Eating Owt

Many years ago we even wrote a quiet day column - all right, a desperate day column - on whether Eggleston (and Escomb) should have a final "e". The issue remains terminally unresolved.

Eggleston's in Teesdale, roughly between Barney and Middleton, a pleasant former lead mining village with a green, two churches, another pub, an agricultural show dating back to eighteen hundred and long gone and, on the mid-wicket boundary, Eggleston Hall, home of Sir William Gray.

The well recommended caf, shop and four acres of gardens are open all year, offer splendid views, horticultural delights and include the ruins of the old parish church. "We enjoy sharing with others, so feel free to pop into the potting shed," says the brochure.

The Coach House bistro is presently only open on Friday and Saturday evenings, probably Thursdays after Easter. We went last Friday, in the dark as usual.

Three other tables were set, candles twinkling, in the large room with pink washed walls on which pretty plant pictures were hung. Three other couples duly, independently, arrived.

We were seated more or less in the four corners, fellers facing inwards like dunces at dinner hour. It's a matter of etiquette, a man thing, like walking on the outside of the pavement or being first off the plank but last off the ship. It also means that people talk behind your back, but probably they'd do that, anyway.

Often, it's said, Sir William and Lady Gray - the former Juliet Jackson whose father David is chef-cum-consultant - are in attendance. The waitress, however, was a South Shields lass with sand dancing accent who impressed from the moment that she divined the music was obtrusive and, unasked, reduced the volume.

The menu was short - half a dozen choices in the first two sections, three puddings. Starters included carrot and coriander soup (£4.50), melon and citrus fruit salad, a lobster and prawn fettuccine, which was pleasant but not greatly overflowing with fish, and a warm salad of scallops, asparagus, thin crispy bacon and hollandaise which The Boss considered excellent. They were preceded by a plate of nibbles: olives, crisps, warm cheese tartlets.

Main courses, competently executed and attractively presented, seemed to us to be sadly short on surprises - better not say imagination. Chicken chasseur - try it yourself at home - was £14.50, stuffed peppers with ratatouille £11.50, The Boss's lobster thermidor £17.50. They all came with new potatoes, mangetout and carrots. They weren't, said The Boss, £17.50 veg.

We'd ordered loin of lamb with bubble and squeak and port and redcurrant sauce. Bubble and squeak has been enjoying a culinary comeback but despite possibly being the world's only onomatopoeic food - readers may know better - is still just cabbage and tatie, for all that.

The lamb was pink and plentiful, the sauce probably not the sort of thing you'd light a beacon on Bollihope Common about, in order more quickly to spread the news.

She finished with a very good almond and raspberry tart - perhaps the sort of thing they sell in the caf? - we with coffee and caramel ice cream with a couple of strawbs.

With a couple of coffees and a £13.50 bottle of something or other the bill reached £69.50. It had been a perfectly pleasant meal in perfectly pleasant surroundings - but memorable? As unforgettable as PC1288 Russell Elliott? Ask again next week.

Passable pasties - pity about the coffee

THE ever burgeoning train of High Street names now standing on Newcastle Central Station - Upper Crust, Millie's Cookies, Costa, Journey's Friend - has been joined by the Pasty Shop.

The word "Cornish" is prudently avoided, lest perhaps the Bodmin bovver boys catch the next Riviera Express up north.

"Traditional" is used instead. "Specialities", another word which might clot a Cornishman's cream, include cauliflower cheese, lamb and mint and pork and apple.

The latter, £2.65, had pallid pastry but a filling that was ample and nicely spiced. The coffee, £1.40, was lukewarm, lugubrious and loathsome. A Pasty nasty, alas.

ALAN Archbold reports from the Stags Head in South Shields, lauded in the Good Beer Guide but spoiled (he says) by the introduction of television and music. Mind, adds Alan, how many pubs do you know where you can still buy snuff - and who, come to that, still takes it with a pinch?

LAST Wednesday I addressed Gainford St Mary's Women's Fellowship, The Chippie - as officially it is known - enticingly illuminated across the road. "Lovely fish but the chips have curvature of the spine," said one of the ladies, mysteriously.

Determined thereafter to investigate - learning curve, as it were - it was disappointing to discover that the place closed at 8pm and to go home hungry once again. The teacher at Timothy Hackworth juniors always said I talked too much, anyway.

DESCRIBING Sunday lunch at the Ship at High Hesleden, near Blackhall, last week's column recorded an overheard conversation about the area's two best known locals.

One was former boxer George Bowes - the locals rhymed it with cows - the other former Manchester City and England footballer Colin Bell. "A squawky kid, mind" someone had said.

A gentle letter has since arrived from Eileen and Bart Teasdale, Colin's sister and brother-in-law, taking exception to the remark.

Colin's mother died when he was 18 months old. He lived with an aunt until he was seven, then for ten years with Bart and Eileen until joining Bury FC.

Subsequently he made 394 Football League appearances for City, won 48 England caps and was, inarguably, exceptional.

"As a boy he was very well mannered and shy, sometimes mistaken for aloofness, and is a credit to the family," say Bart and Eileen, Echo readers for half a century.

"He may have been described in many ways but as a squawky kid, never."

No doubt like the original comment, its wider broadcast was never meant to be offensive. Since it has offended, however, we apologise unreservedly.

DARLINGTON CAMRA's Spring Thing beer festival seemed to go as well as ever, not least because someone smuggled a couple of Taylor's pies - the perfect accompaniment - into the Friday lunchtime session. Liquid refreshment included Ales of Kent - brewed, confusingly, at the Four Alls in Ovington, near Barnard Castle - Bede's Gold from the Durham Brewery and Red Ellen from Jarrow, named after Ellen Wilkinson, the town's flame-haired former MP. The Wensleydale Brewery, based at the Foresters Arms in Carlton-in-Coverdale, also made its debut. If they didn't win the festival's champion beer award, they'll have come pretty close.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you call a grammar school outing travelling on the Underground.

A tube of Smarties, of course.

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