Loving spoonful

It was long ago. These days there are universities which award third class degrees – usually in media studies – to any who correctly can spell their name atop the exam paper.

Since it was Cambridge, at any rate, the wooden spoon should not be confused with the Reverend William Archibald Spooner who reluctantly gave his name to spoonerisms and was Dean of New College, Oxford.

Old Spooner is said, not always authentically, habitually to have transposed his initial consonants, a 19th Century Stanley Unwin.

The most infamous may be “Kinkering kongs their titles take” though the poor chap is also saddled with “You have hissed all my mystery lectures and were caught fighting a liar in the quad. Having tasted two worms, you will leave by the next town drain.”

“Spoon”, as Chambers Dictionary reminds us, can also mean to “dally sentimentally with”

and must reluctantly be considered irrelevant.

In the search for good food, the most familiar use of wooden spoons may be at Vintage Inns – several in the North-East – as a means of indicating a reserved table number.

Now – at least at the Old Farmhouse and the Tawny Owl, both on Darlington’s outskirts – they’ve also established what’s called premium dining areas, with full waitress service and, if required, reservations. Spoons are for soup supping.

Appropriately stirring itself, the column went to the Old Farmhouse, on the road to the neargrounded airport. The evening proved both relaxing and enjoyable, a waitress called Debbie deserving of whatever may be the opposite of a wooden spoon. A gold star, perhaps.

The pub – 250 years old, but not originally a farmhouse at all – has had a £130,000 makeover.

The posh end is comfortable, with some banquettes, tables for four or two, low music.

Though seasonally adjusted, as probably they’d never say, the menu retains familiar items like hunters’ pie and foresters’ chicken, or possibly the other way round.

We arrived at 6.15pm one bank holiday evening. Admittedly that could apply to just about any day in the past month, so let’s also say it was a Monday.

Perhaps fearing that the dish had run away with the spoon, a little girl was asking if she might have one on her table, nonetheless. The barman affably agreed.

The king scallops – nice texture, not much flavour – came with a beetroot, baby spinach and chorizo risotto that worked surprisingly well. Thereafter I asked for the belly pork, which was off, the Lancashire hotpot (ditto) and finally settled in the “summer” lamb shank.

“It’s an AV menu,” said the lady of the house and thereafter referred to the lamb shank as the Nick Clegg.

Like Mr Clegg it was liberal, but comparisons had better end there. The meat fell from the bone, accompanied by well-cooked dauphinoise potatoes and “rosemary topped summer vegetables”.

So that’s how you dress up winter veg? The result was very moreish (and that may rarely be said of pub vegetables).

The lady began with Piedmont peppers topped with a French goats’ cheese, rocket and a balsamic dressing (£3.95, another very pleasant combination) and having chosen the least expensive starter, followed with just about the dearest main course.

The fish mixed grill comprised marinated tuna, king clip, grouper steaks and tiger prawns, served with chips – proper chips, lots of them – or salad. A grouper, not to be confused with a groupie, is any fish of the bass family. Goodness only knows what king clip is, but it should on no account be confused with a clip joint.

Debbie and her colleagues were confident, efficient and everywhere. They wear black. Let’s just say she suits it.

The bill, including a “Sicilian lemon sponge”

– they have lemon curd in Sicily? – a couple of pints of the excellent Bitter and Twisted from Harviestoun and a bottle of water was £47.

Spoon-fed or otherwise, entirely reasonable.

The till receipt, computer generated, was signed “Thank you, Debbie, x”.

Vintage, or what? Thank you, Debbie, x.

THE campaign to reopen the Travellers Rest at Skeeby, between Scotch Corner and Richmond, as a community pub has taken an interesting turn. There’s now a proposal to reopen the small village shop as a “micro-pub”.

Marie Church has been canvassing fellow villagers and supporters. The reaction’s “not favourable,” she says.

HOPE Street, Crook, St George’s Day.

There are two Chinese places, an Indian and two Italians – or at least places with Romanesque names.

Even the hairdresser’s is called Gallerie, which may be French or may just be the way they spell it in those parts.

Up and down the main shopping street there’s just one Union Jack, and that, fading, is in the window of an antiques shop called Former Glory.

Hope and Former Glory. Has it come to this?

Then there’s Cottons, an English restaurant run by a former British bobby and just celebrating its first birthday. Someone had given them a balloon.

The welcome’s genuinely, attentively warm, perhaps not least because there’s almost no one else in. “On Thursday they were queuing down the street,” says Dave Threadfill, the ex-polliss in question.

Soon we’re joined by a lass with a tape recorder who’s working, she says, for Radio 5 Live. “They want me to find some wholesome kids in Hope Street,” she explains.

This may sound less BBC and more Big Bad Wolf but is no doubt a case of Live and let live.

The first three items on the specials board are lasagne, tagliatelli and, I think, moussaka. The literature on the window ledge is about holiday apartments in Prague. The thread is misleading: Cottons is essentially, enjoyably and unequivocally English.

The Stilton and vegetable crumble, a slightly perverse choice because they pride themselves on the quality of their meat, is delicious, creamy and crunchy, costs £5.95 with good, crisp salad and a fresh roll.

The toffee meringue roulade which follows is absolutely stonking, accompanied by a bottle of good old English ale.

Till then they’d only opened by day, seven days. April 23 was the first Saturday evening opening, Dave in and out of the kitchen to check on progress.

“Those potatoes done? How’s the carrots getting on? Don’t forget to scrub those turnips.” In the trade it’s called prep, and by no means everyone does their homework.

He’s just appointed two new chefs, one who’d been at Slaley Hall, the other, coincidentally, who’d worked at Cottons Golf Club in Lancashire or somewhere. “Lives in Howden, though,” said Dave.

The place is spacious, the quality excellent.

In Crook and for miles around, worth putting the flags out.

COCA Cola marks its 125th anniversary tomorrow, an event to which glasses will doubtless be raised in the 206 countries in which it’s sold. If all the Coke ever drunk were put into 8oz contour bottles, there’d be more than six trillion bottles which, stacked end-to-end, would be 468 miles high. Not many people may know that.

…and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what cheese is made backwards. Edam.