FIFTEEN years ago, Krimo Bouabda opened his first restaurant - in a former tobacconist's shop on Seaton Carew seafront - with just £250 and, he says, a lot of enthusiasm. Like Krimo it worked: Saturdays booked 16 weeks in advance, food guides mildly incredulous.

In 1998 he and Karen - he's Algerian, she from Easington - launched Porto Fino on Hartlepool's Historic Quay. A swish spot with pasta topping and pizza base, it was nurtured alongside his firstborn.

Now the Seaton emporium is closed. Krimo's, eponymous but by no means anonymous, has moved to Hartlepool's burgeoning Marina, almost on top of the lock gates, so splendid the seascapes.

If it's where Hartlepool folk go to push the boat out, and manifestly they do, Krimo's boat has very definitely come in.

We've known him almost from the start, used even to get a Krimo Christmas card and to exchange experiences on eating in the interior. Probably there were too attractions, the consistent zest of his cooking and the way he pronounced "booger".

Now he's moved house from Horden to Hartlepool, too, not - says Krimo - because of the old place's recent upward mobility but because another three penalty points on the coast road and he'd have been commuting by bus.

It was a midsummer Tuesday evening, 8pm and on spec. You probably remember it this year, because the sun shone and the sea shimmered, though Krimo's is clearly cool.

It was filling fast, one table filled by what appeared to be a group of elderly Townswomen Guild ladies - not Women's Institute, too tame - others by much younger promenaders.

By nine o'clock around 70 were in, as if all Hartlepool were home from sea and celebrating simultaneously. A week earlier, but still talking Tuesdays, he'd had to turn them away, or offer a taxi to take the disappointed round the dock, to Porto Fino.

Krimo himself talks of buying a jet ski to get him between his two promontories, and may not entirely be joking.

The decor's apparently styled modern Mediterranean and expensively attired, the adjoining bar's ostensibly North African. Another critic called it "Moorish" but might have meant "more-ish" and meant the food.

The carte changes daily, the "Thought for the Week - "A clean tie will always attract the soup of the day" - less often. The menu's preamble also points out that several of Krimo's old favourites have been free transferred up the coast from Seaton Carew.

There'd have been a riot, it adds, if they hadn't come, too.

If the setting is fashionable, however, the atmosphere buoyant and the food close to outstanding - more of that in a moment, honest - Krimo's secret ingredient may be the waitresses.

At least six were visibly on duty, bonny in white shirt, black and white apron and black skirts which varied from fractional to full length.

All he looked for in a waitress was a smile, said Krimo, a comment we thought disingenuous. (If the old booger needs to look it up, it won't do him any harm.)

Others may more accurately label the food, but a 500 mile radius of Gibraltar may principally encompass it.

We began with spicy chicken pilaf with peas and the most delicious chorizo sausage, she with a distinctive Mediterranean fish soup with croutons.

The duckling which followed - French ducking, it said, which may still allow for the Gibraltarian analogy, was served pink with a red onion confit and a port - Port of Hartlepool? - reduction. The Boss enjoyed a vegetable pilaf of the same provenance as the first, considered it excellent, finished with orange and lemon brulee. (The notes appear to say it was an orange and lettuce brulee, but even with such inventive cooking, this seems unlikely.)

Krimo's Surprise was a bibulous, knickerbocker glory sort of confection with a parasol on top, and tasted very much better than that description might suggest.

He'd jetted over from Porto Fino half way through - a sort of marine cavalry - blinked, charmed a few diners, had a sweat on.

When the evening had calmed, solstice sun at last abed, we stood outside on the mulled and marvellous Marina, talking of old times and humble beginnings.

With him was a French friend, now a chef in Tallahassee, who'd also married an Easington lass. Must be an export market.

"On a night like tonight it could be anywhere," said Krimo, and possibly it could, but the North-East should be very grateful that he's tied up in Hartlepool.

l Krimo's, Neptune House, Hartlepool Marina. 01429 266120. Open Tuesday-Saturday. Special lunches; three course dinner around £40 for two without drinks. Suitable for the disabled.

FAST upon last week's column on the diminishing Little Chef at Scotch Corner, a Which? magazine survey reports that more than half of 39 tested motorway meals were 'very poor quality'. Only one was excellent.

Welcome Break (which runs Bowburn services) has summoned Egon Ronay; a spokesman for Granada, which owns Little Chef, said the company was prevented from providing value for money because the Government had their business in a bureaucratic stranglehold.

One of the weekend's papers, meanwhile, reports how a Little Chef customer was told that he couldn't have an omelette because they hadn't come, but they could do fried eggs instead. Cuisine's first case, perhaps, of making an omelette without breaking an egg.

TWO guides have arrived, and not even bob-a-job week. Historic Inns of England (Prion, £14 99) is a splendidly photographed collection with text by Ted Bruning, who edits CAMRA's newspaper but defers real ale enthusiasm to history and anecdote.

Just two County Durham entries - the Morritt Arms at Greta Bridge and the Unicorn at Bowes, a few miles up the A66 - one in Northumberland (the Angel at Corbridge) and the usual market square suspects in North Yorkshire.

Somehow, however, it locates the Golden Fleece in Thirsk between town centre and racecourse. One too many, Ted?

The Quiet Pub, compiled by Derek and Josephine Dempster (Aurum Press, £9.99) is the annual encomium to the blessed, peace-making establishments where there is conversation, not cacophony, where the music no longer goes round and round.

If also applied to television, the Shakespeare in Durham might be pushed to retain its entry.

The Free Trade in Berwick, it's noted, not only welcomes children ('if well behaved') but keeps biscuits for visiting dogs; the Masham at Hartburn, Stockton, has 'particularly well kept' Bass - our friend Mr Smallwood would agree - and the Red Lion at Langthwaite, above Reeth, is 'an oasis in a desert'.

The Morritt Arms makes this one, too. A recent bar lunch was nowt ower, as they say - the carte offers 'best English chips', the bar menu 'French fries' - but they catered superbly for a wedding last week. A quiet pub still with something to shout about.

HAVEN until recently of shove ha'penny, central stove and draught milk, the Nevilles Cross Hotel at Durham is wholly and unrecognisably changed. Two mirrors are all that remain.

One bar's ancient and modern, unexplained pulpit at one end, the other - known as the Departure Lounge - said to be more futuristic. The Copper Dome restaurant, upstairs and apparently up-market, has a distinctly Asian flavour. More shortly.

WE'D looked into the Nevilles Cross en route to the cricket, bumped at once into the cream of Castle Eden Brewery, out for what might best be termed a Friday lunch. The Cross's real ale, including the excellent Summer Knights, is chiefly theirs.

Another lengthy lunch ticket was that they've just won a national award from Tesco for a new speciality beer. The prize winning flavour of the month will be announced in September - it's what the future's said to be.

TESCO, incidentally, is trying to make the pork pie sexy. "It's not fashionable to admit eating them, they aren't seen as cool," says a spokesman.

The latest mini-pies are said to fit into clutch handbags and dinner jacket pockets. Those from Tesco's military modern new place in Catterick seemed less than aphrodisiacal. Whatever turns you on.

YET more on Bimbo. Did you know that it's the 544th best selling sheet music of all time, asks Don Pattison in Spennymoor - then recites eight or nine outfits (Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians?) who recorded it in 1954 alone. But surely Bimbo's number's now up?