AMONG the problems with Sven-Goran Eriksson and his partner Nancy Dell-Olio is their spelling. You always have to check it - the posher papers even seek out umlauts from the cellar. It was never like that with Alf Ramsey and his wife, Phyllis.

Sven, as generally he is known, is one of Sir Alf's successors as coach to England's football team. Two months ago he - or, strictly, the Football Association - took the team to dinner at Sardis in Darlington. Two weekends ago, Sven and Nancy - staying at the Redworth Hall Hotel - went again.

They had another great night, it's reckoned, notwithstanding the foolish female who approached Ms Dell-Olio, told her how lovely she looked and added that Ulrika couldn't hold a candle to her.

Ulrika? Don't mention her. Nor should the other woman have done.

Sardis is in Northgate, run for the past 17 years by Sardinian brothers Salvatore and Francesco Obinu and already with a flavour of football.

There are football programmes on the piano where the music might have scored, football scarves on the coat hooks and now a framed England shirt, signed by satisfied celebrity customers.

"Lovely people," said Salvatore, who supports Darlington, too.

Unlike Sven, we'd not been there for five years, the 1998 account headlined "Sardis night fever" - inspired but for the fact that that the column was clearly about lunch.

This was dinner, what might be called follow the leader. They can use the same headline if they want.

Like Eriksson's England, Sardis isn't world-class and probably wouldn't pretend to be. Like some of the England team, they are superb professionals, nonetheless.

The welcome is warm to both casuals and season ticket holders, the atmosphere informal, the menu frequently changing and the cooking exceptionally sound. If Sardis were a footballer it would be Tony Adams - consistent, wholly dependable, and with the ability to make difficult things look simple. (Wiseacres tempted to suggest that Tony Adams is a recovering alcoholic with knackered knees and a PFA pension should address the remark to the man himself or, still better, get a life.)

The small bar area offers olives, chipsticks and cheer. Though it was Tuesday evening, the restaurant was filling up fast. Further plus points include musical silence - apart from a party singing Happy Birthday, which in the circumstances may briefly be allowed - and an equal absence of waiting staff asking every five minutes if everything was all right.

We were seated at the highest of three levels. "You can throw toffee papers at the people below," suggested the waitress, though The Boss was altogether more engrossed in the behaviour of the adolescent young lady beneath.

"If she was my daughter, I'd slap her," she said. It's possibly what's known as looking down on people.

Table d'hote dinner is £18, £21 with a half bottle of house wine. We ate from the carte, The Boss beginning with antipasto so vastly generous on both meat and fish that it filled two large plates. Everything else is similarly glad handed; England must have been on double shuttles for a week.

A starter of cotechino - spicy pork sausage with tomato, wine and cannelini beans - was no less richly flavoured and, though by no means skimpy, rather less gargantuan. Other first courses, a fiver or so, included spaghetti with prawns, clams and things, risotto and cannelloni.

As night doth day, she followed with sea bass - and was duly reprimanded. "I've saved you £5," she said. "I could have had the lobster."

The fish had been cooked off the bone with lemon, olive oil and chillies. It was, she said, absolutely wonderful. Carefully cooked, the pan fried veal escalopes were topped with cheese and asparagus, sat in a vivid and buttery sauce and were accompanied with bowls of very good vegetables which included a lovely, cheesy cauliflower.

Salvatore had also asked, downstairs, if we'd like some home-made chips and might have asked if ducks can swim. "You speak good English," we said but regretted that they didn't also do creamed potatoes. It could have been mash of the day.

A dozen or so main courses, mainly between £12 and £14, might also have been roast rack of lamb with tarragon, garlic and cream, sea bass - oh no, she's had that - or grilled ostrich fillet with, among other things, sherry sauce. The sumptuous tiramisu was the size of half a house brick, the brandy snap basket as big as a giant clam shell.

The service - incomparably attentive, wholly unobtrusive - peaked when they spotted her snaffling all the biscuits and genially brought an extra half dozen for a doggy bag. It ended an excellent evening. A restaurant well ahead of the game, a very high scoring draw.

*Sardis, 196 Northgate, Darlington (01325) 461222. Open Tuesday to Saturday, lunch and dinner; evening booking essential. Two course lunch £13, three courses £15. Set dinner £18 - about £50 for two, without wine, from the carte. Tricky for the disabled, cigarettes allowed in all parts.

ANOTHER good do in prospect on Sunday when the Ramside Hall Hotel, outside Durham, celebrates its 40th anniversary with an eight and a half hour bash. Unfortunately we can't make it: The Boss is judging a dog show.

FOR the first time in more than 40 years, there's a caf on Durham railway station. Admittedly there's no furniture - "any day," said the assistant - but for the moment we can stand for that.

Old age travellers will remember the last one, a marvellous mahogany buffet bar on the south bound platform with expansive views across the city.

This one's on the north bound, run by former polliss Devin McManus who also has a take-out on the other side.

The menu includes sundry French pastries, sandwiches, bagels (the thing), bacon rolls (£1.40) and sausage rolls for £1.50.

We ordered a very large cappuccino (£2.05) which lasted down to Darlington and a sausage roll which, as lyrical train spotters used to say, was a glimpse and gone for ever.

It was neither the best sausage roll nor the best thirty bob's worth in railway history but on Durham's oft belated railway station, a welcome arrival, nonetheless.

DURHAM'S CAMRA newsletter contains both a notion that most of the city's licensees are called Tony or Michael - a theory probably formulated at 11.30pm - and an advert for the Tap and Spile in Framwellgate Moor.

"No atmosphere, pokey rooms, surly staff and a fat Geordie tart in charge. What more could you possibly want?"

It adds that the beer's superb.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you give a constipated budgerigar.

Chirrup of figs, of course. The column returns in a fortnight.

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