Sluggish but sublimely slimy

PROBABLY there is a word for a morbid fear of slugs, just as there appears to be for every phobia under the firmament. Whatever it is, The Boss suffers from it with knobs on.

It therefore seemed a bit rich for her to write in last Wednesday's paper that in her next life she's going to marry a plumber.

Who's to say that Mr Plug, while comfortable with power showers, washing machines and other works of the domestic devil incarnate, would be so utterly fearless as the present incumbent of the marital bed in delivering a lethal clip around the slug hole?

None does it better, nor with greater disregard for personal foreboding.

We mention all that only because this week's column is largely about the Slug and Lettuce on Newcastle's buoyantly born again Quayside, one of a curiously named chain of youthfully orientated pubs.

The Quayside alone, stunningly conceived and dominated by Blinking Eye over twinkling Tyne, abundantly rewards exploration. "It feels like a proper city now," said The Boss and the south bank may be catching up, too.

Though a good place to be, it is an expensive one to live, however. A single bedroom flat, by no means one of the most expensive, was advertised at £650 a month. Penthouses push towards £1m.

Other pubs and bars include the Pitcher and Piano, the Waterfront and the Wig and Pen, near the fine and fearful law courts. For several centuries until its closure last month, there was also a Wig and Pen in Fleet Street.

The lawyers still held court there; it was the journalists - possibly because most of them had been reluctantly decanted to Canary Wharf - who weren't drinking enough. That sentence may never previously have been written.

For a quiet night out, of course, the older generation is best to avoid weekend evenings by the river. This was Wednesday, known in Whitley Bay and similar temples to the temporal as Grab a Granny Night.

The Slug is big, comfortable, relatively subdued. There were fliers for Britpop - something to do with dandelion and burdock, presumably - and a young couple on the next table discussing spreadsheets.

When we were their age, a spreadsheet was something you put on a double bed and a flier probably wore a Biggles jacket and took off in a Spitfire.

The Boss thought that one of the two main differences between the Slug and the other places we'd passed was that here we were old enough to be most of the customers' parents and in the others old enough to be their grandparents.

The other, she said, was that in the Slug the young ladies were clothed, whereas in the other places they wore little more than immodesty and the Indecent Offences Act of 1867 demanded.

Though a street corner pub, it was nothing like the Rovers Return. For one thing, there was neither dart board nor hot pot, for another, they weren't punching one another's lights out every 25 minutes.

The beer was disappointing - no real ale, just Roughwith, lager, or Guinness at £2.65 a pint. The chain menu embraced everything from "Indian banquet" to fish and chips; from Tex-Mex to tuna sandwiches.

There was also something called a slug plate, not to be confused with a slug pellet.

The waitress, uniquely, didn't use a pad. Had they run out or was the Slug an out-station for the Pelmanism Institute. (Whatever happen to old Pelman? One forgets.)

In any event she remembered the order but not the second pint of Guinness, explaining when prompted that she'd left it on the bar to settle.

This one had been settled so long it could have taken out naturalisation papers.

The waitress also delivered a foot square tray of condiments - balsamic vinegar, West Indian hot pepper sauce, much else - enough to come between even the most affectionate diners.

We began with Tuscany bean and Indian sausage broth (£3.75) - hot, substantial and tasty with vast doorsteps of bread which Geordies might call a fadge, if not a fadge of honour.

The "home made" eight ounce burger - they also do one twice the size - had a bit of something about it, too, marred only by the lukewarm cheesy stuff (cheese, possibly) which had settled over it like an area of low pressure.

The chips, chiefly by virtue of being hot and fresh, were miles above average.

She began with olives, garlic bread and, for another £3.75, a glass of house red. The cod and parsley fishcakes had a fresh, zesty lime and coriander dressing.

We passed on pudding, principally of the syrupy sort.

Two courses and a drink apiece cost just under £30 - as our little friends beneath the lettuce leaf might have put it, everything in the garden wasn't bad at all.

TEN more phobias, per Schott's Original Miscellany, last year's Christmas best seller: coulrophobia - fear of clowns, stygiophobia - fear of hell, phasmophobia - fear of ghosts, alliumphobia - fear of garlic, rhytiphobia - fear of getting wrinkles, philematophobia - fear of kissing, chionophobia - fear of snow, selachophobia - fear of sharks, pogonophobia - fear of beards, arachnophobia - fear of spiders.

And of slugs?

LATEST of many thoroughly deserved awards, Chris and Alison Davy at the Rose and Rose Crown in Romaldkirk, Teesdale, have been named Hosts of the Year in the 2004 Les Routiers Guide, just published.

Les Routiers' red, white and blue logo is familiar outside many eating places. It sounds good, too. Unlike the Good Food and Good Pub Guides, in which entry is free and wholly on merit, recognition comes at a price, however.

Replying to an Eating Owt e-mail, Les Routiers marketing manager Victoria says (ungrammatically) that nominees have to meet a certain criteria - warm welcome, value for money, fresh local and regional produce.

Depending on the size of the establishment, the fee can be between £250-£650 annually. So what happens if a restaurant refuses to pay?

"All our members pay," says Ms Borrows. Entry, in other words, is also dependent upon the willingness to stump up.

ARTHUR Pickering, Hartlepool-based master of the Pies R Us website, reports that Seahouses baker Graham Newton came second in the World Scotch Pie championships last week - he won the quiche class, though - but questions the use of the word "kizzened" in last week's column.

Last time he heard it used was by a Blackhall lass describing a well-done bacon sandwich. "I'd always assumed it was pit yackerish," he says.

We take "kizzened" to mean so well cooked it's near enough burned black, as with those folk by the fireside in Whashton. The Blackhall lass in Arthur's works canteen had a different phrase for bacon that was extra crisp, however.

Then it was kizzened to hell.

A VERY pleasant Sunday lunchtime do marked the opening at Seaton Carew of Ocean, the swish new restaurant at the Staincliffe Hotel. Even the sun shone on Seaton.

It's reckoned Hartlepool's first upmarket fish restaurant, supplied by local firm Hodgson's, who also did the cod for Blair and Bush. "So much fresh fish about and all anyone opens is chippies," said Mark Jones, Ocean's owner.

The Boss agrees. Not eating enough fish is the reason for so many delinquent bairns, she reckons.

The carte - daube of monkfish, whole sea bass or steamed halibut and mussels, perhaps - offers just one meat dish. The Welsh black beef fillet may be considered a genuflection to Jones the Fish's upbringing.

Lunch, served 10am-6pm - what might be termed a long lunch hour - is a little more carnivorous.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you get if you cross a parrot with a homing pigeon.

A bird that asks its way if it gets lost.

Published: 09/12/2003