Where there's a willy...

SPLASHING out, as might be supposed in an aquatic environment, we lunched last week at The Pump Room, near Durham. Three courses with coffee offered little change from £20 a head. Since the only beer was Roughwith, we kept additional costs down by sticking, appropriately, to water. (Harrogate Spa, big bottle £3.50, and with the British Heart Foundation logo on the label.)

The restaurant is by the Wear at Houghall, just off the busy road from the city to the Bowburn motorway interchange and built in 1840 as Durham's first tap water pumping station.

Though the conversion is both imaginative and successful - interior design by a Newcastle company suitably called Fluid Design Solutions - there are few internal signs of the listed building's previous incarnation.

There's a vaguely biblical statue of a woman carrying a water bottle, though. She's probably called Naomi; they usually were.

Owned by Nigel and Debbie Gadd and their chef/partner Mark Everson, the Pump House opened in December. So far, said Nigel - we paraphrase here - they're keeping their heads above water.

So many people were coming in and out for menus, however - as if the sign by the roadside had proclaimed them as the day's special offer and with a free sticky toffee pudding just for asking - that the tide may turn shortly into a torrent.

The restaurant's on two floors, a balcony looking down from one to t'other, with much that is innovative and visually appealing.

The Boss, for example, spied an elliptically shaped soup bowl and supposed that it resembled a urinal. Closer inspection suggested a hip bath, perhaps, or a prototype of the Joddrell Bank telescope. There's rarely a dull moment, anyway.

Doubtless it's what's known as designer tableware. Like architect designed homes, the phrase is curious. Who's supposed to have done the blessed job, the chimney sweep?

Whilst discussing such matters, it should perhaps also be said that the powder room (as they term it) is decorated with images of fat naked men with little - little may be just the word - left to the imagination.

Nigel said that Debbie had chosen them; The Boss said she was glad she hadn't ordered the sausage.

The gents, it should in the interests of inequality be further added, contained nothing more erotic than a bottle of hand lotion. "I'm working on it," said Nigel, whose previous ventures have included the Seven Stars at Shincliffe - a mile up the road - and the Derwent Walk Inn at Ebchester.

We ate on the ground floor, other guests including a lively group of elderly ladies who clearly knew their way around a menu. Some of them, it was said, still found their way around a tennis court, too.

Either they were a) merry widows of long standing, b) had collectively murdered the old feller that morning and buried him beneath the floorboards or c) left him at home with Meals and Wheels and a huff on.

As the afternoon sped on, the latter seemed most likely. They were in very good form, whatever.

We began with carrot, coriander and lemongrass soup, the latter a key ingredient in invigorating what can so often be straight from the bland box. The Boss remained unimpressed, however. "It reminds me of why I don't like humanist funerals," she said, an analogy which it seemed improvident to pursue.

She'd started with the scallops and, conversely, thought them "succulent."

Main courses included Toulouse sausage (aforesaid) with a herb mash, caramelised onion and red wine and chicken breast with roasted root vegetable mash and thyme sauce.

The Boss had the king prawns, all three of them, we the wild mushroom pancake with garlic, white wine and cream and with a refreshing little tomato-based salad. As with everything else, colour and presentation were admirably eye-catching.

It may be that the little burned bits were part of the Grand Design, too. The column has been incorrigibly fond of burned bits ever since washing day rice pudding way back in the 1950s.

We ordered another big bottle of water. The British Heart Foundation would damn near have been hyperventilating.

A hot chocolate and hazelnut fondant with a warm Grand Marnier and chocolate sauce not only filled about six column inches but agreeably filled a hole, too - rich, moist, fattening in a guiltless way. The glazed lemon tart was precisely that, tart, and much the better for it.

The lunching ladies left £20 each, whilst, with the Harrogate Spa bar, our bill reached £44. Not a drop in the ocean, admittedly, but for those who like to do the water works once in a while, a fascinating voyage of discovery.

* The Pump House, Farm Road, Houghall, Durham; telephone 0191-386 9189. Open seven lunchtimes and Mon-Sat evenings. Two course lunch £12 50, three course dinner upwards from £22. Ground floor OK for the disabled.

THE Seaham Hall Hotel, another place which has to be seen and where the food's decidedly interesting, has a special offer Monday to Saturday three course lunch until March 1. The front of the company's postcard says it's £14.50, the back £14.95. Either way, an eye opener, too.

RIGHT at the other end of the price list, we wrote on January 7 of the £2.50 specials, all day Monday to Thursday at the Dog and Gun in Etherley. Since then they've been doing 100 meals a day - mostly Cumberland sausage and mash or liver and onions. "It's been unbelievable," says landlady Julia Welsh. The pub's just off the A68, above West Auckland.

NATIONAL Faggot Week begins on Sunday - "one of those forgotten great British dishes," says the bumph.

Not up here it's not, though probably still called penny ducks and bought (so it's generally claimed) for the dog.

Faggot Week, inevitably a public relations stunt, is to promote Mr Brain's - a rather unfortunate name in the circumstances - and the Faggot Family's tour of Britain, which won't penetrate beyond Leeds University.

Further north the other day, our discerning old friend Arthur Pickering from Tyne Tees Television offered a savoury duck to his colleague Andy Kluz's dog, Daisy.

"The ungrateful cow turned her nose up at it," he complains. "It was a Hartlepool faggot, an' all."

NOTICING pea fritters at the excellent Maggie's Plaice in Barnard Castle, last week's column wondered if they might be a peculiar Barney delicacy.

Arthur Pickering thinks not. He has a colleague who has a friend who knows someone who had pea fritters in Exeter.

"Apparently it was mushy peas in batter. No spud. Dead common, or what?"

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you call an overweight pumpkin.

A plumpkin, of course.

Published: 21/01/2003