31 The Quay

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31 The Quay
Smokehouse Two
Duke Street
North Shields
NE29 6BZ

0191 257 5310

31thequay.co.uk

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free options? Yes

I’m tapping out these words shortly after having had my first meal out since before you-know-what. Not in the restaurant that's the subject of this review, but in a place that, for now, will remain nameless. 

We were among the first through the door on the Saturday when restaurants were finally allowed to reopen. For me, the whole thing felt a little bit like an awkward first date; we and the staff were all smiles and politeness, but also just a bit nervous. It’ll take a while for things to settle in I think, for the rituals to feel natural again. 

The food there was underwhelming too, but I have no intention of slating the first meal that some chef had prepared for a paying customer in nearly four months. That wouldn't do anyone any favours. For now I’ll only be pointing you towards places that I think are really worth your custom. Things are difficult enough for the hospitality trade without a chancer like me using whatever online presence I have to whinge about unseasoned chips or a collapsed soufflé. Don’t worry, I’ll get back to the snark and the grump soon enough.

For now, I'm only writing about the good places, and this one really is a cracker. Or it was four months ago - it's actually the last restaurant I visited before everything went kaput. The meal was everything that makes eating out something I’ve missed so much: excellent ingredients, precise and considerate cooking, and charming service from lovely people. They’ve all been furloughed throughout the lockdown, but they say they’re back to work on July 31st, which seems apt given the restaurant in question is called 31 The Quay.

Spanish City: 1910 Steak & Seafood/Trenchers

1910 Steak & Seafood 
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Trenchers 
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Spanish City 
Whitley Bay 
Tyne and Wear 
NE26 1BG 
0191 691 7090 

www.spanishcity.co.uk 
Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes 

A small part of me is sad that the remarkable reboot of Spanish City hasn’t incorporated some element of the dodgems, waltzers and arcade machines that I hazily remember from a sepia-tinged yoof. 

On the other hand most of me is impressed by the sight of its dome, beautifully decorated inside, the exterior gloriously floodlit at night. And all of me is delighted that, in its rebirth, we now have eight new venues to get fed and watered by the coast in Whitley Bay. I suppose that costly refurb was never going to get funded through sales of rollercoaster tickets. 

The current food and beverage options include an outpost of decent Newcastle micropub The Split Chimp, a pancake and waffle house, a Champagne bar, a chippie - of which more later - and a tearoom. The premium offering, 1910 Steak & Seafood, is named after the year in which Spanish City originally opened; it also reflects the menu.

Catch Ponteland

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A696 
Higham Dykes
NE20 0DH 

01661 881 440 
www.catchseafood.co.uk 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes 

Seafood always seems to taste better when eaten within a skimmer’s throw of the briney from which it was yanked; there’s no finer seasoning for fish than the tang of salt in the air. So you might it slightly odd to open a seafood restaurant just off the A696, a mile or three north of Ponteland. And yet this is where the third Catch restaurant has pitched up - the other two are in West Yorkshire, also nowhere near the sea. 

The happy news is that, regardless of its longitude and latitude, it’s doing a lot of things right. As we were met at the door by one of those lightbulb-filled name signs that seem to have become a bit of a thing, it was clear that the old Waggon Inn site has been given a pretty thorough sprucing up.

Fat Mermaid [CLOSED]

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Coble Quay 
Amble 
Northumberland
NE65 0DJ 

01665 712111 
Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes  
facebook.com/fatmermaidamble 

[Really sad to see this place close. Fortunately you can still enjoy Jonny Bird's excellent cooking in Amble at Sea&Soil]  

There is a certain art to writing a good menu. As with so much in life, it’s about getting things in proper balance. 

Take the level of detail. At one extreme, some menus - especially in your hipster-habituated newer places, sporting a font that looks like it was produced by a Dymo machine - are overly terse, offering only a list of principal ingredients. “Prawn, citrus, peanut” – that type of thing. All well and good, but what have you done with them? I want to know what I’m eating, not your shopping list. 

On the other hand, you have the purple prose over-revealers. You know the sort: “Our famous best-ever house cured salmon, sashaying nonchalantly on a bed of wilted spinach, drizzled with chef’s own signature relish and served at a 45 degree angle to a dome of audaciously boiled rice”. I’m happy for a menu to show a bit of leg, but not to get its kit off before I’ve even been served a drink. 

