CHINESE restaurants, a survey claimed last week, have regained their once unassailable position as Britain's favoured eating out venue.

Probably this doesn't reflect the inventive, almost indigenous fare served (for example) in George Street, Manchester - rather the present passion for the pile 'em high oriental express now standing, buffet coach and economy class, in many North-East towns.

The only way in which it may lawfully be described as junk food, of course, is if the stuff's just arrived on a slow boat from Shanghai.

Never populist, the column takes the opposite view. Twenty years ago, good Chinese food was a vivid treat - latterly, even in Newcastle's Chinatown, it has been turned out soporifically and symmetrically, as uniform as the People's Army and just about as original.

To mark its return to popular favour, however, we took the Medical Advisor to dinner at the New Treasure Garden in Castle Hill, Richmond, just off the cobbled Market Place. The Medical Advisor should not be confused with the Good Doctor who, on the happily rare occasions upon which we darken his diagnosis, essays a little brain surgery in return.

"Where are the best places to eat out locally?" he will demand. We are thinking of sending him a bill for private consultation.

The Treasure Garden is all right, perfectly OK, nothing wrong with it that a few well-placed Chinese crackers wouldn't enliven - and if that sounds like faint praise, so be it.

In the window are lots of happy snaps of diners clearly enjoying themselves and one of those World's Greatest Restaurant-type framed certificates which, because good money has often been paid for them, are seldom worth the paper they're written on.

The menu is largely familiar, saucy only in a black bean sort of a way, surprising only in how it spells foo yeung. The Medical Advisor ordered spare ribs with chilli and salt followed by duck with ginger and spring onions.

The spare ribs had little heat and not much more light. The duck was all right, perfectly OK, nothing wrong with it... (See above.)

The Medical Advisor talked of defibrilators and dermatitis and other matters of a high falutin' nature. After the meal he relentlessly chewed nicotine gum. Having finally chucked tobacco, he is now addicted to chewy.

The column ordered pork dim sum and fried squid with ginger and spring onion, aforesaid. For comments, go back two paragraphs, though it may safely be concluded that we didn't much dig the Garden.

The bill, including four Cokes - John Smith's Smooth was £2.70 a pint - amounted to £35.50. We'd barely stepped outside the door before being hailed in the street by Enus Miah who owns Tandoori Nights, two or three doors up.

Miah, as he prefers to be called, has rung several times in the past four years to invite the column to his restaurant; each time the rules of anonymous engagement carefully explained.

"When are you coming to my restaurant?" he enquired, amiably, and invited us upstairs for a drink.

Tandoori Nights also has a framed certificate, Masterchef five stars, and a big picture on the wall of William Hague apparently presenting it. The town's MP is reckoned a regular, a chicken tikka masala man, though recently fortified by something called a royal sizzler.

"You pay for those certificates, don't you?" said the Medical Advisor, clinically. Miah, who travels each day from Bradford in the usual company of his brother Raj and a load of fresh spices, emphatically denied it.

Their recently extended restaurant has a good reputation, anyway, though what it doesn't have is a licence to sell alcohol. The "drink", it transpired, was tea and it took absolutely ages to arrive.

It would be ten minutes, Miah had said. That the aromatic tea took 40 was apparently explained by a big Asian festival in Bradford. "The staff have escaped," said Miah.

The Medical Advisor drank it with milk and two sugars. It's probably not the way it's done in Bangladesh.

After about an hour we in turn escaped to the Ralph Fitz Randall, the cavernous new pub opened by Wetherspoon's in Richmond's former principal post office, and enjoyed two or three late night pints of a delicious Daleside beer called Old Leg Over.

Perhaps Miah's tea had been an aphrodisiac. Like all the best things in life, those who write the headlines can have Life's Richmond Tapestry for free.

THERE'S a polite notice in Grubb's Diner opposite Middlesbrough bus station - management regrets that prices will rise by 10p from August 5.

It means that a farmhouse grill - gammon, liver, sausage, all sorts - is now £2.95, sausage and mash £2.10 and the "Grand Slam" all day breakfast £1.85.

It was 9.15 on Sunday morning, the place already filling, the Grand Slam as unsophisticated as its environment but cheerfully fulfilling a need. Not lovely Grubb's, maybe, but worth a cheap day return, nonetheless.

THEIR fault, not ours, last week's column gave the wrong dates for the adventurous beer festival at the Grey Horse in Consett - it's over the bank holiday weekend, half of the 32 real ales available at any time and including nine from landlord Paul Conroy's brewery out the back and around 16 from northern independents.

What's not changed is that buses from Durham and Newcastle stop, conveniently, on the doorstep. Details on www.thegreyhorse.co.uk

The column was unequivocally mistaken, however, in suggesting that Anthony Pearce is landlord of the excellent Ship in High Hesleden, north of Hartlepool, where a beer festival will also be held this weekend.

Anthony's merely a CAMRA member who's looking forward to a bank holiday in the beer tent. The landlord (01429 836453 for more information) is Peter Crosby, to whom apologies.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you call a maggot army.

An apple corps, of course.

Published: 20/08/2002