Chains changed: Pizza Express

The Pizza Express in Milton Keynes mall is trialling the new spring menus - and... well, the news isn't great. The concept is "lighter", which means they've had to come up with a cute way of making the pizzas less calorific.

How have the done it?

By, erm, cutting out most of the centre of the pizza and dumping a salad in the middle of it. (And also making the pizza smaller in the first place.)

It's a pity, as the toppings sound great - asparagus and peppers, a really fresh-sounding margherita. But half your pizza replaced by lettuce? What sort of a half-assed concept is that?

Chains changed: Carvery crumbles hopes

We've not been to the Toby Carvery for ages and ages, and so visiting this Saturday should have been a treat. And, to be fair, the vegetables were better than ever, but the vegetarian option was a crushing disappointment. The butternut squash crumble used to be a large, delicious ramekin full of vegetables and sauce, topped off with a tasty cheese crumble. It was delicious - a signature dish, in fact.

Now, though, it's been reinvented as half a small squash, served up like a baked potato. Actually, potato skin would be more honest, as most of the flesh has been scooped out - presumably to be used elsewhere. The void is filled with a watery topping, a kind of mushroom soup. But a mushroom soup like you'd get from KwikSave in a basic can, not a thick, creamy delight. And of the crumble? Not a glimpse.

If we go back - and, really, it's an if now - I think I'll save the money and just go with the vegetables option.

The Taco rings a bell: Salon explores Mexicanish takeaways

Mark Dery wonders at how a nation full of Mexicans can still believe in Taco Bell:

Daniel Olivas, on the other hand, seems to savor the cognitive dissonance of Taco Bell's "wonderfully wrong" gloss of Mexican cookery. "I admit to being awestruck by the warped brilliance it took to invent something like the Mexican Pizza," writes Olivas, a lawyer and fiction writer living in California's San Fernando Valley. Obviously, he concedes, "It's nothing like the food my mom makes, but I'm not expecting that ... I'm not one of those Chicanos who believes that Mexican food is sacred. I'll leave such snootiness to the French."

Chains changed: Pizza Hut

Oh, poor Pizza Hut, still struggling to find a role, pulled between the chundering hell of being a kiddie's canteen and the desire to move upmarket. It doesn't have any new ideas this time round, except adding the word "fantastico" to some menu items.

Some of the upmarketesque flourishes have survived - the goats cheese still lurks on the menu, like a bizarre misprint, and, on the back to the sticky, laminated card touting the (usually broken, never very-hygenic-looking) Ice Cream Factory some not-bad desserts are on offer. The salad bar seems to have changed again, but it was impossible to tell when we went yesterday lunchtime what had been dropped and what had merely run out and left unfilled, but there was some insulting couscous sitting in one of the tubs.

The horrific dip-cheese-stuffed-crust in fondue thing is still there - and surprisingly popular - but the quesadilla starter has been foofed up with the pointless addition of ham. (Or reformed ham containing water, as the menu fesses up in small print.)

When Little Chef finally folds, the tolling bell will be calling for the Hut.