Also of importance is the issue of familiarity. Are you serving up the same tired staples as every other place since decimalisation? Or are you seeking to shock, by clattering together ingredients that have no business sharing a plate? 

The well written carte should offer something for the curious and the customary diner alike. On all these fronts the main menu at Fat Mermaid in Amble is a triumph. Over 5 sections, with sensible titles like “From the Sea”, “From the Garden” or “Snacks”, are proposed that rare thing: a bunch of dishes any one of which I’d be happy to order.

Colmans Seafood Temple

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Sea Road 
South Shields 
NE33 2LD 

0191 511 1349 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes

colmansseafoodtemple.co.uk

It was once the grandest public toilet in the world. Gandhi’s Temple, they called it, perhaps as a tribute to Gandhi’s trip to the UK in 1931. 

 

With carved pillars and ornate balistrades and overlooking the sea, the upper level was first a seaside shelter against the rain and later a bandstand. By the end of the last century it had had its chips. Which is appropriate, because now it’s the place for some of the best chips you’ll ever taste, and fish, and lobster and all manner of seafood. For Gandhi’s temple has become Colman’s.

Saltwater Fish Company

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Fenwick Food Hall 
Northumberland Street 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE99 1AR 

0191 239 6613 
 www.saltwaterfish.co.uk 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes 

Like some petulant pop star, I don’t do requests. It’s not for the lack of opportunity. Every week I get an invite from some PR or other asking me to cover the “VIP Opening” of their new breathlessly described culinary outpost. This might sound like fun but, believe me, it’s not. 

You stand around with a glass of wine waiting for some food, and then have to feign appreciation when a few platters, primarily designed for the camera, are paraded around. There is a peculiar sub-culture that loves this sort of thing – perhaps you’ve seen them about? They’re called bloggers. Open a restaurant, send out some invites and you’ll soon have blogfuls of them, eulogising about their latest freebie. But you won’t catch me there. 

I’m way more interested in how a restaurant works under the normal run of things and I think my readers are too. How’s the service, the menu, the ambience? You won’t get answers from a frothy press night, which is why I never visit a restaurant just because I was asked to. Well, almost never. 

When you get a personal request from Terry Laybourne, you have to pay attention. Mr Laybourne has done probably more than anyone to improve the standards of eating out in this region. We all owe him one. Some time ago he messaged me that he felt the cooking at his Saltwater Fish restaurant in Fenwick’s food hall was now better than the review I’d given it in 2015. Would I consider trying it again?

The Jolly Fisherman on the Quay

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95 Quayside 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 3DH 

0191 261 7011 
www.jollyonthequay.co.uk 

“Is that it?” I stammered, scanning the room for a chalkboard of specials. 

“Yes sir, that’s our menu for this evening.” 

I frowned at the printed A4 sheet in my hand. At least it wouldn’t take long to decide what to order. 

I tend not to go into very much detail about the menus of restaurants I cover. It’s an omission I need to remedy. A menu is more than a list of items that make you less hungry. It’s a statement of intent, a declaration of ambition. Are there any unusual cuts of meat or fish being offered? Is there a knowing mention of some groovily on-trend cooking technique? Does the farmer get a shout-out? What’s happening for the vegetarians? All of this stuff matters, and for people like me who spend a lot of time scrutinising what restaurants do, it matters a lot. Menus are important.

Riley's Fish Shack

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King Edward’s Bay 
Tynemouth 
Tyne & Wear
NE30 4BY 

0191 257 1371 


If I arrive early at a restaurant, I’m usually rather glad of my iPhone. I know I should really be people-watching or menu-checking, but I confess I suffer from the common malaise of smartphone addiction. 

Here, however, as I waited for Mrs Diner and her friend to join me, with only a glass of excellent Almasty APA for company, the phone stayed firmly in my pocket. I didn’t need a companion, for I had the view.

The Potted Lobster

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3 Lucker Road 
Bamburgh 
Northumberland 
NE66 3QH 

01668 214 088 

Amongst the rugged gorgeousness of the Northumberland coast, few sights are so singularly impressive as that towering heap of a castle at Bamburgh. 

