Not every Dog has its day

"But the children of the kingdom shall be cast into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Matthew 8:12

AT The Spotted Dog in High Coniscliffe, outer darkness equates to the exposed area out the back to which smokers are banished to continue their sod 'em all suicide pact - if, as the blackboard suggests, they really must.

There is a view of the car park, and of the incessant rain. It is the wood shed, the sin bin, the pariah commitment and since it is by the pub entrance, it is also a sort of village stocks, where the weak willed may be pitied or pilloried according to taste.

It's the first entirely no-smoking pub in the Darlington area, perhaps in Co Durham, a prohibition which is unequivocally to be applauded. The same, alas, may not be said about the food.

It re-opened in June as both no-smoking and "gastro" pub, a concept which the promotional literature was anxious to explain.

"Gastro pubs are the British equivalent of the French bistro," it claimed. "Their atmosphere is unpretentious... they sell top quality food from beans on toast to extravagant, restaurant-style dishes such as lobster foie gras and sea bass truffles."

Food in a gastro pub, the press release rather foolishly added, would "always" be terrific. They hadn't had the sweet Yorkshire pudding, then.

A thing that has characterised The Spotted Dog for much longer is the seriously uneven floor, a bit like the House of Fun at Whitley Bay Spanish City (as was) and perhaps good for a laugh so long as you're not old, or infirm, or disabled. Despite the revamp, they'd done nothing about it.

Under new management there's also a magazine rack, everything from the previous month's Marie Clare ("Other people's sex lives exposed") to that day's Northern Echo ("free crocus bulbs for every reader").

The menu is innovative and reasonably lengthy, backed by a couple of specials boards with dishes like sea bass wrapped in streaky bacon stuffed with grapes and laced with claret juice (£12.95) or apricot stuffed pork fillet wrapped in parma ham on a beetroot, carrot and apple coleslaw (£13.95).

Starters might have been red mullet and pepper terrine with mustard seed and mint hollandaise, brandade of salt cod with red onion and whisky marmalade or baby black pudding with sun blushed tomatoes.

Whilst every tomato in Christendom is now shamelessly sun blushed, what's with the baby boom? Why is everything - sweetcorn, carrots, broccoli, now even black pudding - said to be "baby"? It all seems rather infantile.

Still, full marks for invention, for smiling, friendly, capable staff - unpretentious, even - and for three mainstream real ales, albeit at £2.28 a pint. The lunch menu looked particularly attractive, the Christmas Day offering far beyond cold turkey.

So why the caution, why the slow burning enthusiasm? The proof may be in the sweet Yorkshire pudding.

We'd started with "chowder belle-mere" (£4.95) Chowder should be stand-up soup: in this one, though served in a wide bowl, the spoon could have lain flat on its back and still not risked drowning.

It was thin, insipid, formless stuff and with one minuscule mussel, rather like Popeye (whatever happened to Popeye?) before cracking open a tin of spinach.

The Boss fared much better with "escabache of sardines" with balsamic vinegar and star anise, announced that sardines get an unnecessarily bad press and enquired what an escabache might be.

The waitress returned. "It's a Gordon Ramsay recipe," she said.

She followed with three vegetables (red pepper, green pepper, courgette) stuffed with couscous, dates, tomatoes (suitably sun blushed) and a "delicious" creme fraiche and mint dressing.

We had the smoked haddock and parma ham salad, that being the only smoking allowed. It was topped with a poached egg - a tip-top poached egg, it might be added - and dressed, that is to say overdressed, as if about to start the dance of the seven veils. Still, a pretty good fist, for all that.

Her "hot fruit ratatouille" was advertised with a crunchy nut topping. When The Boss complained that it was nothing more than a crumble the waitress again sought advice from the kitchen.

The chef, she said - oh, come on - was experimenting with new recipes.

The sweet Yorkshire pudding with rum and raisin ice cream (£4.25) cannot properly be described. It had the consistency of Ilkley Moor, could only be accessed with a peat shovel, had been made in some sweet Yorkshire pudding bowl many a mile from High Coniscliffe and tasted vaguely like a pound of chocolate eclairs in meltdown. It was uniquely dreadful.

The management might also be concerned that, admittedly on a Tuesday evening, just four other tables were taken and there was no one at all in the lounge areas.

We wish them success, but for how long can the no-smoking tail wag the Spotted Dog? By no means outer darkness, but only halfway to paradise yet.

l The Spotted Dog, High Coniscliffe near Darlington (01325 374351). Food all day until 9.45pm.

SLALEY is four miles this side of Hexham, perhaps best known these days for the Slaley Hall Hotel - good, no doubt, but also seriously expensive.

The village is also home to the lovely little church of St Mary the Virgin, where the notice board rather alarmingly invites visitors to "drop into the churchyard" and where the churchyard in question blooms with ox-eye daisy and red campion, cranesbill geranium and Indian bedtsraw.

Most memorable of all, however, may be the 16th century Travellers Rest - stone-flagged and friendly, a mile north on the B6306 - where an excellent pub lunch cost little more than a tenner for two, or would have done had we not unnecessarily topped it with a bowl of very good chips.

From a simple but imaginative menu, one of us had a fresh chicken tortilla with onions and peppers and fried with Mexican spices, the other crayfish with cherry tomatoes, lime mayonnaise and a rocket salad. Both dishes came with a heap of proper coleslaw and, unannounced, half a stone of crisps.

It's featured ("wonderful food and accommodation") in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide, among the most truly indispensable of books, with four or five hand pumps including Flavius from the Hexhamshire Brewery and Whistlestop from Wylam.

The walls have loads of old maps - there was a Pity Me up there, too - and when we wanted a new one copying, the landlord went out of his way to oblige.

Slaley labour? Many a day's work before you'd find anything more agreeable than this

MUCH later that day we looked homeward into the Raby Hunt at Summerhouse, between Darlington and Staindrop, which may now be the only North-East outlet permanently to sell the excellent Marston's Bitter. Run by Mike Allinson (BA, Econ) for the 25 years or more since he left university, it now has limited opening - evenings and Sunday lunch - and only a sandwich menu. For all that, a comfortable and welcoming haven in a tumultuous world.

THE column a couple of weeks back on the restaurant at the reinvigorated prisoner of war camp at Harperley, near Crook, foolishly described it as Harperley Hall.

Harperley Hall, as retired Cleveland police superintendent Ken Thurlbeck stylishly points out, was the former Durham Constabulary training school a few hundred yards away.

Ken, a resident cadet from 1947-49, recalls two occasions for which the two sides joined forces, the first when the entire county police football team, plus reserves and officials, found themselves - "by sheer coincidence" - on the same three week refresher course before the national police championships.

A practice matc ips.

A practice matc h was arranged against the PoWs. "Possibly as a prelude of things to come," says Ken, "the predominantly German team proved much too strong for their English opponents."

More regularly, he says, trainee polliss and detainee solider would find themselves on the same Saturday night bus to the cinema in Crook.

"To the best of my knowledge there was never any ill feeling or hostility, despite the fact that most young ladies seemed to prefer the PoWs' ill-fitting siren suits with a large 'P' on the back to the more elegant sports jackets and dark blue police flannels worn by the hopeful upholders of the law."

DURHAM'S CAMRA branch newsletter reports that the last vestige of homogenisation, the remaining Roughwith keg, has been removed from the admirable Grey Horse at Consett. Paul Conroy, that establishment's laudable landlord, reports that their sixth annual beer festival will be held from August 28-30.

... and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what the Invisible Man calls his mum and dad.

Transparents, of course.

Published: 17/08/2004