Eating Owt

It's the red dragon which principally is assigned to Wales, of course, a fire breathing tradition said to date from the fifth century and continued from the prow of English ships by Good Queen Bess, described by the historian AL Rowse as "that red haired Welsh harridan".

The dragon - hit and myth, hot and cold - now flies over every Welsh public building and familiarly guards the borders.

In the North-East, however, the dragons appear mysteriously to be green - unless they're Golden, in which case they're Chinese restaurants.

There are other Green Dragons at Bedale, Darlington, Stockton and patrolling the entrance to the Hardraw Scar falls in Wensleydale. Heraldically, at least, the green dragon - emblem of the Dukes of Pembrokeshire, of all the toffs - is, as it were, top dog.

Exelby's just off the A1. Many years ago the Echo had an industrial correspondent called John Exelby who signed himself XLB - we thought it pretty cool at the time - and who married Judith Hann, who'd graduated from Durham University to the features desk.

The Boss reckons that Judith, who must (as they say) be a canny age, is still on television promoting the benefits of Weetabix, or something. Very Tomorrow's World, anyway.

The last time we were in the Green Dragon, about 15 years ago, was to address the annual dinner of the Wensleydale Cricket League, lovely lads.

To mark the league's centenary a few years later they hired test match umpire Dickie Bird instead. The do was at the Scotch Corner Hotel, the meal was roast beef and whatnot, the day - crucially - a Friday.

Dickie stared miserably at the menu card. "Eeeh, ah can't be doin' wi' roast beef on a Friday," he said and sent out to Richmond for fish and chips which he ate from the Daily Telegraph. What's called Catholic tastes, presumably.

This was Saturday, 8pm, still boiling like an unwatched kettle. A board outside the pub promised that it was the place where good food and drink wasn't a myth, Royal Ascot hats sat in the back of a car outside. Bairns played on the lawn out the back, a few parents lazed around the patio, its heaters blissfully redundant.

We'd not had chance to order the drinks - three hand pumps, including one of Nick Stafford's from down the Great North Road - before a pleasant young thing asked if we were eating. Can a dragon fly?

The specials board was primarily piscine, the main menu good, middle of the road pub food with almost nothing over a tenner. Like William George Bunter, the restaurant was large and well filled, the service brisk and efficient, the atmosphere as informal and as exuberant as a cricket club tea room - the midsummer night's theme.

The pub also had a helpful little book called The World's Top Twenty Dragons, or some such, with stories like Ragnar Shaggy-Breeches - he was a Danish dragon, probably too much lager - the Lucerne Dragon and the Last Dragon, seen off by E Nesbitt who more famously entrained with the Railway Children.

There was also a 35 page epic called The Green Dragon, written by Countess d'Aulnoy, who was French. It was a dragon's tail too far.

It seemed a change to start with Caesar salad. The waitress, prudently, asked if we'd like it with anchovies. Equally sensibly we declined and incurred uxorial wrath.

"How can you have Caesar salad without anchovies?" she demanded, calling to mind the occasion in Durham when, asked the same question, she was served a veritable archipelago of anchovies.

"You've got everyone else's, no-one can stand them," said the waitress. Couldn't they have pork pie Caesar salad instead?

The resultant salad did, in truth, seemed a little naked, if not underdressed, the chicken Diane which followed was akin to chicken Diane soup, so plenteous (and so pleasant) the sauce in which a slightly dull bird found itself nesting.

The lady driver had scallops and bacon ("very good indeed") followed by salmon and haddock fishcakes which appeared fresh and well balanced. The chips were fine, vegetables a bit soggy.

Never much of a one for afters thoughts, she looked forward even so to some summer pudding and was disappointed to find it all gone. Other options included baked vanilla cheesecake, sticky toffee pudding and a custardy crme brulee.

She thought the coffee microwaved, and couldn't drink it.

Whole families were still coming in after nine o'clock, the young staff as cheerful and as admirable as they'd been when probably we were still passing Birmingham.

It had been wholly relaxing, entirely agreeable. If not quite the magic Dragon of which Peter, Paul and Mary so memorably sang, then an entirely friendly one, nonetheless.

* The Green Dragon, Exelby, near Bedale (01677) 422233. Bar and restaurant meals lunchtime and evening; no problem for the disabled. Heated patio area.

AWAITING our return, better before we'd left, was a guide called "Breaks near the Motorways", published by Cheviot Books in Belford, Northumberland. It aims to offer alternatives to service stations within five minutes of Britain's major roads. "I have found that they are better value for money," writes editor Hugh Cantlie, though it would be damn near impossible to do otherwise.

Among those included near the A1 in the North-East are the County in Aycliffe Village, the "picturesque and friendly" Shoulder of Mutton at Middleton Tyas, and the "excellent" village pub in Exelby. Unfortunately, they call it the Green Man.

THE Green Dragon in Darlington is a humbler place than its Exelby counterpart, though the sign depicts an altogether more businesslike crittur. Exelby's, of course, may not be as cabbage looking as it's green.

The menu, extensive and inexpensive, appears almost wholly to be from catering packs, the vegetarian section designed to appeal to Quorn again Christians of all denominations.

A notice by the bar advertised chocolate flavoured vodka - Bounty, Cadbury's Flake, what have you - £1 a shot, £2 for three. We ordered a pint of keg Magnet instead.

Main courses begin at £2.50, sandwiches with chips are £2.95, wraps - more chips - £3. Another £3 bought a pretty ordinary egg burger with coleslaw, salad and decent chips.

LAST heard of at the Black Horse in Kirkby Fleetham, near Northallerton, the Scarlet Pimpernel of North-East Gastronomy is on the move yet again. Seek and ye shall find, the ubiquitous Didier de Ville has turned up at the Helme Park Hotel, alongside the A68 near Tow Law. It's pure coincidence that in ten days time we're booked in.

AMID last week's heatwave, information arrived from Cask Marque - the outfit which promotes the perfect pint - that real ale is being served much too warm.

Some is being offered at 28 degrees Centigrade, the equivalent (and probably the taste) of water in a heated swimming pool. In Kent, the county where the heat's really on, inspectors found a pint being sold at 35 degrees, just two degrees less than the average shower.

"There's a misconception that cask beer is meant to be warm," says Cask Marque director Paul Nunny. "In reality it shouldn't even be tepid, let alone warm." From the Brewers Fayre group, meanwhile, hot news that 35 per cent of kids say they want to eat the same meals as their parents - "proving that Britain really is cool again".

In PR-speak, it probably does.

...and finally, since we've been travelling the A1, the bairns wondered if we knew what's large and brown and scares the wits out of travellers to Newcastle.

The great North toad, of course.

www.northeastfood.co.uk