The building that houses The Lounge has gone through different guises over the years, mainly as a café or casual restaurant. It opened in 1994 as part of the Happy Eater chain, later rebranded into the Little Chef family, before closure in 2003. Since then it’s been through other guises, usually as a roadside café or casual restaurant, although I do remember a period when it was also a bookshop. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the bookshop didn’t last long – it’s the sort of location where you might stop for a brew or a Full English but not really to browse books.
We stopped for lunch, having been to a plant nursery at nearby Kelsall, Homemade cheese and ham quiche and a handful of mixed salad. Wagyu beef burger on what seemed like a Lancashire oven bottom muffin, rather than a more traditional burger bap and all the better for it, texture-wise. Handful of salad and a very generous portion of “fat” chips. Both decent plates of food which kept body and soul together for a few hours.
