The Golden Egg, London 1970/1971

The family-friendly Golden Egg restaurant chain offered good quality foods at reasonable prices in Britain between the 1950s and 70s and was created by Samuel Kaye and his sons Philip and Reggie Kaye.

Waitresses at these cheerfully decorated restaurants, located the length and breadth of Britain, presented customers with menus that were giant two-foot-long egg-shapes on hardboard.

Each branch of the Golden Egg had a riotous color scheme but had different decorative themes. Some had an Italian touch, others a Spanish theme and still others had a Hollywood/American diner feel.

Artists Bill Newland and his wife Margaret Hine, who had worked with fellow ceramicist Nicholas Vergette before he emigrated to the US, worked on the Golden Egg’s innovative interior design schemes.

The trio had been known as the Picassso-ettes, their work being largely influenced by the Spanish artist and sculptor who was co-founder of the Cubist movement.

Owner Philip Kaye said that a sculpture of Newland’s for a Golden Egg in Edgware Road, London, was an outlandish eight-foot-high sculpture of a head.  "But," he added: "People stopped to look. They were horrified and they were mystified, but it intrigued them and they went in."

A mixture of coffee bar and restaurant, the 36 locations of the Golden Egg had separate areas for drinking coffee and eating. 

This menu is from late 1970 or 1971, showing prices in the old British currency of pounds, shillings and pence as well as in the new decimal system. This was to help people prepare to transition to a new monetary system.

Decimal Day or D Day in Britain was Monday, February 15, 1971, when the old currency was replaced by a system where the pound was divided into 100 new pence.

The Golden Egg chain, established in 1958, was sold to J Lyons, owner of Wimpy bars, for franchising in 1970. In 1976, the company sold the chain to United Biscuits and its popularity began to diminish. Some locations lasted till the 1980s.