No prizes for guessing which food consumers most associate with Pizza Hut - but can you name the band that brought you the “classic” Fast Food Song that made it to No2 in the charts and, in the process, confirmed the Hut among the high street elite of downmarket dining? “A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut ...” A line writ large across the summer of 2003.

Five years on, Alasdair Murdoch, chief executive of Pizza Hut in Britain, wants to move on somewhat. Today, the chain is introducing a new, pasta-focused menu, intended, in tandem with a £35 million refurbishment, to propel it into more upmarket terrain.

To reinforce the point, 30 branches are to be renamed (temporarily) Pasta Hut. Customers will be able to dine on tomato and mozzarella mezzaluna and prawn and crayfish arrabiata - as well as the more familiar barbecue deluxe pizzas with cheese-filled crusts.

It is a bold move. If any restaurants are expected to be immune from penny-pinching consumers, squeezed by the now omnipresent credit crunch, it is those offering cheaper, comforting fare. The new pasta dishes take longer to prepare than pizzas and their less exotic predecessors on the menu, such as lasagne and cannelloni, and an upmarket refurbishment may seem foolhardy amid signs that consumers are downtrading to an unprecedented extent.

“We've really been on a journey for four or five years, trying to make our food better, offer more variety and quality for the customers”, Mr Murdoch said. “Now we're putting our food above the parapet. We're trying to say to people : ‘Yes, we're great at pizzas, but we're also great at salads and pasta.' Pasta is around 3 or 4 per cent of our sales. I'm very sure in a couple of weeks' time that will be 10 per cent.”

The menu revamp is part of a drive to transform the chain into a smart casual establishment. “The restaurants have to look good as well,” he said. “We're probably investing as much or more on our refurbishment - £18million this year - than anyone else.”

The new-look restaurants, with dimmed lighting, hushed tones and uplit bottles of wine displayed behind the bar, are far removed from the fast-food style restaurants of old. The staff will be wearing chic black uniforms that would not look out of place at an upmarket chain. There will not be a baseball cap in sight. About 40 per cent of Pizza Hut's stores have been fitted to this standard. In a further nod to the modern climate of health awareness, Pizza Hut yesterday began to display the nutritional content of meals in its stores.

If the revamp succeeds in attracting more middle-class customers, perhaps Pizza Express may start glancing over its shoulder. “We're not Pizza Express,” Mr Murdoch said, tapping the table for emphasis. “That's not who we are. Do Pizza Express have a restaurant in Rotherham?” - quickly adding that he did not mean to be nasty about the people of Rotherham.

Sure enough, those tastefully lit bottles of wine are Jacob's Creek - not Blue Nun, by any stretch of the imagination, but hardly Châteauneuf-du-Pape, either. “Our wine list isn't going to impress the wine aficionados, but it's palatable and it reflects what our customers like.”

Is Britain falling out of love with the pizza? Mr Murdoch thinks not, but there are signs that customers are reaching for takeaway menus instead of venturing out - and pasta is also central to efforts to catch up with Domino's Pizza, the market leader, in the delivery business. Pizza Hut will introduce three pasta dishes to its delivery menus this week.

“More pasta is eaten at home than pizza, so the size of the market is considerable,” Mr Murdoch said. “Fifteen to 20 per cent of deliveries will be pasta.” The frontline with Domino's

is likely to be critical to Pizza Hut's success, as home delivery is the fastest-growing area of the “eating out” market, according to Mintel, the market research company, a trend that is likely to accelerate.

If those consumers begin to think of Pizza Hut as being a more upmarket brand than its peers, then perhaps the best efforts of the Fast Food Rockers, the group responsible for that musical masterpiece of June those five short years ago, will finally, mercifully, have been put to rest.

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