Enter the horse - and the dragon

Injudicious ministerial comments about foot-and-mouth disease were said seriously to have undermined Stowell Street, Newcastle's Chinatown; none of its restaurants - nor any other Chinese restaurant in the region - features in the 2002 Good Food Guide. Ten years ago, Stowell Street alone had four or five entries.

They seem largely to have stood still, possibly a case of supply and demand - or chicken and egg foo yung, as a Cantonese caterer might say.

Do they give the average customer what he wants, plodging up to the chow meins in monosodium glutamate, or what in a Soho restaurant (or one in Shanghai) he might reasonably expect? Should it be a case of out with the old and in with the new, or of not forgetting auld acquaintance, not least number 37 (sweet and sour pork)?

First footing, at any rate, we sailed off to the long established East Ocean in Borough Road, Middlesbrough, on a quiet night last Tuesday.

The decor is largely westernised; Dusty Springfield - that pretty little black-eyed floozie - sings, still sensational, on the tapes. A waiter of oriental appearance but Eston accent asks if we have "appropriate instructions".

He is the star of the show, this lad, an accomplished act whom The Boss supposed might be doing a PhD at the University of Teesside and who, on any argument, had seen more of the world beyond Borough Road than the Sunday School trip to Saltburn.

The menu is familiarly extensive, though with some pleasant surprises, the proceedings prefaced with the usual basket of polystyrene flavoured prawn crackers.

"Something to spoil your appetite," said the waiter, jocularly.

It is possible that people devour prawn crackers for the same reason that lemmings hurl themselves off 200ft cliffs, which is to say that they're too stupid to know any better, though only the diner may live to regret it.

We began with "West Lake" soup, The Boss with a crab claw starter plate (£5.30) with spring rolls, spare ribs and sesame toast. West Lake soup had minced beef, though tasted little different from any "Chinese" soup in living memory.

The Cantonese loin pork (£10) came in huge quantities, perfectly pleasant if not hugely distinctive. Her mixed sea food hot pot - there are different contents, strengths and seasonings - was tremendous: spicy, ample, fully flavoured. As it is with her in Coronation Street, hot pot is said to be the chef's speciality. It was easy to see why.

Puddings, chiefly fritters or proprietary ice creams with fanciful names, only reinforce the Auld Lang Syne impression.

We enjoyed the evening well enough, though. In the main, as you might say, the East Ocean seems buoyant.

SHE was only the station master's daughter, as quite possibly we have observed before, but in those distant Durham days we seemed pretty much on the right lines.

The Kwai Lam, on the narrow road to the Cathedral, was possibly quite smart - even fashionable - in the late 1960s. Now it's the New Kwai Lam, and only the name seems different.

Almost always, we'd eat cornflour based mushroom soup, sweet and sour chicken and banana fritters. Memory draws a happy veil over which we considered the most exotic.

Young and dafter, we would even dress for dinner - she in her good white frock, we in the monkey suit bought on a Provident club from the late Syd Armitage in Shildon.

Possibly because he also sold boots and shoes, corsets, curtains and candlewick bedspreads, Syd (bless him) might never have been described as a bespoke tailor - mightn't, even, had we known what a bespoke tailor was - but it was a perfectly good suit, nonetheless.

That within a few burgeoning years it was several sizes too small may not be laid at the door of Mr Armitage.

The Kwai Lam is still approached up the same dismal flight of stairs, still offers the same anodyne oriental music, still has one prow table with views towards the Market Place and others struggling in its wake.

No longer, however, can you expect a romantic meal and change from a ten shilling note.

The three course lunch is now a fiver, the soup a shallow bowl of chicken and sweetcorn. Will ever there be a day in the Year of the Horse - or in any of the other four-legged fellowships, we wondered - when it is anything else?

We followed with oriental vegetables in black bean sauce (sweet and sour chicken not being available) and with a sort of scrag end jam fritter. Jam fritter, it's possible to suppose, may not be all the rage in the rarefied restaurants of Beijing.

Only two other people lunched, university types, she shamefully berating him for working too hard and he either too exhausted or too supine to answer back.

Alone, we remembered far cheerier occasions but, like Mme Piaf, without regrets. As the Chinese proverb probably says, verily there is no time like the present.

ACROSS the road from the Kwai Lam is the Shakespeare Tavern, not quite Durham's best pub - the Victoria takes that title - but one of several city gems. We'd not been there for ages, either.

The Shakespeare was the only place between York and Newcastle featured in Classic Town Pubs, a 1988 CAMRA publication, the Shakespearian connection said to be as genuine as the "Brewer's Tudor" timbering on the outside but the welcoming interior much admired.

It hadn't changed at all and hadn't changed - if the paradox may be pardoned - for the better.

Still the tiny bar at the front, still the two snuggeries behind, still the labyrinthine gents and the eclectic mix of students and older hands.

Only the price of a pint is different, Timothy Taylor's Landlord - one of three real ales - £2.

The board above the bar offers pork pie for 60p, pickled eggs 40p. The barman filled the glasses to the brim.

We concealed a notebook behind the brattish, worked contentedly for 90 minutes, supped three pints. What was it that the Bard wrote about too, too solid flesh?

RAY Price declines the PR lady's invitation (Eating Owt, February 5) to offer comments on the catering at Newcastle Airport. If they want a suggestion, however, he nominates Thompson's of Prudhoe. They're the region's best known demolition men.

YET another "brand new concept in fine dining" - or so it says on the invitation - opens in Yarm next week.

Punningly named, fish orientated, Mcquay's (01642 785808) is owned by Malcolm McKee whose hotel group includes the Croft Spa, the Park Head at Coundon and a couple in Redcar - where he began with the Park in 1986. He has also bought the Waterfront bar in Stockton, closed for two and half years, which will re-open along similar lines to Mcquay's later this year.

Mrs McKee, meanwhile, is expecting their eighth child - the oldest is 13 - next month. "I'm a very busy lad," says Malcolm.

'MUFTI", last week's column noted, was an Arabic word originally. Precisely, it means an expounder of Muslim law which probably explains why the wonderfully named Parthenon Jones in Bishop Auckland remembers the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem - "a thorn in the side of the British during the troubles, pre-1939."

The Grand Mufti was eventually banished - "another turbulent priest," notes our correspondent, "of whom there have been a few."

....and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you get if you cross a parrot with a soldier.

A parrot trooper, of course.

Published: Tuesday, February 12, 2002