Absolutely fabulous

The car parks are largely full, the expressions largely vacant. If it is no longer to be the day of rest, a trend greatly to be regretted, it is clearly not the day of restaurants, either.

Most eating places are simply closed. The Blue Lagoon's special Sunday lunch includes moussaka and chicken escalope, as the menu has done every day for these past 50 years.

The pub chains remain fettered to formula and to formaldehyde, Ochis - the Caribbean place - declines to open until 2pm.

They should know that, where I come from, there are those who've not only had their Sunday dinner and long washed up by two o'clock but are actively enquiring what's for tea.

Then Oven occurred. We'd eaten there 18 months ago, but that was in the company of a church-going architect whose mobile rang half way through the starter.

It was someone wanting to talk ceiling tiles. "Not just now," he said, politely. Had he not been a good Methodist, he'd have said he was in a meeting.

The Boss, in other words, had never been. Since the atmosphere was growing quite chilly, it was time to put her head in the Oven.

It's in Duke Street, a thoroughfare of estate agencies, and is rapidly becoming hot property.

There's a discerning lady, my dentist's mother, who has a table reserved every Saturday evening for a year. She was also there on Sunday, too - that's now booked a year in advance, too.

Two things should thus be made clear before further proceeding. Firstly, it's by no means cheap. Secondly, it's worth every penny.

It's run by Tarek Thoma, who famously cooked for George Bush and Tony Blair at the Dun Cow in Sedgefield, and by Lisa Mason, his partner.

Externally unprepossessing - it was the Victim Support Scheme offices - it's been cheered up no end inside. Tarek's particularly pleased with the upstairs extension, plenty of mirrored walls to reflect how things are going.

It's wholly informal, a haven for all sorts and conditions, so long as they've a few bob in their pocket. Many are in jeans which may barely, thread-barely, even be called best jeans.

There's a bairn in a high chair and a family group in no hurry. Candles burn on the counter. What's particularly noticeable is that half those leaving make another booking before so doing. Recommendation, or what?

Tarek's Egyptian. When he came over here 20 years ago, he says, he didn't just not understand English Sunday lunch, but positively hated it. Now he has a passion for it, and it's manifest.

It's the sort of Sunday lunch about which Charles Wesley, the tercentenary of whose birth we are celebrating, might have sought a thousand tongues to sing.

There's a lengthy and imaginative menu, which I've lost. The cheapest main course is £9.95. The beef's £14.95. A lot of people only want one course, says Tarek. "I have to make sure it's a good one."

The restaurant manager comes across, introduces himself, says the beef's been cooking for 24 hours and is much to be recommended.

The Boss starts with smoked salmon, with creme fraiche. The chicken liver terrine is substantial and delicious, the fig marmalade a clever accompaniment.

She follows with the beef, as pink and as tender as a new born bottom and probably even more appetising. Turn, though, to the duck, orange-infused, at the other side of the table.

It comes in a large bowl with four roast potatoes, swede, some mash and half a dozen wonderfully roast parsnips artfully arrayed across the top. The parsnips are cooked in honey and sugar, the roast potatoes in goose fat.

Next comes a bowl of leeks in a cheesy sauce, another bowl of vegetables, a bowl of what may be mint and onion sauce - nice touch - and some stuffing. The stuffing may be symbolic.

Then they arrive with a Yorkshire pudding, cooked in beef dripping, on another side plate. "Just in case you've room," says the waiter. The Yorkshire pudding was damn-near perfect.

It is cooking with eye appeal, with verve and with care. Tarek wanders out. "What a lovely face he has," says the Boss.

She finishes with a mango and passion fruit parfait with a mango coulis - "absolutely fabulous". The other pudding - it'll be on the menu somewhere - offers every bit as happy an ending.

The restaurant manager then suggests that we might like some of Lisa's home- made petit fours, which we assume to be a couple of buckshee sweeties with the coffee.

In the end about 20 arrive on a two-tier plate, like something from a Victorian confectioner's, but adding £6.95 - a bit of a swizz, we thought - to a bill which, with a pint of beer and a bottle of water, thus reaches £62.

For outstanding quality and extraordinary quantity it shouldn't be a deterrent. This is Regulo 10 stuff. Sunday, goody Sunday.

Oven restaurant, 30 Duke Street, Darlington.01325 466668. Sunday lunch is served from noon-8pm. The toilets are upstairs.

EARLIER that Sunday, we'd had a quick one in the idiosyncratically named Quaker Coffee House in Darlington town centre, a regional winner in the "perfect host" category of the Daily Telegraph's pub of the year competition.

They no longer do Sunday lunch, but the real ale range is magnificent. There was even something called Northern Headliners, apparently dedicated to Edwin Starr. The Boss wondered if he were related to Freddie.

The Horse and Jockey in Stockton was named the North-East's "perfect family" pub, the Star Inn at Harome, near Helmsley and the nearby Abbey Inn at Byland were "perfect food" pubs and Number Twenty-2 Coniscliffe Road, in Darlington, a "perfect cask ale" pub.

As for the otherwise admirable Coffee House, how much better if they adopted the Quaker concept of quiet contemplation and took a mell-hammer to the music machine.

BEER festival time this weekend at the ever-welcoming Langdon Beck Hotel, beyond High Force at the top of Teesdale - "25-plus" real ales, mainly from the region, reports Sue Matthews, the landlady. The "plus" adds up. "Glen keeps thinking he has enough and then he gets carried away again," she says. As if excuse were needed for a celebration, it's also her husband's 50th birthday. The festival runs all day Saturday, Sunday and Monday.