Susie Rushton: Is there life after the dough base?

Hit the Hut lately? Thought not. The last time I perused the salad bar at a branch of Pizza Hut, Jason Donovan was at the top of the charts. The originator of the stuffed-crust pizza is now wooing lost customers like me with a £17m upgrade including new, more nutritious menus (a cut in salt and hydrogenated vegetable oils) and the introduction of wine, albeit only one red and one white, both Jacob's Creek. The spiciest topping on this revamp is a Prince/Puff Daddy-style change of name that may cause some of you to need a little lie down: it is now called Pasta Hut. Correct. The restaurant whose ads have, since the beginning of memory, featured fat, juicy strings of hot mozzarella stretching luxuriantly from doughy segments is now boiling stuff.

Obviously, its managers don't want to put off the thousands of regulars who partake in Pizza/Pasta Hut's famed £4.99 lunchtime pizza buffet – just a bigger slice of the healthy-eating market. "We're trying to say to people, 'Yes, we're great at pizzas, but we're also great at salads and pasta'," says CEO Alasdair Murdoch.

To find out if any of it is, in fact, great, I swung into the Whitechapel branch yesterday to become the very first person (in E1, in any case) to order the new, non-dough-based fare. Outside, the old sign is still up, although it would soon change, the waiter, Mohammed, told me. He seemed pretty excited about the new menu, and urged me toward the "Tuscani Pasta" [sic] range. He also recommended I try the wine , which can be ordered in an in-flight sized bottle (£2.99), though not by the glass.

The salad bar was smaller than I remembered, with a dozen perfectly-formed domes of sweetcorn, slices of cucumber and a tasty couscous, but it was neither thrilling nor great value at £3.49 – in fact, the whole bill came in at a crunch-busting £15.41. The service, though, was beyond charming, putting in the shade every surly meal encounter I've had in Pizza Express; the décor, with its Basquiat-esque murals, was jollier than I'd remembered. And the pasta? The cellentani spirals in my chicken arrabiata (£6.99) weren't quite overcooked, and there was just enough chilli, but the sauce had a sugar content to rival most desserts. Marks for effort, but not quite a hit for the artist formerly known as Pizza Hut.

Her Satanic majesty

Spoon-fed their style by fashion editors and designer labels, the pop princesses tend not to stray from the approved look (currently, Fifties-pin-up shorts; prom dresses; platforms). Then there's Grace Jones who, at a lunchtime ceremony for the Q Awards, wore a black pleated veil and face mask. With horns. That illuminated. Spectacular.

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