His Brother Mr D Pounds was assassinated that year too!! Newspapers had headlines such as; "Gravy-geddon" "gravy on the streets" "Quarter-d Pound-er" and "Casserole Combat in Chelsea". Because of that Casserole takeaways began shutting down, there are only 5 Casserole takeaways left in the UK as of 2023, Big C has one located in the Isle of man, it has a 2 star hygiene rating.
Yes no time to do anything at all, not even type this. Lots of good sachets with casserole. All you have to buy is a bit of meat and veg, pop in the oven for 90 minutes. To save time you can do your washing and ironing while the meal is automatically being prepared by the oven
In California there’s a local chain of Casserole Cafes called “Out-n-About”. It’s like McChunky’s but with more meat-to-gravy per bowl. If you’re ever in Hollywoodland or on the warm Malice Beach, you need to order an “Out-n-About Big-Bowl-Casserole”
Sherwin’s was a regional chain of Casserole takeaways where I lived on the border between Staffordshire and Leicestershire. By the time me and my mates started to buy them regularly (April 1979), Sherwin’s had seen better days. The Formica surfaces had lost much of their lustre, as had the acoustic booths housing the trademark public phones. I’d give anything to go back to those days. I’ve never really warmed to the coated cashew nut shops that are a hallmark of most modern precincts.
Interesting fact: the first McChunkys in Scotland didn’t advertise “British Beef”; all of their promotional literature was identical to that available south of the border (colour-in recipe cards, “Mister Brisket” etc) but the beef was advertised as “Scottish Beef”. This became more of an issue during the Falklands war in 82, when there were mysterious “supply issues”. pPeople started to work out that it had been neither British nor Scottish beef all along - it was Argentinian! I still remember the Brown Diamond advert that took the piss out of them for that - you wouldn’t get away with that these days, of course. So un- PC!
The detail that went into the Big C menu is astonishing: CASSEROLES beef...................small 50p medium £1.01 chicken.............small 50p medium £1.01 ham..................small 50p medium £1.01 porcupine.........small 50p medium £1.01 PUDDINGS chocolate casserole..........................90p crab-apple pie....................................90p hundreds & thousands 9p DRINKS casso-cola®...small 14p medium 16p cassolade......... small 14p medium 16p extra gravy.........small 23p medium 26p hot milk............ .small 8p medium 9p cold milk............. small 8p medium 9p warm milk.........................................free
I worked in a Brown Diamond during the uni holidays. It was at the time when they'd lost the rights to sell Coke and had their own brand. If any customer asked for a Coke we had to reply "do you mean Brown Carbonated Replacement?" or else we wouldn't get a little diamond on our name badges. And, yes, I can confirm that if a pretty girl was at the counter we'd shout "Brown on Six" meaning pretty girl at counter number six. If she turned out to be ugly we'd say "broil that", referring to the meat broiling machines we had. Now it's all touchscreen ordering technology in the Brown Diamonds and less banter.
Oh, wow - blast from the past there. Does anyone remember Brown Diamond's ill-fated attempt to keep up with mechanisation, with that weird ATM-style dispenser? The Brown CasseHole, I think it was called. Not sure why it did so badly - perhaps it was just too ahead of its time. People would be all over that now.
Just arrived home from a short business trip to Peking and my wife and I were equally gobber-smashed to discover that Mc Gravy's and Big C are still going strong in China. Their signature casserole dish - and forgive me for the clumsy translation here - 'bowl of rancid meat parts and putrid vegetables squirted down pipe to tourist" continues to pack 'em in.[CORRECTION EDIT] I have since discovered that the outlets we visited were nothing more than bootleg establishments, profiting from long-gone British brands, sporting fire sale-bought signage and livery, all the while peddling far-eastern filth. Three stars.
You guys in the UK are lucky - here in the US, casserole places didn't really become common until the late 2000s. I remember when the first American O'Gravy's opened in my area my junior year of high school, it became the regular hang-out spot for a lot of the kids at my school. Good memories man.
Didn’t they open a few drive-thru places on the West Coast? There’s that famous picture of the giant speaker post that’s shaped like a ladle; I’m pretty sure that was at an O’Gravy’s.
@@williamrisbridger60 ah see I'm on the east coast so I'm not sure when they opened out there. Though I think for legal reasons O'Gravy's is called Gravy's Jr. or something once you go west of the Mississippi (kind of a Checker's/Rally's situation)
I remember when Big C casseroles tried to expand to United States of America and it was good for a few years until the America branch broke away and became its own company of Auntie Adam's casseroles and when that happened, the quality just died on the spot and the company folded in within the year. I remember the taste of the bacon mac and cheese casseroles like yesterday even though they were awful for my sodium and cholesterol intake.
Over here in the US we just had Cathy’s Casserole and it did okay until the leveraged buyout happened during the housing crisis. In a matter of months they were out of business and many locations got turned into Panera Bread.
This whole video is insane, I'm so glad I live in the good old fashioned US OF A (America). What an absurd joke of a continent England is ever since leaving Europe.
We all love casserole, but journalistic integrity is also important. Obviously this piece is biased, as the production was paid for by Crockutainment Enterprises, the parent company that owned McChunky's and Sir Stew and had a controlling stake in Big C. Infuriating that only a passing nod is given to Imhotep Casseroles-by far the most popular cass-spot in London around this time. Immy's was famous for the giant straws it provided with each casserole bucket, which were later adapted for use in bubble teas and made the company millions in licensing fees.
I hated Picasserole's. It was everything wrong with 80's Nouvelle Cuisine restaurants. Athena inspired artwork of hunky unshaved men cradling a newborn casserole in poncy black and white on the walls, filofax inserts with casserole recipes available at the pay-point, the constant sound of beepers only just drowning out the sound of Clannad. I'm glad they went bust. Give me a McChunky's Casserole Bap anytime.
