High honours for Legion grub

NEW towns are having a bad press. Report after report finds them crumbling, physically or metaphorically, about the unfortunate citizens' ears.

A food critic would draw no more comfortable conclusions. No gastronome has ever been guided gleefully towards Newton Aycliffe, no epicure turned ecstatic at some pease pudding pub in Peterlee.

So what on earth were we doing, a bit late on parade, at the Royal British Legion Club in Newton Aycliffe?

John Mullen is responsible. He is an avid Eating Owt man, even sank his teeth into the pork pie tasting between Morrell's of Hartlepool and Taylor's of Darlington - Taylor's, he reckoned, by a whisker - wrote both to question a recent recommendation and to laud the Legion.

"The dumplings are terrific, the steak pie a sure thing," he said, and is clearly unalone in his enthusiasm. A couple of Sundays back they served 214 lunches before 2pm, though the Aycliffe all comers' record is 248.

"Someone once asked about christenings and I said we didn't do them. She ordered 25 Sunday dinners instead," recalls Ann Elliott, who with partner Dennis Anderson has for four years leased the upstairs lounge.

The club is behind the carbuncular recreation centre in the middle of town, a lift available to the upper room. Old soldiers may indeed never die, but they can still have trouble with the stairs.

It's smartly furnished, though with few concessions (save pepper pots and things) to being a restaurant. The word unpretentious came to mind. A display of military memorabilia by the door is a reminder of battles long fought.

The atmosphere is also wholly informal, the impression of a family gathering reinforced by a rattle of baby chairs. Everyone appeared to be called "Flower" or, if not, Doris. Food, straight as a guardsman's intentions, was also remarkably inexpensive. Main meals are £2.75, salads £1.90, puddings 80p, sandwiches from 60p.

Even a pint of Worthington Creamery is just £1.25, for those who believe in that sort of thing.

There were four specials, though (sadly) none embraced diddle dumplings. The Boss had liver and onions, handed over the attendant Yorkshire pudding - it was Yorkshire Day, and they'll have had much worse south of the Tees -- thought the liver very tasty.

The steak pie was perfectly good without being exceptional, the vegetables fresh, the gravy abundant. It was the sort of dinner that grandma used to make, the sort we won the war on.

The jam sponge couldn't be faulted, the coffee - uniquely in our experience - came with its component parts on a tray. Coffee beans in a bowl, hot water in a pot, milk and sugar where they belonged. It allowed for individual strengths, and seemed a good idea.

Mr Mulley, whose wife was waiting on, reckons there are many days when the Legion attracts literally legions. The stuff to give the troops, anyway.

l Royal British Legion Club, MacMillan Road, Newton Aycliffe, No membership necessary. Lunch Monday to Friday (11.45-2pm) and Sunday. Sunday lunch £3.50. Suitable for the disabled.

News that the admirable Ship at Middlestone Village, near Bishop Auckland, has again won CAMRA's North-East Pub of the Year award comes with the revelation that until he re-opened the pub two years ago, Graham Snaith had been a lager man. Now he's really got the taste - 377 real ales, mainly from small independent brewers - though Liz, his wife, still prefers red wine. So far this year, the Ship's crew have ticked 1,340 of the 5,000 Good Beer Guide entries. Another auction on August 24 for the Butterwick Hospice in Bishop.

Eastgate sits under a cloud, and not just the usual stuff from the cement works chimney. The works near Weardale's upper echelons closes on Friday, the shock nothing palliated by the consultant's report - who pays these people? - which suggested that dalesmen keep bees and grow daffodils instead.

Mr Bean also came preposterously into the proposals, though none in Weardale is laughing.

It was all over the paper the day we looked into the Cross Keys. Eastgate's 300- years-old village pub, though spirits will doubtless be raised by the Keys' annual pork pie competition on Sunday.

"Benching from 12 noon, judging 1pm prompt," it says and Angus Ward, last year's winner, again looking a bit tasty. Mr Ward helped lead a consortium which tried to buy the works; another pie laureate might, as it were, provide a few crumbs of comfort. Athol Graham and his wife have had the pub for three summers, their original intention to turn it exclusively into a restaurant.

Sensibly they kept the bar and the locals, though the presence on a short lunchtime menu of things like nicoise tart (£3.95) suggests that they're still aiming at the sort of customer unlikely to get his nicoise in a knot.

The tart embraced anchovies, tuna and olives. The Boss considered it terrific, a lovely light lunch. For an extra £1, the Cross Keys tart artfully amalgamated smoked salmon, spinach and home-made hollandaise sauce, niftily topped with a poached egg and with a fresh little salad to the side.

The most expensive item was a club sandwich, £7.50, and with every indication that the club was more Stringfellows than Stanhope Workmen's. (This is in no way, of course, to disparage the lads in Stanhope club.)

That's all we had. A couple of pints of excellent Pedigree from the only hand pump, a couple of glasses of mineral water and a look at the restaurant which is frequently fully booked.

It may be one of the few reasons for Eastgate to be cheerful: not cement, perhaps, but pretty positive, anyway.

The Beadle brothers' chip shops have won another award from the Sea Fish Industry Authority, this time the emporium at Tindale Crescent, near Bishop Auckland. Outside there's a veritable gantry of bubble gum machines - the collective noun may be a bathysphere - and a poster offering a taste of the Med. Had the signwriter run out of space, or couldn't he spell Mediterranean?

The Med was kebabs and stuff, the fish and chips distinctly British - unlikely wholly to satisfy the purists but hands-on happiness in dear old Tindale Crescent.

Costa, the coffee people, have e-mailed the result of an NOP survey into the nicest thing that a new partner could offer first thing in the morning.

Among women, 25 per cent said coffee and 20 per cent sex; among men, 34 per cent had sex on top of the list and just 21 per cent coffee. Other preferences are inexplicably unrecorded and therefore may only be dreamed of.

Asked how they interpreted the phrase "Do you want to come in for a coffee?", 58 per cent thought there were "romantic connotations". Don't you just love it, eh?

....and finally the bairns wondered if we knew why bullies are like bananas. Because they're yellow, and hang around in bunches .

Published: 06/08/2002