Museum piece

DO they still have those socio-economic classifications where A, B and C1 are above the salt – there is no need, presumably, to explain that ancient pecking order’s origins – and where C2 to E decline steeply towards Siberia?

Should they still be extant – that is to say, socially conscious – the Northern Echo’s quarterly Living magazine would definitely be targeted at what once were known as ABC1s.

It’s very much aimed at coffee tables, not a nail on the netty wall, the sole incongruity being the regular inclusion of one of these distinctly E-type columns.

The latest issue, at any rate, has a Question and Answer with Adrian Jenkins, a 44-year-old Welshman who since 2001 has been director of the Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle.

Favourite landmark? The Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. Favourite shop? The “amazing” Raine’s ironmongery in Middleton-in-Teesdale.

Favourite restaurant? “I have always had a slight bias towards the cuisine at our very own Café Bowes, and since it reopened recently after a serious makeover it really is the place to dine in Teesdale.”

Well he would say that, wouldn’t he?

It was faintly reminiscent of the advertising campaign, exactly 20 years ago, when a Darlington bank clerk’s daughter, Elizabeth Esteve-Coll, was director of the V&A in London – “An ace caff with quite a nice museum attached,”

read the slogan.

The Bowes has the builders in, extensive work under way. Information boards use words like “fabulous” (of the improved textiles and dress gallery), “stunning” (the silver and metals gallery) and “magnificent”, of the reading room at the top of the building.

Another board reveals that attendance figures have doubled since the museum became a private charitable trust nine years ago.

The menu describes the café as “newly enhanced”. The Boss, who herself is of Welsh peasant stock (and properly proud of it) reckoned it had been tarted up.

The effect is impressive, an easy fusion of fine art and functional, even the menu cover suggesting the silver swan for which the Bowes is most famous of all. It’s a spacious place, but at 1.15 on a wet Tuesday afternoon there’s still a short queue to be seated.

Mr Jenkins couldn’t be seen. Perhaps Tuesday’s the day he pops out for fish and chips.

The menu ranges widely and thoughtfully, from ham sandwiches to pan-fried fillets of grey mullet with saffron potatoes, asparagus and tomato and crayfish vinaigrette.

Leaving aside the absurdity of panfried fish – you fry them in your hat? – it also offers Tyrell’s “hand-cooked”

crisps. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, how the hell do you hand cook a crisp (or anything else, for that matter)?

The sourcing’s mostly local. “Peat’s thick sliced granary bread” is a Barney staple; the scones are made with Wensleydale cheese, the ham knuckle’s from Wensleydale, too.

The Welsh lass was also much taken with the hot chocolate list, rising from ordinary through “luxury” to “supreme”, topped with fresh cream and marshmallows.

The Central Midlands Football League is a bit like that. The first division’s really the third, the second is the Premier and the real class acts strut in the Supreme.

I’d begun with broccoli and blue Wensleydale soup – hot, deep, authentic, alive with the distinctive and unalloyed flavours which were to characterise a first-rate lunch.

The Boss skipped a starter, moved to the mullet. A learned discussion followed about the sort of haircut a mullet might be. The Oxford doesn’t say, but reckons a mulligan to be a stew made from odds and ends. Her lunch was lovely, anyway.

I ordered the Pikestone Farm tasting plate – shepherd’s pie with mutton and Cotherstone cheese, home-made haggis with roast swede, devilled kidney and wild mushroom bruschetta (£10, like the mullet).

Katy Bestford, who turned out to be restaurant supervisor – degree in psychology, honours in efficiency, doctorate in charm – said that Pikestone Farm was between Egglestone and Bishop Auckland, Woodland way.

Perhaps it’s a museum because it’s a reminder of what food used to taste like, every mouthful worth savouring as testament to how good simple ingredients can be.

Each of us accompanied lunch with a bottle of Fentiman’s born-again pop – “botanically brewed,” it says on the label. I had ginger beer, she dandelion and burdock. “It takes me back to my grandmother’s. I can still see the Staffordshire pot dogs on the mantelpiece,”

she said.

The puddings – chocolate and orange torte with Cointreau coulis and rhubarb curd tart were attractively presented and vividly flavoured. The coffee was Fair Traded, the bill £39.

Ben Parnaby, the 23-year-old head chef, was trained by Adrian Barratt, formerly at Café Bowes, who with wife Jill now runs a smashing little bistro up at Reeth, in Swaledale.

Everything about it was excellent – “historic”, as Mr Michael Winner might say of a museum café, “ace” as Mrs Esteve-Coll may have supposed.

It was wrong, of course, to have doubted the director. Anyone married to the Welsh will know that they’re never, ever wrong – this was simply the Living proof.

■ Café Bowes is open from 10am to 4.30pm daily, main meals from 12pm to 2.30pm, afternoon tea (£8.50) from 2pm. The museum is open daily from 10am to 5pm, admission £7, concessions £6, carers and children under-16 free.

LAST week’s column noted the 20-odd eating places along one stretch of Northgate, in Darlington.

It might also have mentioned the Railway, a traditional pub where regulars have formed a dining club – and with plenty of choice on the doorstep.

“We haven’t had to use cars yet,”

says Brian Llewellyn, king of the Punch and Judy men.

Usually they eat out on Tuesdays, when places are quiet and a big group can attract a big discount. Spoiled for choice, Brian reckons the best bet to date has been the “fantastic” Eastern Bamboo Chinese restaurant.

On their voyage of discovery down Northgate, it’s about 100 yards away.

IN observing the death of Frank O’Neill, former landlord of the Foresters Arms at Coatham Mundeville, last week’s column also noted that his funeral was at Sacred Heart RC church in Middlesbrough.

It prompts an interesting note from Harry Manuel, who lived in Middlesbrough in the Thirties, was apprenticed to Richmond racehorse trainer H D Peacock but is now stabled in Hexham.

“I went to that church and attended the neighbouring school when both were known as St Philomena’s, next to Middlesbrough football ground,” says Harry. “When and why did the name change?”

Good question, to which the Oxford Dictionary of Saints gives an almost instant answer. “supposed virgin and martyr of early Rome….”

Too many doubts had been raised about the authenticity of her story. In 1960 the Holy See suppressed her cult – St Philomena’s at West Auckland similarly became St Paulinus’s.

Harry – email address: basher1929 – is disappointed. “My mother was also called Philomena. I don’t suppose that they named the church after her, but she was certainly a saint.”

ALAN Hogg, said to be brewing very nicely at the Surtees Arms in Ferryhill Station, stages a beer festival from May 14 to 16. There’ll be more than a dozen real ales, from the Yard of Ale brewery out the back and from very much further afield. There’s a food stall, a festival ale, and a Friday night dominoes handicap. The pub’s open from 4pm on the Thursday and Friday, noon on Saturday.

…and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you get if you cross a praying mantis with a termite.

A bug that says grace before eating your house.