The column's companion this week swapped his usual Wednesday evening football match pie for something much more sophisticated, though probably not much more expensive.

BOTTOM line at the very top, a three course dinner with coffee was £8.50 and was so good that someone on another table wanted to know if they could book now for Christmas. Lunch would have been £4.50, the lot.

Dinner starters included a filo basket filled with woodland mushrooms in a garlic, herb and whole grain mustard sauce and broccoli and Stilton soup; main courses might have been seared salmon fillet on a bed of courgette spaghetti with cherry tomato sauce or corn fed chicken breast stuffed with smoked bacon and pine kernels baked in puff pastry with red wine sauce; puddings...

You get the flavour, anyway - unequivocal excellence made yet more remarkable for being the training restaurant at East Durham and Houghall Community College in Peterlee, an area which is to gastronomy what Billy Bunter was to counting calories.

Without talking out of school, however, it should at once be said that they knew we were coming.

The column's old dad used to sing something called If I'd Known You Were Coming I'd Have Baked a Cake - he did a plaintive Goodbye Old Ship Of Mine, too - and while the College may not have baked a cake (but see under puddings, below) they certainly know how to make guests welcome.

The principal's car parking space was kept free, the table was number one - what else? - the waiter, the designer-coiffed Daniel Kennedy, at the top of his class.

We dined with Mr Tommy Miller, former Shotton polliss and now chief scout to Hartlepool United Football Club, and his delightful wife Kath. Tommy thought it better than a George Formby grill, by which he meant a George Foreman grill, by which he meant that it sure beat the hell out of beans on toast.

Perhaps George Formby would have given his name to a grill, too, had he not been so busy cleaning windows.

The training restaurant has been open for 12 years, students - both in the kitchen and up front - sharply supervised by catering lecturers. "It's amazing how many people still don't know we're here," said Alistair Gilchrist, on duty last Wednesday evening, but they should now. These kids are really learning their lesson.

We began with smoked duck breast with grape and apple chutney, beautifully presented like everything else, and with terrific bread, dotted with black olives and baked that morning.

Daniel, lion's den, hovered on the brink of over-attentiveness but maintained his balance beautifully. Music, softly enough, ranged from the Ride of the Valkyries to the Beach Boys, themselves getting around.

Vegetarian option for once, we followed with herb pancakes filled with fresh basil ratatouille served with a cheese and mustard sauce. Pancakes were rarely lighter, the filling more vivid or more full of flavour. Salmon and chicken seemed equally appreciated.

"On Wednesday nights I'm usually having a pie and a Bovril at a football match somewhere," said Tommy.

Wines begin at £7. "We don't make much money out of it," said Alistair, and may have been awarded an A-level for understatement as well.

The best, for all that, may have been saved until last. The rum, raisin and chocolate chip cheesecake was simply the finest in memory, the profiteroles ("miles better than them shop profiteroles," said Tommy) served with a white and dark chocolate sauce, the bavarois of strawberry and yogurt set on a crunchy shortcake with passion fruit coulis.

There are one or two shortcomings, chiefly the absence of a lounge. The loos were also said to be a bit secondary modern, but really it didn't matter.

If it's a taste of things to come, it's to be hoped that all concerned long remember their prep. Last Wednesday was truly an education.

l The trainee restaurant at East Durham and Houghall Community College is open for lunch on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday (table d'hote £4.50) and for dinner (£8.50) on Wednesday and Thursday. Booking is essential - 0191-518-8302 - and, no, you can't yet book early for Christmas.

IF I'd Known You Were Coming" was written - piece of cake - by Bob Merrill. Though it sold a million, the unfortunate Mr Merrill is said in a piece on the Internet to have been the worst song writer of all time.

Using a child's toy xylophone, Merrill also wrote early 50s smashes like Where Will The Baby's Dimple Be, She Wears Red Feathers and a Hula-Hula Skirt and - for Patti Page, the Singing Rage - How Much Is That Doggy in the Window (the one with the waggly tail.)

"He so debauched the currency of mainstream Tin Pan Alley that it had no moral authority to resist rock and roll," says the guy on the Net.

Poor Bob Merrill shot himself when he was 76.

HOMEWARD from Peterlee, we looked into the resurgent Grand Hotel in Bishop Auckland where Wear Valley CAMRA marked its North-East regional meeting with four new members and a specially made mystery brew.

It proved to be stout, Black Monkey from Cameron's, where on a recent brewery visit 28 CAMRA folk saw off 39 gallons of ale.

A picture was also doing the rounds of Mr Alastair Downie, CAMRA's deputy North-East organiser and a stout fellow himself, wearing nothing but a Black Monkey beer mat.

"You won't dare put that in your paper," they said, and were correct so to suppose.

The Grand, daily serving five or six regularly changing real ales, has its own beer festival from February 11-14. For valour, and for other good reasons, it abundantly deserves support.

Darlington CAMRA holds its annual meeting tonight in the cricket club at Feethams - recently named the branch's club of the year and serving the excellent Mansfield Bitter alongside guests. "The real ale drinkers get to choose which guests they want," says cricket club treasurer Eric Blench. "It's going down a treat."

Outside the Blue Bell, by the Tees in Yarm, there's a board which boasts "highly trained quality staff", "quality food" and one or two other qualities - none of them, of course, bad 'uns.

It's a John Barras pub, one of a Scottish Courage chain, Courage Directors' the only real ale. There's nothing wrong with the staff, taught to say please and thank you in the right places, but not so highly trained that two of the three visible had to ask the third how to work the till.

The menu is standard, not necessarily to be confused with bog standard, some dishes risibly marked "classic" and others long since marked "new."

For £4.35 we ordered steak and gravy pie, said to come with "golden shortcrust pastry" and with "chunks of steak in a rich gravy". The pastry was yellow ochre, the chunks of steak nothing more than a toothless mush, the gravy penurious.

The chips, no matter how ceaselessly bombarded with salt and pepper, were the gastronomic equivalent of eating an elderly library book.

If Scottish Courage really think this is quality, then they're talking through their Barras.

....and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what's furry, has whiskers and chases outlaws.

A posse cat, of course.

Published: 27/01/2004