A waiting game

Once it was familiar territory, especially to The Boss who worked above a butcher's in the Echo's Northallerton branch office and still bought her sausages somewhere else.

The Northallerton press gang would hold court in the Lion every Wednesday lunchtime, awaiting the arrival of characters like the late Tony Wilkinson who wore so much patchouli that his approach could be detected at the other end of the High Street and his drink ordered in advance.

Last Wednesday we arrived unannounced at 8pm, asked for a menu, were told there'd be no food for half an hour because there was a "function" on. Probably it was a Round Table do; Northallerton has more Round Tablers than a stag night at Camelot.

We ordered drinks, took a seat by the gas propelled fire, perused the menu. After ten minutes the fire suddenly went out. Had they been cut off, run out of shillings for the meter or had the function bagged all the fuel as well as all the food?

Though the menu seemed pricey - soup £3.95, most other starters £5.95 - we asked at 8.30 if it were possible to order. The restaurant manager, apologetic as well he might be, said it would be at least another 20 minutes before the function could fully be fed.

Displeased and dysfunctional - two diners going hungry at the town's biggest hotel - we headed for the Tithe Bar instead.

We'd enthused about it in November 2001, though regrettably referring to it throughout as the Tithe Barn. In 2002, it was runner-up in Yorkshire CAMRA's pub of the year competition; the winner must have been quite something.

It's almost opposite the Friarage Hospital. When the elder bairn was in for a knee job last summer, we'd suggested that a wheelchair turn to the Tithe Bar might prove therapeutic.

The consultant was all for it, the staff nurse demurred, the sister was nearly to convey to coronary care, so great her state of shock. Let them drink barley water.

At the risk of tweaking the Lion's tail, Wednesday evening at last offered the chance of a return visit.

It majors on real ale, of course, principally English casks and continental bottles, though there's a sound menu and specials board downstairs and more adventurous cooking in the no-smoking restaurant above.

The beer menu included Guzzle from the York Brewery, Frostbite and Navvy. (A navvy, as readers will know, was originally one of the navigators who laboured on digging England's inland waterways. The Boss sang a little song about them.)

Since uncertainty prevailed, the young lads behind the bar offered a nip of all three, and all in excellent nick. Lovely lads, these two, though it is reported that one spells "soupe" with a final "e" and has subsequent difficulty with sellery.

The bar's entirely agreeable, wooden floored, possibly (thought The Boss) a bit French. The people care about what they're serving. There's also a shelf of games like Monopoly, Scrabble and chess, 50p a throw with proceeds to multiple sclerosis research. Nice idea.

Cheating a bit, we ate downstairs from the upstairs menu - Stilton and celery soup and lamb with a red onion, grape and raisin compote on one side of the table, salmon with dill and capers and grilled salmon with a spinach risotto on the other.

"In Dublin I once ate salmon at every meal for three days," The Boss protested.

The Stilton seemed singularly unassertive, the croutons were pappy, the compote had been composed quite a while previously but the dauphinoise potatoes were excellent. The fish wife, on the other hand, thought everything about her meal beyond reproach. Two courses for two, around £24.

It is little matter that food may not be the principal ingredient in its success, for it is a truly excellent pub - and when another group came in, were offered the taste test and declared that it sure beat the hell out of John Smith's Smooth, the night's resurrection was complete.

* Tithe Bar and Brasserie, 2 Friarage Street, Northallerton. (01609) 778482. Bar meals lunchtime and early evening, brasserie from 6.30pm. Open all day - no problem downstairs for the disabled.

THE Campaign for Real Ale has its first woman chairman. Paula Waters, a 44-year-old teacher and mother of one, grew up in Seaham Harbour and wet her whistle on Vaux Double Maxim (which in CAMRA terms, wasn't "real" at all.)

CAMRA research suggests that most women don't drink beer. "One of my biggest ambitions as chairman is to convince them to try it and to realise that the diversity of taste leaves wine in the shadows," she says.

THE Richmond and North West Yorkshire CAMRA branch now has a lively newsletter, 3,000 distribution, provisionally called Mine's A Pint but offering a copy of the 2003 Good Beer Guide for a better suggestion. Since anything rhyming ales with dales is likely to fall at the hurdle of over-familiarity, we offer up Country Pump Kin. They can send the Good Beer Guide here.

THOUGH the Glittering Star in Darlington is barely a cockstride from this office, it was three or four years since last we were there.

A return was prompted by a report in The Publican Newspaper that Samuel Smith's Tadcaster Brewery - to their great, eternal and barely credible credit - has frozen the price of its beer for the past 12 years.

The Glit is one of precious few Sam Smith's pubs north of the Tees, though they do say that the Swan and Three Cygnets in Durham has had an impressive make-over.

Last time we were there, a pint of Old Brewery Bitter, ever steady, was £1.16. It has risen, because of budget changes and uncontrollable things, to £1.22. There are pubs, even in Darlington, where you'll almost pay as much for a half. A pork and stuffing sandwich was 80p, the entertainment provided by a chap trying to sell hair extensions until some slaphead turned up the juke box. It was then possible to remember the price you will still happily pay for a pint of peace and quiet.

ONE of the problems with modern technology, the excellent Jennings Brewery in Cockermouth has e-mailed pictures of the ale bottled to mark its 175th anniversary but hasn't actually sent any beer. They're a good bunch, though, expanding a bit in the dales and we wish them prosperity. A virtual anniversary.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what is purple and burns.

The Grape Fire of London, of course.

Published: ??/??/2003