IT'S the sort of menu which suggests that the chef needs not so much a City and Guilds in kitchen craft as a BSc in geography, which could double as a doorstop or be serialised for A Book at Bedtime and probably last a fortnight.

English, Chinese, Spanish, Asian, Italian, Moroccan, Greek, Thai, tapas says the business card and then, either wearied by such globe-trotting or in danger of falling off the end of the business card, adds limply "and many more".

It is the sort of menu which Phileas Fogg might have taken six months to circumnavigate and which - let's be honest about it - makes proper food writers wonder if they wouldn't have been better off stopping at home.

We were at the Bridge in Stapleton, a couple of miles south of Darlington on the back road to Scotch Corner. There were around 35 starters, over 150 main courses - one or two repeated twice - specials like the Twiggy or the Sumo Wrestler and puddings, which began with Austrian almond cake and may even now be taking a compass bearing on Zululand.

"This is nothing," said Anne Kreft, the new landlady. "We had over 500 main courses when we were at the Swan in Aberford."

Otto Kreft kept the Bridge ten years ago, swanned off to Aberford - off the A1, near Wetherby - and retired three years ago to Spain. The Bridge, small world, is the one he had to come back for. They re-opened it last month.

"I loved the pub, I loved the village and to be honest we were bored," says Anne. "We didn't take much persuading to return."

On a busy night there's little doubt that the population of the Bridge would exceed that of Stapleton itself but it was quiet on the Saturday lunchtime we called, the few other diners including a family with two young children.

The children behaved immaculately. Every few minutes their father would tell callers on his mobile phone that he would catch them later. We concluded that he must be an off-duty policeman.

That the smartly-turned-out waiting staff had time on their hands perhaps offered even more attention than might otherwise have been the case, but the principal young lady was so splendid that the tip represented the biggest percentage of a bill in the column's peculiarly parsimonious history. But back to cosmopolitan magazine, otherwise known as the menu.

The unavoidable question, of course, is whence all this is sourced - sauced? - and the answer, insists Anne Kreft, is universally in-house. Before returning they built two walk-in freezers; at Aberford they had five.

Properly to accomplish it, she says, they need five chefs. Otto is presently coping with just two commies, which is not to suggest reds under the bed table but rather that they are commis - apprentice - chefs.

"We've had a heck of a time getting chefs," says Anne. "It's unbelievable; we've advertised, tried the catering colleges and the Jobcentres. There's nothing."

We finally began with Thai scallops with a sauce of coconut, chilli, chives and things and a nicely presented salad; she had a Caesar salad, with chicken.

That they took half an hour to arrive may have been because the expeditionary force was disorientated but certainly not because the chef had lost his way. Both were very good, maybe even surprisingly good.

She, inevitably, then cast around for fish. Monkfish, marlin, mahi-mahi - that was only the m's - before deciding on the poached salmon with a chive sauce. We had chicken wellington, sitting on a florid sauce.

Bowls of vegetables, chips, a dish of saute potatoes with bacon and onions arrived but not the ordered baked potato.

Mrs Kreft arrived five minutes after the food, announced that the chef considered the baked potatoes a bit green and asked if instead we'd like saute potatoes with bacon and onion.

Poor thing, she'd probably been held up at customs.

With the exception of the music, we thoroughly enjoyed it. The music was of the sort favoured by "Mediterranean" restaurants - Greek, Italian, Spanish, Sorrento's second cousin by marriage - in which the singer interminably intones as if reading the closing prices on the Madrid stock exchange.

If they must have "authentic" music, it should at least be Esperanto.

There were three real ales, splendid staff, immaculate toilets, attractive new decoration within and without and an eclecticicity bill which, two courses for two, barely touched £20.

We left - it may already have been presumed - feeling very much more greatly impressed over the voyage of discovery than perhaps we had expected to be: global warming, if ever.

l The Bridge, Stapleton, near Darlington (01325 350106). Open seven lunchtimes and evenings, Sunday carvery £5.90. Fine for the disabled.

COINCIDENCE, no more, we also looked for lunch into the Bridge at Ramshaw, near Evenwood in south-west Durham - where hangs a well remembered first paragraph.

"It wasn't just the walls of the Bridge at Ramshaw that were fresh plastered on its grand re-opening night. So was the chef."

That was 25 years ago. It's a tighter ship, and a more sober crew, today.

The Friday lunchtime cod (£4.95) was a carefully cooked giant served with chips and vegetables; we'd started for £2.50 with potatoes marquis, a tasty and well presented dish of mash balls with chicken and bacon and a creamy sauce.

Many chefs wouldn't even turn the gas on for fifty bob. Dave Cox, the landlord, not only cooked it but served it. Though dressed like Ali Baba, or an extra from Aladdin, he was as sober as judgement day.

A better bargain yet may be the Saturday night/Sunday lunchtime carvery - £4.25 adults, £2.60 bairns. A pity there's no real ale; as the chef should have done all those years ago, we drank Coca-Cola.

AT the Raby Arms in upwardly mobile Hart Village, near Hartlepool, the fish comes with an optional lager and lime batter - an elder in this office drools simply at the thought of it.

The beef, Stilton and ale pie was pretty good, too, though the broccoli so waterlogged that we considered calling Cleveland fire brigade.

What most greatly caught the eye, however, was the Raby challenge drawn graphically in chalk above the bar - a free meal if the huge plate is cleared within 45 minutes, £14.95 otherwise.

The dish comprises four burgers, two Cumberland sausages, four slices of bacon, four black puddings, four eggs, four slices of fried bread, a dozen mushrooms and ten roast tatties. There are two tomatoes, too. A body needs his vitamin C, after all.

YET more on the former Nicky Nack guest house at Croxdale, haven - recalls Philip Steele in Crook - to the stars who in the 1960s appeared at the Top Hat night club in Spennymoor. Dorothy Squires, he recalls, was particularly fond of the old place.

Retired Spennymoor head teacher Joe Prest quotes good authority - James F Dodd's 1897 "History of the Urban District of Spennymoor" and John Reavley's 1935 town history - to amend last week's account of how the guest house came by its name.

It wasn't a flapping shoe sole but a heel plate ("a common, crescent-shaped metal reinforcement used as late as the 1930s in boots and shoes") which made the eerie noise, though Joe believes that stories of the ghost of Nicky Nack wood were already well established.

Twenty five years ago, he himself wrote "perhaps the only ballad" about the Nicky Nack ghost, mentioned in his own recent book, Time for Music.

Before he could present a copy to the last landlord of the Nicky Nack, the poor chap died. Mike Patterson, the present owner, changed the name to the Daleside Arms, instead.

.and finally, the bairns wondered if we'd heard the one about the cat that won the milk drinking contest.

It lapped the field, of course.

Published: Tuesday, July 10, 2001