My date with sophisticated Chef

Get your glad rags on, I'd said to the lady wife over the phone, because tonight, we're dining out in style. Meet you there at 8.30. Can I leave the baby-sitter to you? "Oh, how sweet: is it my Christmas treat?" she'd replied. "No, don't say where, I want to guess. The Fat Duck at Bray? The Feathers at Woodstock?"

"Actually, love, it's a table for two at the Little Chef on the Pear Tree roundabout outside Oxford. Hello, are you still there?"

Intrigued (well, no, appalled) by the news that Compass group, the company behind the roadside eateries, was investing £6 million to move the chain upmarket, "changing the evening ambience with dimmed lighting, table cloths and a dedicated waitress service", I felt compelled to make a reservation.

Dimmed isn't quite the word you would use to describe the lighting: a football stadium could be illuminated with these bulbs. And a quick glance at my fellow diners reveals that, far from the romantic, sophisticated environment promised by the PR blurb's breathless prose, we have instead been transplanted back to a world of VS Pritchett short stories, of men from the motor trade eating solo suppers, and chips with everything. Back, in other words, to the time before Sir Terence Conran chanced upon France and, single-handed, transformed a nation's eating habits.

Controversially, the New Choices that Little Chef 's six tarted-up test sites offer include alcohol served without food, which should do wonders for road safety. But a stiff drink is, in fact, the very first thing that springs to mind when you enter an establishment where speakers blast out the local radio station, and where a window table offers views of a petrol station, a Holiday Inn and a dual trunk road.

I rather fear that Compass has its work cut out on this one. The staff are uniformly charming and helpful, but such changes as there have been - table service, paper cloths, a wine list, an expanded menu - can't disguise the fact that Little Chef is basically a roadside caff that has suddenly developed ideas above its (petrol) station. Perhaps, to add class, they should change its name to Petit Chef.

The menu contains the usual suspects, and some curiosities. God knows I've got time to study it, as the wife, apparently on a train from Paddington, seems unaccountably delayed. A pudding called Ugly Fudge Over strikes me as almost heroically unenticing, while Smothered Chicken conjures images of a pillow-wielding chef chasing a frisky fowl around the kitchen. At least the wine list, which includes a perfectly drinkable chianti, is good value and respectable.

Nearby, a couple converse in whispers, with no hint of sweet nothings among them, while in the corner a man sits alone with his crossword and pipe. The radio plays a 10-year-old hit, the tepid chips give up and go cold, the clock ticks from 8.30 to nine and onwards. I've been stood up.

Back in the frost-covered car, I pass a sign for Woodstock, and reflect bitterly on what might have been. It's midnight before I get back to London, to a house asleep. "Where were you?" I hiss at my wife in the darkness. "I couldn't get a baby-sitter," she mumbles. "Sorry, I tried ringing." Mmm. The next day, I cancel plans to cook a turkey for Christmas lunch. She can have the Smothered Chicken instead. Alone.