Restaurant area at Maidstone, situated left of the main entrance & “corridor”, towards the back of the interior and opposite Costa. Since opening in 1997, Maidstone has always had a sit-down restaurant. It began with a large “Foodfayre” restaurant, a 1990s sit-down brand of Roadchef’s which expired by 2001. In 2001, half of the restaurant area became Costa, and the other half became onRoute, a newer Roadchef own brand, taking inspiration from Pret A Manger. OnRoute marked the extinction of sit-down, plated food restaurants at motorway services for snack-based options. OnRoute was refurbished in 2007 to become another of Roadchef’s own-brand restaurants “Restbite”. Restbite was a buffet-style restaurant used at most Roadchef sites. Maidstone’s Restbite was one of Roadchef’s last four to continue trading, until it eventually closed in 2018. In 2018, the unit was divided into a small Chozen Noodle stand and a miniature Fresh Food Cafe servery. Dividing the unit gave customers more variation in food options. Since 2018, Fresh Food Cafe was swapped for Garden Square Deli, a recent Roadchef partner, with the Chozen Noodle remaining. This restaurant area is constantly overlooked by McDonald’s as customers are more familiar with McD. A similar arrangement can be seen at Stafford South, and the seating for this restaurant area is an interesting choice being rustic looking green and purple chairs. This restaurant appears time warped and structurally, not much has changed since being open. I’d assume the prices would be fairly steep for both Garden Square Deli and Chozen Noodle, potentially being the reason most customers use McDonalds. This entire restaurant servery was closed during my visit as I visited late at night, so it was totally empty with all the lights off. I’d imagine this restaurant area doesn’t get too busy during the day as Maidstone is a fairly quiet site. Neither Chozen Noodle or Garden Square Deli are signposted from the M20 in either direction, and neither brands are advertised at all around the site.

Photo taken on 09/04/2024 by Tom Moon.

Assigned to galleries: Maidstone, Chozen Noodle, M20, Roadchef