Artist's impression

MR AA Gill, who writes restaurant reviews (and much else) in The Sunday Times, awards stars – one to five – with pithy options alongside.

Usually they play on the name.

Had he been reviewing a place called Lowry’s, for example – named after the Matchstick Men painter – five stars might have been “Masterpiece” and one “You’ve been framed”.

Between the extremes, perhaps, would be “Stick in”, “Stick it” and, who knows, “Happy as Lowry”.

Lowry’s is a fish and chip restaurant in Seaburn, indivisibly Roker and Seaburn on old railway posters, in Sunderland. Opened two years ago, it was named through a competition in the local newspaper.

That it’s in Lowry Road may have offered a teeny clue.

Adrian Gill isn’t reviewing it; I am. Brush off or work of art, readers must wait to see how things develop.

Though best known for his North-West connections, and particularly for his painting outside Bolton football ground, Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887-1976) was something of a wanderer.

His frequent visits to Wearside, it’s whispered, were to enjoy the company of a local lady.

He stayed at the Seaburn Hotel, now the Marriott.

“I am very fond of the sea, how wonderful it is and yet how terrible it is,” he once wrote. “I often think about what would happen if the sea changed its mind and didn’t turn the tide and it came on and on. That would be the end of it all.”

Whatever his feelings towards the lady, he also became very fond of the North-East, often painting pits and shipyards. His work also includes “The Sea at Sunderland” and “River Wear 1961” – both on the menu cover – and a selfportrait depicting himself as a lighthouse or pillar, standing against the sea.

Many of his sketches were on the back of napkins or beer mats, given away to local kids or passers-by and these days said to be worth a fortune.

The Marriott is still said to have a napkin; Morrison’s, nearby, has a mural.

“It can be said,” adds the menu – and has the effrontery to say it – “that Lowry painted seascapes of such power that to look at them is to risk drowning in their depth of mystery.”

It can also be said that reading such guff is to risk much the same sensation as putting out in a bath tub in a Force 10.

The fish and chippery is part of the Pullman Lodge, on the sea front, where two old carriages serve as dining cars. Lowry’s is round the back.

If the main restaurant’s Pullman, this is composite brake.

Immediately outside we found an unpeeled potato, thus exciting all manner of guessing games over how it might have got there. It was the highlight of the afternoon.

Inside’s gloomy, almost lachrymose, despite the Lowry reproductions over the walls. Where there are windows, the view is of a wall, a couple of industrial waste bins and, between, some grass strewn with fish and chip cartons.

Seaburn has plenty of outlets.

Nor is the atmosphere helped by the inescapably intrusive presence of Smooth Radio – it could have been any radio – and unleavened in the cubicle in front by the paternal attentions of a Wearside gentleman towards his six-yearold son.

“If you don’t sit still, I’ll knack you.”

Memories turned instead to the 1960s Lowry song about Matchstick Men and Matchstick Cats and Dogs, coincidental because Seaburn is known also for the Cat and Dog Steps, once regarded as a sun trap.

A helpful information board on the promenade explains that Victorian families fallen on hard times would get rid of unwanted pets by putting them in a sack and throwing them from the top.

“If they had followed the correct procedure,” it adds, “they would have taken the animal to West Wear Street police station where a charge of 2/6d would be made to have the animal electrocuted and its body thrown into a lime pit.”

Where were we? Ah yes, Lowry’s.

Main courses are mostly fishy, mostly battered, though there’s “Grade A” jumbo sausage – that’s battered, too – and one or two other things.

The lady thought the haddock (£6.95) a pretty good catch, if fried a little too long. The “whaler” – a giant cod – was huge, indeed.

£10.95.

The batter was crisp, though again rather overcooked, the fish by no means as succulent as that at Colburn Fisheries, reviewed two weeks ago.

The chips, by common consent, were poor.

Soggy, lukewarm, mostly abandoned.

With a coffee and a bottle of Double Maxim, the bill reached £21.90. As may never have been said of the Matchstick Man, we were not particularly struck.

YOREBRIDGE House at Bainbridge, in Wensleydale – once a vicarage, later home to the Yorkshire Dales National Park – has been named the UK’s most romantic hotel by users of the Trip Advisor website. The basis upon which the conclusion is reached is uncertain.

Probably coincidentally, they’re having a Pol Roger champagne night – the stuff they drank at the recent royal wedding – on July 12. Including dinner, £85 a head.

THE Rose and Crown in Mickleton, near Middleton-in-Teesdale, reopened last weekend simply as the Crown – probably to set it apart from the celebrated Rose and Crown in Romaldkirk, up the road – and now under the wing of Andrew and Mandy Rowbotham, who already have the Riverside Restaurant in Startforth, Barnard Castle.

Consett lad originally, Andrew had a steak bar in Spain before kicking off at Startforth in 2007. The Crown, he says, has been restored to its former glory.

DARLINGTON has its first Japanese restaurant, the Empire Oriental Grill adding to the culinary league of nations in Northgate.

While intending consumers watch, food’s cooked to 400C on an iron griddle – “creating the sublime gustatory experience,” they insist.

FURTHER north, there’s a new bar diner in Scotswood Road, Newcastle, somewhat confusingly called Chelsea Docks, open from 7am until midnight and offering a “wide range” of breakfasts if not necessarily a dockers’ sandwich.

In Northumberland Road, Newcastle, the Legendary Yorkshire Heroes pub launches its first beer and cider festival from June 9 – “lasting until everything runs out”. They promise at least 20 ales.

CLEARLY believing that flattery can get you anywhere, the Stillington-based Cleveland Brewery has introduced Clever Head (eight per cent abv) and Clever Blonde, rather more quaffable, to the bars of Durham University. They’ll also be on special offer on Tuesday at the Vane Arms, in Long Newton, near Stockton. Cleveland’s run by Simon Gillespie, formerly of the Wear Valley Brewery, in Bishop Auckland. Any more news?

“I’ve been asked to bring back Amos Ale,” he says.

FAMILIAR former North-East football manager Ray Gowan, who led Shildon to the FA Cup first round in 2004, is back in South Africa after a flying visit home. The highlight, he insists, was a night at our house – the low point paying £6.10 for a bottle of Peroni at Pizza Express at Teesside Park. “You have my permission to name and shame,” he says.

…and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what’s yellow, brown and hairy. Cheese on toast dropped on the carpet.