Among our favourite tales from the cookhouse, and beg pardon of those who may have heard it before, is the story of the chef who trained at the Savoy and then pitched up as manager of a council estate pub in Hartlepool.

The night we looked in, he was preparing pies and peas for the pensioners' party.

"There's not much you can do with pies and peas is there?" we said.

"Yes there is," he replied profoundly, "you can bugger them."

It returned irresistibly to mind last Tuesday evening at the Oak Tree in Hutton Magna. New landlord Alastair Ross also trained at the Savoy, and he's not buggering about, either.

Hutton Magna's a dot of a place off the A66, about ten miles west of Scotch Corner but (happily) within the County Palatine of Durham.

The cottagey pub, Grade II listed, has had any amount of owners, latterly Mrs Murgatroyd Agatha Bedford - known to her great relief as Mac - about whom we wrote little more than a year ago.

If this is Hutton Magna, that column concluded, then heaven help Hutton Parva.

Mac, charming lady, is gone. Alastair and Claire Ross were tempted back north by his friend Adrian Barratt, award-winning owner of the Arden Arms at Atley Hill, near Scorton.

Alastair's from near Loch Lomond, latterly head chef at Leith's in London, his own citations framed on the walls. Mostly they're for "Regional finalist", but if that suggests "Nearly man" it's still a damn sight more successful than nearly everyone else.

They opened a month ago, intent within confined space on retaining both a village pub and a restaurant with wider appeal, though the little bar has just three tiny tables, as if the removal van had taken a wrong turn at Retford.

Three other couples dined, including Mr Neil Riddell, long time former captain of Durham County Cricket Club, and his wife Barbara. "You'll be on your rounds for the Echo," said Neil, threatening to crumble cautious cover.

Alastair busied himself out the back, his brother Neil waited at table, the atmosphere distinctly informal. Neil appears an entirely amiable young man but may not, as they say in Sheffield, be a master cutler.

The table was laid with knife and fork alone. Since neither seemed wholly suitable for a smoked haddock chowder - nor, indeed, for The Boss's garlic mussel macaroni - we suggested that spoons might help.

The spoons were vast, the sort of thing with which a mother basking shark might feed halibut - or cod liver oil on a bad day - to her young.

The blade of the butter knife pointed directly towards its intended user. Had it been Timothy Hackworth Infants School, his knuckles would have been rapped with the formidable Miss Vint's 12 inch instrument of retribution (nee ruler); had it been at home in Shildon he'd have been made to do the washing up.

The chowder, it should swiftly be added, was terrific and in a bowl (how may this be put) commensurate with the size of the spoon.

Other starters included mushroom soup (£2.50), warm salad of bacon, tomato and mozzarella (£4) and, same price, bruschetta of smoked salmon, avocado, cream cheese and chives. The Boss enjoyed hers, too.

We followed with braised lamb shank with garlic mash and black pudding (£11). Though attractively presented on the bone, it looked like a bit like one of those sectional drawings of the human brain so beloved of biology text books.

"You must have a very funny brain," said The Boss, a sentiment oft-echoed by neurologists and others down the decades.

The lamb, carnation pink, fell from the bone bleating "Eat me". It was the best in memory.

Other main courses on the blackboard above the bar - "I like using blackboards, it means you never have to admit running out of things," said Alastair - included rib eye steaks for £12.50, pan fried sea bass with squid, roast chicken breast with sage and onion risotto (£10) and The Boss's roast salmon, swimming in at £9.50.

Accompanying vegetables were disappointing, however. A little dish of carrots and cabbage and things and what appeared to be roast potatoes, though they're probably called something else in London.

They arrived with two dessert spoons, the serving spoons (presumably) having been earlier deployed. It wouldn't have been particularly surprising had the fruity flavoured creme brulee which ended the meal been delivered on a Drott.

All things considered, however, it was a very promising start - and you know what they say about acorns and oak trees, even among chartered Savoyers.

* The Oak Tree, Hutton Magna, near Barnard Castle (01833) 627371. Open seven lunchtimes and evenings; difficult for the disabled - and mind your head, an' all.

The piece two weeks ago on Don Bee's fish and chip place at Seaton Carew - manna in a tawdry desert - provoked all manner of reactions.

The Bees liked it, Chris Eddowes liked it - "one of our greatest treats is to eat Don Bee's fish and chips in Seaton Carew car park" - Chris Day in Longbenton thought the comparison unfair on Ibiza.

"Parts of the film South Pacific were shot in Ibiza because of the beauty of its coastline," he insists.

Joan Steel, born and bred in sunny Seaton, agreed with its "annihilation" but recalled also the views of her granddaughters, three and five, who live in Oman, find weekends in Dubai and Abu Dhabi boring and long for their annual holiday in Hartlepool.

Given this summer the chance of a re-visit to Disney Florida, the five-year-old declined and was taken by way of reluctant compromise to Disney Paris instead.

"You promised we could go to Seaton Carew and now we have to go to Paris," she protested.

Joan wonders if there's something in the biblical bit about the mouths of babes and sucklings." Or are we," she asks, "just getting too sophisticated?"

PS: Hartlepool-based comedian Mickey Gunn told an audience in Tow Law on Friday that Seaton Carew is getting a new theme park. "It'll be called Dismal World," he said.

In vain search for the Tow Law folk supposedly selling fish and chips in Mallaig, the column's own holiday took the high road back to Scotland.

The fish shop folk were as local as Loch Fine lobster, and also sold Kelpie, a Scottish real ale made from seaweed - bladderwrack seaweed, precisely - which proved a distinctly acquired taste.

"At least it's more Scottish than McEwans Export," said the waitress, defiantly.

The Isle of Skye Brewery produces some terrific stuff, though, and in the brewery shop in Uig we also re-discovered Fentiman's pop - 97-years-old and still made in Newcastle.

Once it was sold door to downtrodden door. Now it sits upmarket, brews like Seville orange jigger and Victorian style lemonade, and on Skye sold for £1.79 a bottle.

It may be cheaper elsewhere, of course - Skye's the limit, is it not?

CAMRA's 2003 Good Beer Guide was launched yesterday in London, a day too late for the column which marched alongside the countryside folk on Sunday. More of that in Thursday's John North - and of the Good Beer Guide when we get one.

...so finally, the bairns wondered if we knew which mouse was a Roman emperor.

Julius Cheeser, of course.

Published: 24/09/2002