Hare do

IN an ideal world, which some would suppose to be a week or two distant yet, everything featured in this column would be manifestly and unequivocally a bargain, the VFM equivalent of a Taylor’s pie or fish and chips from that shop at the top end of Coxhoe.

The best bet used to be Sunday lunch, many a place where a threecourse meal might be had for the equivalent of an hour’s graft at minimum wage and no matter if it were unlikely to win a Michelin.

Times change. Few worthwhile Sunday lunches are now less than £13/£14 for three courses – we’d love to be proved wrong – and at the Hare in Scawton it’s that, or more, for one. It was our most expensive Sunday lunch ever.

Three courses for two were £62.30, two pints of ever-excellent Timothy Taylor’s Landlord another £5.90 and a bottle of sparkling mineral water £1.75. The Boss, never a cheap date, became so concerned half way through that she asked for a jug of tap water, cheerfully served, instead.

It had to be damn good for that price, and it was. Whether it’s value for money is probably a matter of personal perception, or possibly of pocket.

Scawton is a North Yorkshire hamlet near the top of the infamous Sutton Bank, east of Thirsk. Rievaulx Abbey is another couple of miles along the back road.

There’s the pub, maybe a dozen houses, a corrugated green “reading room” which may now be remaindered and the lovely little 12th Century church of St Mary, one of five churches in a far-flung parish of just 450 people which is presently looking for a priest. It’s to be hoped they pay mileage allowance.

A sad little plaque in the porch records the death, nearby, of five Free French airmen killed when their plane, queuing to get into Elvington airfield near York, crash landed nearby.

Once the plaque had hung on the tree against which the Halifax bomber came to rest; then the tree fell down.

Scawton should thus not be confused with Scorton, near Richmond, which has two pubs, a Methodist chapel presently celebrating its centenary, ancient strings to its bow and arrow and an annual carnival known as Scorton Feast.

The Hare had been recommended three or four years ago by a lady from Southampton, or somewhere – there always was something of tortoise and Hare about this column – since when it was closed for nine months before being taken over in October 2006 by Geoff and Jan Smith, who’d been at the Bruce Arms in West Tanfield, near Ripon, and who style themselves business partners.

Once they were the other sort, man and wife, as well. Now they’re divorced.

Geoff, described over the door as “chef/patron”, lives at the pub. The admirable Jan lives in Theakston, near Bedale, but is at the pub most days. Divided they stand.

“Nothing’s changed, he still argues with me all the time and I’m always right,” said Jan, so it seemed a bit intrusive to ask how they shared the profits. Splitting Hare’s, as it were.

If the price may be forgotten, or accommodated, put down to an occasional treat or to expenses, it was an excellent lunch.

The door, aforesaid, is so low that it might decapitate anyone above medium height. Immediately inside is a dark little vestibule that might serve as a disorientation chamber should the CIA ever rethink its approach to mind games.

That navigated, everything beyond is cheerful, bustling, well maintained and efficiently run. As befits so monastic an area – monastic though not, of course, Hare-shirted – the toilets are identified by figures of monks and nuns.

Unbooked, we’re shown into a little room at the side, and to the only table without a cloth. Good on them; they know peasants when they see them.

The other noticeable thing is that every other table is occupied by what might be called a menage a trois – two women, one bloke – though in a strictly innocent sense, of course.

Though dated, the Sunday lunch menu is basically just a slightly abridged version of the evening carte, and for the same price. A couple of roasts are added.

Starters thus included “posh”

prawn cocktail (£8.50) and queenie scallops with cheese and lemon (£8.95) while mains might have been chicken breast with banana, smoked bacon, coconut and a mild curry sauce (£13.75), sea bass with new potatoes, asparagus and hollandaise (£16.95) and roast sirloin of dales beef (£12.75.) The Boss began with “home-cured”

grav lax, spelt like that, £7.95, followed by a beautifully presented north Atlantic cod with marsh samphire (£16.75). Put out when accused of eating the most expensive thing on the menu, she protested that the sea bass was 20p dearer.

It was very good, though, right from the basil-infused bread with delicious butter and a terrific, melting, tantalisingly flavoured chicken liver parfait with apple, grape and brandy chutney – more of that chef, please – and a pile of leaves. I’d followed with a crisp, perfectly tender confit duck with braised red cabbage – it’s some cook who can make red cabbage moreish, this one can – and with simple, crisply cooked vegetables. Lovely carrots, even better courgettes.

Puddings were £5.95 – a top-class raspberry and hazelnut parfait with a little bowl of tangy raspberry sauce, perhaps, or a passion fruit creme brulee about which it was easy to get excited. A cup of coffee with a mint was £2.75 a head. For that there should have been a pot, at least.

The bill had “service not included”

written on the bottom. That we didn’t leave a tip was purely forgetful because they were good kids and whatever the bill, this was a Scawton feast, too.

■ The Hare Inn, Scawton, 01845-597769, Sunday lunch 12-8pm, closed Mondays FACING the closure of his business because the owner wants to turn it into flats, it’s with understandably mixed feelings – but elation chiefly – that Peter Everett at Darlington Snooker Club reports being named the North-East CAMRA Club of the year for a remarkable fifth successive year. The club’s on the Corner of Northgate and Corporation Road, the beer and crack excellent even for non-snooker players. Peter’s in touch with his MP. “I just hope there’ll be a sixth, seventh and eighth,” he says.

LAST week’s column on Café Indigo in Darlington made reference to the Audacious Faith Church which meets in the former Methodist premises in Wheatley Hill, east Durham. Church secretary Rebecca Bouveng points out that it’s now called His Chosen Victorious Army and that, as well as an African element, a “significant part”

of the congregation are white, British and local.

…and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew which football team’s players never meet until the day of the match. Queens Park Strangers, of course.