Bend me, shape me, any way you want me

Wimpy has been a staple of the British high street for decades, and having walked past one literally hundreds of times this last few years, it was finally time for me to go in.

“Food served at the table within ten minutes of ordering and with atomic age efficiency. No cutlery needed or given. Drinks served in a bottle with a straw. Condiments in pre-packaged single serving packets.”

Such were the breathless words of Art Buchwald of the Washington Post in 1955, as he surveyed London a decade after the end of the Second World War. He was in what he described as a “hamburger parlor” in Coventry Street, the first to be opened in the United Kingdom. Rationing had finally completely ended a year earlier. It was time to move on, and the United States of America, one of the two countries which had truly won that war, was the height of modernity.

Buchwald was in what would otherwise have been just another Lyon’s Corner House. The condiments may have been pre-packaged and the food may have been served with “atomic age efficiency”, but it was still served on china crockery and—presumably after customers complained over having to eat with their hands, like savages—with knives and forks. This new parlor had been opened by Lyon’s after purchasing a license to use the brand of an American name called Wimpy Grills Incorporated.

Thus was born the most unusual of fast food restaurants, an American brand (albeit one largely unknown at home - and yes, they did just lift the name from the Popeye supporting-cast member with an unhealthy fixation on hamburgers) tempered for local tastes by a British retailer and manufacturer in the mid-1950s, and which has remained largely unaltered ever since. The height of modernity has become a trip down memory lane, and perhaps the biggest surprise about it all is that it still exists in the first place.

If you live north of Birmingham, you may well be forgiven for believing that they went out of business years ago. Of the 63 remaining Wimpys in the UK, only four of them are north of the Midlands, in Stafford, Huddersfield, Birkenhead and Kilmarnock. If you want to truly startle a northerner, show them a photograph of an open branch of Wimpy. It’s like telling a southerner that you can still fly Pan Am from Leeds City Airport.

So startle a northerner I did, and the upshot of that conversation is that on this Friday morning I am effectively taking my children to a museum of fast food. I live in Worthing, on the south coast, and in this neck of the woods Wimpys are a slightly more common sight. Our local one is on Chapel Road, more or less in the town centre. It’s been a fixture in this town for as long I’ve lived here, and doubtless many decades earlier.

But for all the affection that I may hold when I see a Wimpy, whether I’d actually want to eat in one is a different matter. I was born in 1972, and the first McDonalds opened in the UK in 1974. By the end of the 1970s Enfield, where I lived, had one. It was a treat, reserved for birthday parties and the like (my mother had been a Corner House regular a quarter of a century earlier).

Even for somebody of my age, Wimpy felt old-fashioned, somewhere you’d go if you didn’t want your fast food fast, to which it may well be replied, ‘in which case, what’s the point of it?’ My primary experience of it was a branch near Tithebarn Street in Liverpool in the early 1990s, where I’d occasionally stop off on the way to class to scarf down a toasted tea cake and scalding cup of tea if I’d not gotten around to having breakfast or lunch.

I remember that they sell their burgers mostly in brown bread buns, which I considered rakish in 1982 and still kind of do now. I recognise the legendary Bender Burger, but only as an object of curiosity. I have reason to believe that the milkshakes are excellent, but this is based on old knowledge. Otherwise, my Wimpy memory bank is pretty much empty.

But I don’t look at the online menu before we leave. I’m not, but both of my kids are both vegetarian (though the younger one will now break this rule for McDonalds chicken nuggets and McDonalds chicken nuggets only), so I’m interested to see what veggie options they have for those two. If they don’t have anything, we may have to make our excuses and leave early.

One thing that I do know about this particular branch of Wimpy is that they love advertising their awards. The sign which read ‘Wimpy of the Year 2014’ hung proudly outside for a good three years after it was presumably given to them, and rightly so. With 63 branches, such accolades don’t come about all the time. But their current boast outdoes even that. “Award Winning Restaurant 2018”. Which award? Why couldn’t they successfully defend it? How have they done in this competition since 2018? So many questions from so few words.

On the inside, it’s clean. It underwent a renovation this year, and everything is red and white formica, recreating that clean, sharp-edged futurism of the 1950s. It’s also bustlingly busy. For all I know Friday lunchtime is their busiest time of the week, but if we were expecting to have the place to ourselves, then we’re to be disappointed.

The menu is… expansive, but I already know that I have no choice but to opt for the Bender, if only in the interests of science. They’ve renamed it as the “Bendy”, though everybody still knows what it’s really called. This unusually-shaped frankfurter in a round bun has long been a cult staple of the British fast food menu for decades. A hot dog for a country afraid of eating anything that phallic a shape? Not implausible.

And the veggie options are decent. They have Quorn chicken nuggets on the menu, which is perfect because a, we have them at home so there’s nothing unfamiliar going on here (those who’ve had six and eight year-olds will be nodding their heads in silent agreement, here), and b, so that we don’t have to go through the entire “what happens to a chicken when they make a chicken nugget?” conversation, which happens every time Dorian orders them in McDonalds.

The kids are impressed, all the more so when the waitress brings a snakes and ladders board game for them to play while we wait. The game lasts precisely one turn before older kid bounces the dice straight off the table to go skittering across the floor.

No, darling, I’m not asking if they have any replacement dice. He brachiates off to go and find it, backside pointing in the air like someone should be parking a bike in it. “He’s inherited my sense of calm and quiet inner dignity”, I think to myself as I remind him for the third time that the patrons of this restaurant really don’t want to see his bum while they eat.

The milkshakes arrive first, and after one sip I’m left with no doubts whatsoever as to why they’ve brought them out first. The chocolate milkshake is simply divine, with just enough of that ‘chemicals which taste like chocolate but which may not actually be chocolate’ taste to invoke enough of a Proustian rush in me to leave me wondering where I’ve left my copy of Roy of the Rovers.

And then it lands. As they put the plate down on the table in front of me, Holding Out For a Hero by Bonnie Tyler starts playing over the PA system. I pause for a second. Was this musical selection and its timing deliberate on their part? Am I the hero that Britain needs in these uncertain times? I conclude that yes, yes it was, and that yes, yes I am. It is time to take this frankfurter for the team.

It’s not what you expect. Quite asides from anything else, it’s a different colour to the adverts. On the television, it’s a gleaming chorizo red, the colour of temptation and going slightly off-piste. Up front and personal, though, it’s a slightly anaemic mid-brown colour. But the onions are uncooked, which adds a little bite, and there’s a large slice of tomato to fill the void in the middle of the circular bun. It tastes okay, so long as you’re prepared to overlook the obvious. I decide not to prod and poke too much. It’s a frankfurter. It’s lips, trotters and bumholes. We’ve all known that about them for decades and have wilfully chosen to disregard it. It feels a bit late to be requesting prime cuts of pork, now.

Wimpy has a reputation for being horrendously expensive, and it’s true to say that virtually anywhere else what we could have gone would have been cheaper. But at £30 for three of us including a tip, I don’t feel as though I’ve been overly ripped off. The milkshake might have been worth it alone. I’m still glad Wimpy exists, and that it’s retained most of the quirks that made it such a unique fixture on the British high street in the first place. Well down here, at least.

The kids are unimpressed. So far as they were concerned it was lunch, so now it’s time for ice cream, even though they had one as part of their meal. But they’ve had their history lesson, and as we walk down to the seafront I carry the self-satisfied swagger of the father who’s just taught a very important life lesson. Sometimes it’s okay to step out of the modern world and into a vision of a future which never quite came to pass. Just be wary of the lips, trotters and arseholes, no matter what Bonnie Tyler says.