The Circus comes to town

It's like something from The Beano, General Jumbo perhaps, elephants linked trunk to tail as they pass Binns, exotically dressed Indian maidens perched precariously on the howdah hoojah whilst waving tantalisingly to a captivated crowd, three deep on the High Row.

The Indian maidens, come to think, might have been Indian males. You get the picture, anyway.

We recall it because The Circus has again come to Darlington, only without the articulated pachyderms and with rather less fuss. The razzmatazz starts here.

It's the name of a new place in the Market Place, bar and brasserie in modern parlance and run by Les Mooney, who already has Caf Gulp in Priestgate. Because of its immediate proximity to The Northern Echo offices, he has perhaps become a little too wary of jobbing journalists.

"I was a bit unsure about calling it The Circus," he confesses. "I thought you lot would write about sending in the clowns."

In truth, the Eating Owt column has been unequivocally enthusiastic about Gulp, and not just because it doesn't do to fall out with the neighbours. (There are neighbours, of course, with whom falling out is unavoidable - usually after midnight when you're abed, they want to dance and you in the whole world are as sober as a judge.)

Gulp sells good coffee, great patisserie and much else of unimpeachable quality. The Circus is clearly from the same stable.

The premises on Bakehouse Hill have had several recent incarnations - a bit of a tightrope, perhaps - including a vegetarian restaurant which, The Boss remembered, had a terrific line in cheese and pickle sandwiches.

On days when she'd sold a story - a bit like the mother in The Railway Children, only poorer and without the consolation of a chuffing great steam railway at the bottom of the garden - she'd offer the bairns a choice between McDonald's or vegetarian. Half the time they chose cheese and pickle; from those two there could have been no higher recommendation.

As before, The Circus is on two levels - relaxed bar on the ground floor, slightly more formal downstairs restaurant in the charge of Joe Figueira, aka Portuguese Joe. ("We had terrible trouble with him during Europe 2004," said Les.)

Joe spent 22 years at the Scotch Corner Hotel when the admirable and urbane Tom Jones was manager - now 84 and still going strong - and the hotel was, shall we say, different from what it is now. (Jokes about "It's not unusual" may be inserted here.)

We'd looked at the beers, observed only Roughwith and its incorrigible cousins, asked what was available in bottles.

"I only know the draught beers," said the waiter.

"So do I, that's why I'm asking about bottles," we replied. The good news is that real ale should soon be available, only awaiting what they call an ambient cellar.

Lunch menu, shortly to be extended to embrace two courses for around £8.50, includes several "sharing plates" plus (for example) prawn Caesar or Miami salad.

"Light bites" in the bar include salmon and coriander fishcakes in a sweet chilli vinaigrette (£4.50), Circus burgers - including "Fire eater" with jalepenos and red peppers - and a selection of baguettes, all £3.95.

Down below they turn the heat up. Specials board starters included Thai filo king prawns with salad and chilli sauce (£3.95) and field mushrooms filled with Stilton cream sauce (£3.50); main courses might have been duck breast with a blackcurrant and ginger sauce on buttered leeks (£12.95), tandoori chicken with mint yogurt (£9.95) or pot roast lamb with roast vegetables and mint jus, also £9.95.

We ate in the cellar - tiled floors, wine racks, two big mirrors. We don't like facing mirrors when dining; it reflects badly.

Neither the bread nor the butter were up to much. You've heard of beurre blanc? This was beurre bland. The Boss, on brown, dissented. At least until the puddings, what followed was top of the bill.

She began with a mango and melon salad with fruit confit ("very sharp, wonderfully refreshing") and would willingly have had the same for pudding, we with a tian of black pudding with mash and a red wine jus.

"Tian" is one of those fancy, foodie words which no one really understands but which restaurateurs love. There's a railway station near Inverness called Tain, though there may not be a connection.

It was very good, anyway, two thick slices of robust black pudding sandwiching a muscular mash amid a florid sauce.

She followed with scintillating scallops, we with the best ever Cajun chicken, strong on quantity and quality and attractively presented with a "mushroom Creole sauce" and Lyonnaise potatoes and, side-plated, a nicely dressed salad, potatoes cooked in thyme, interesting vegetables and chips as thick as your thumb but altogether more edible. The chips were pretty damn perfect.

Since 21st century circuses dare boast little more carnivorous than a performing flea, there's a vegetarian section, too.

The puddings (an almost flavourless home made Bailey's cheesecake and some whippy banoffi creation) were surprisingly disappointing, particularly remembering Gulp's excellence in that field, but this remains the sort of place Darlington has needed for ages. The Circus is a class act.

l The Circus, Bakehouse Hill, Darlington (01325 366367). Open all day and from 12-5pm Sundays. Ground floor fine for the disabled.

SINCE a recent visit to the Nag's Head at Pickhill, near Thirsk, was a little ill-starred (Eating Owt, June 22) it should be recorded that on the latest - a family celebration - everything was not only fine but the venison, pheasant and mushroom pie (£12.95) was absolutely terrific.

A DECIDEDLY myopic alley, if not necessarily a blind one, the Gadfly column has been exploring different words for what Co Durham folk usually call a "passage."

As tomorrow's column will aver, several readers have not only mentioned the term "vennel" but that there's a caf in Durham city centre called Vennels. (It's actually called Vennel's, but what do you expect from a place that advertises tea's and coffee's?)

Several other businesses lead off this particular passage, mostly concerned with the body beauteous. The 16th century building is beamed and nicely furnished; outside is an attractive, floribundant, canopied courtyard.

It opens at 9.30am. We waited, unalone, to be let in. Sadly there were no sandwiches, and even if there had been, no chicken for the chicken, tarragon and grape and no cottage cheese for whatever it was The Boss wanted. The milkman hadn't been, either.

There were cakes, they said, thus provoking a mild dispute about what Marie Antoinette told the peasantry begging for bread. The Boss insisted that Louis XVI's Queen consort said "brioche" rather than "cake" but being French she would, wouldn't she? Sometimes that lass talks a lot of brioche.

We had a cup of coffee and left.

HIDE Bar, to which we next repaired, is 100 yards nearer the Cathedral, doubtless chocker when studentia stirs itself, but quiet at 9.45am.

English breakfast (£5.50, including coffee) was high quality but seriously skimpy. Hide and seek, almost. No side plates, no separate knife for the butter.

The day's papers were also on offer, though none half as entertaining as the drinks menu. The list embraced B52, Slippery Nipple and Orgasm (Bailey's and Tia Maria - the ultimate, apparently), the back cover offered a gloriously amusing potted biography of Dylan Thomas, as if he were No. 137 in a series of Great British Drunks.

The wondrous Welsh poet, we learned, had once fallen asleep during a live radio reading ("broadcasting his snores to a grateful nation"), had peed on Charlie Chaplin's porch, was given to pretending to be a dog and biting people and - "with Haguesque implausibility" - claimed to have drunk 40 pints in a day.

Poor William is by every account the most excellent fellow. How sad if he will be remembered only for wearing a baseball cap and for supposedly supping 14 pints, while a lemonade salesman in Rotherham.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew which bird can lift the heaviest weights.

The crane.

Published: 20/07/2004