A lesson in fine dining

THE bairns have milestone birthdays, too, they just haven’t stumbled quite so far to pass them. The little ’un – that is to say, the not quite so big ’un – was 25 last Tuesday.

That he entered the world at 4.30pm on a Saturday should not be supposed a concession to the old feller, who was becoming anxious about catching the football results.

It was so that he himself could see them. The red and white birthmark has remained.

Nor does it seem ten minutes since the days when both boys went everywhere with us, or the famous occasion when the world weary elder son – then about seven – asked if they had to talk about the meal, or if they couldn’t just get on and eat it.

After leaving the Echo at Christmas, the little ’un followed the Whittington way, in the hope that the streets of London would be paved with gold and the certainty that, whatever happened, it was a great deal nearer to the Arsenal.

Sadly, however, he has also discovered that London is littered with P45s. Two weeks ago, like everyone else at Press Gazette, he was made redundant. That same afternoon he landed a job with the BBC, on whose wavelength he’d been for some time, at a substantially higher salary and just a mile from his flat.

Among much that he has inherited from his father is good, well preserved, thick-spread jam. There are those, of course, who suppose that the harder they work, the luckier they get.

Between engagements, at any rate, he was able to come home for a birthday lunch and – like father, like son – that proved pretty lucky, too. The bairn wore high heels; you still worry about them, don’t you?

We went to the Bridgewater Arms at Winston, between Darlington and Barnard Castle – a first visit since Paul Grundy, for many years head chef at the celebrated Black Bull at Moulton, took over last summer.

A pub for 50 years, it was originally the village school. The cast list for Jack and the Beanstalk, circa 1957, remains mounted above the bar.

It may be embarrassing enough for young men of that era to be reminded that they played fairies and pixies – high heels or otherwise – but what of the poor pair who were Buttercup?

Buttercup was the cow, presumably, but with no indication of who backed onto whom, and whose were the real horns of the dilemma.

Since it was the Easter holidays, Paul and his wife Kathryn were having a few days away with their own kids. The kitchen was in the charge of Richard Vart, who’d worked under Paul for seven years at Moulton and has returned after a spell in Australia.

Tom Brown, formerly at No 22 in Darlington, runs the bar and, since it was quiet, served at table. Though a fire still burns brightly in the academic grate, he should not be confused with the near-immolated Tom Brown of Mr Thomas Hughes’s Victorian novel.

“Good afternoon, Mr Amos,” said Tom at once. So much for incognito.

The bar’s simply furnished, booklined – mostly job lots, though Winston’s RE teacher would have approved the Book of Common Prayer – and with a single hand pump offering Greene King bitter. It’s to be expected; Greene King own the place. Otherwise enthusiastic, a Darlington & Stockton Times review shortly after the pub re-opened had criticised “dreadful plastic flowers”.

These weren’t plastic at all; they were, however, nearly dead.

Though there’s not a picking on him, the bairn’s a voracious, almost insatiable eater. His birthday meal began with half a loaf, followed by a chicken liver, black pudding, belly pork and apple – don’t forget the apple – salad which, quite rightly, he greatly enjoyed. Both the black pudding and the scratching belly pork were terrific.

He was initially less impressed with the chicken and chorizo stew, not least because the chicken was still on the bone. “There’s rustic and there’s just annoying,” he said.

Pushed, he thought that fine, too.

His mum, who a quarter of a century earlier had had flu and a baby on the same day, started with a huge mound of mussels, saw off every last drop of the sauce and followed with sea trout, asparagus, new potatoes and a “delicious” hollandaise – if Mr Vart is the saucerer’s apprentice, he has been taught very well.

Between them, mother and child greeded so many chips – classic chips, soft within – we’d to order another lot in a separate bowl.

As it had been at the Black Bull, the menu generally is strong on fish, thus prompting the decision to have a straightforward and very fresh haddock, cooked crisp and dry.

It had been preceded by “baby leaf spinach and wild garlic soup”, a wellblended offering which tasted vaguely of greenery, but otherwise of nothing in particular.

Only the men of the house had puddings, the birthday boy greatly enthusing about his chocolate pudding and chocolate sauce – “absolutely beaut,” he concluded, they way they do in order to save half a word – the Eton mess appropriately educational and equally enjoyable.

Several main courses are £20; these were relatively cheap. With a few drinks, the bill for three reached £87. Birthday treat? Undoubtedly.

Class act? That, too.

■ The Bridgewater Arms, Winston, County Durham, 01325-730302. Food Tuesday to Saturday, 12pm to 2pm and 6pm to 9pm, early bird specials Tuesday to Thursday 6pm to 7pm.

Like the Black Bull, the pub doesn’t open on Sundays.

THE polymathic Duncan Davis, landlord of the ever-excellent Black Bull at Frosterley in Weardale, marks St George’s Day on Thursday evening with a Mummers play that he’s adapted and in which he’ll take a leading role, with the help of the Hexham Morrismen. “Traditional English” beef stew and dumplings will accompany proceedings.

CLEARLY overlooking a column written precisely three years ago, Mr Peter Sixsmith in Shildon enthuses about an “excellent”

lunch at the No 6 restaurant, atop the Baltic Arts Centre in Gateshead. In 2006 it was McCoy’s, and a bottle of Old Peculier was a frightening £4.95.

More terrifying yet was that the restaurant was on the sixth floor, had glass floor and glass walls and was reached by a glass-sided lift. “It’s a warm April day and I’m in a cold December sweat,” I wrote.

Whatever else has changed about the place, the heights of panic have not. Pete’s recommendation, alas, will not be taken up via the elevator.

GUIDED by a note in a recent column, Paul Dobson tried out the new “champagne and cocktail” bar in Bishop Auckland Market Place. “It’s okay so far as bars which look like ex-shoe shops go,” he says. This may be considered a left-handed compliment, or a left-footed one, anyway.

INCOMPARABLY convivial, the latest Booze and Cues beer festival at Darlington Snooker Club was further enlivened by the world’s best pies and peas, by a Yorkshire Dales Brewery ale named after the magnificent Muker Silver Band – a high note, if ever – and by the usual intellectual conversation.

Chiefly it turned on the origins of the song Nick-Nack Paddywack Give the Dog a Bone to which, it was supposed, there may be very much more than meets the eye. Sit up and beg, readers may be able to put more flesh on it.

…and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what’s pink and curly and cuts the grass. A prawn mower, of course.