Visible from miles around, there are no prizes for guessing why such an imposing site was chosen as a seat of power of the Angles, Bernicians and those other Northern powerhouses. When I take friends from the South around our region, Bamburgh is one place I particularly enjoy showing off, although until recently it wasn’t somewhere I’d consider taking them for a meal. A cheese sandwich on the beach was always the best bet. 

Then, a couple years ago, I discovered, enjoyed and recommended The Mizen Head. Now I think I’ve found somewhere even better.

Saltwater Fish Company

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Fenwick Food Hall 
Northumberland Street 
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE99 1AR 

See www.fenwick.co.uk

It will have escaped the attention of nobody with even a passing interest in Newcastle’s foodie scene that the venerable old girlthat was Fenwick’s food hall has been subject to a pretty full-on vajazzling. 

Where things had become a bit fusty, this new-look venue feels modern and classy, a culinary centrepiece befitting a city that has seen massive improvements in gastronomic standards over the last few years. Everyone involved can afford to feel rather pleased with themselves. 

Just as interesting as the look are the new product lines and concessions. Sayonara to the revolvingly mediocre chain sushi, hello to the excellent Ouseburn Coffee Company, premium cheese from Neal’s Yard Dairy, “clean” food from The Naked Deli and several others. For those of us who take our eating a tad more seriously than we probably ought, a trip to Fenwick has become an adventure. 

The Bridgewater Arms

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Winston 
Teesdale 
County Durham 
DL2 3RN 

01325 730 302 
www.thebridgewaterarms.com 

I confess that spending an entire morning looking at dresses isn’t my idea of fun. But this was different. 

The Bowes Museum, the imposing French-style chateau that’s one of our region’s most stately assets, is currently [September 2015] playing host to the UK’s first Yves Saint Laurent retrospective. Despite my reluctance, Mrs Diner wouldn’t take no for an answer, and I’m really glad she dragged me there – even though she complained all the way down about my outfit. I thought: if double denim is good enough for Jeremy Clarkson, then it’s fine for Barnard Castle. Apparently it’s not.

Longsands Fish Kitchen

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27 Front Street 
Tynemouth 
Tyne & Wear
NE30 4DZ 

0191 272 8552 
www.longsandsfishkitchen.com 
(Closed on Tuesdays) 

My first encounter with fish and chips was in Front Street, Tynemouth. As a child I was sent there every Friday night to fetch the family’s three fish and two chips (salt, no vinegar) from Marshall’s Fish Restaurant. 

I think I still remember a long queue and some wornout black and white floor lino in the long takeaway corridor. There was a window through which you could see the privileged people in the eating-in part, with their white triangles of margarine-buttered Sunblest and cups of tea. 

I can’t actually recall the quality of the fish (a career in food criticism not being on the agenda back then) but I do remember being served by a prodigiously large woman with a short-sleeved blouse, giant flabby wings flapping as she folded up sheets of Evening Chronicle to envelope our meal. 

“Batter, pet?” 

“No thanks, Miss”. 

The smell of frying oil mixed with stale female sweat was a heady combination that probably affected me for life. 

I doubt that Marshall’s, which is now nothing like my childhood memory and I'm told is actually a very good chippy with lovely staff, would have put out the bunting for last month’s opening of Longsands Fish Kitchen, just up the street.

Colmans

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176-186 Ocean Road 
South Shields
Tyne & Wear
NE33 2JQ 

0191 456 1202 
www.colmansfishandchips.com
Daily 11am - 6pm only

1977 was a momentous year for South Shields. Not only did the Queen pop in during her Silver Jubilee tour, but the following month the King came too: Mohammed Ali was somehow persuaded by a local painter and decorator from Whitburn to make the trip from the United States to support his local boys’ clubs. 

There’s a lovely documentary called “The King of South Shields”, made by Bridge+Tunnel Productions, which documents the effect that Ali’s visit had on the town, particularly on the local Yemeni community after he had his marriage blessed in the local Al-Ahzar mosque. 

In the film you can see the crowds thronging the open topped bus as Ali glides down Ocean Road past Colmans fish and chips. 

I’ve always liked to think that Ali might have been momentarily distracted by the wonderful smell of frying and popped in for a catch of the day. “No visit to North East England is complete without tasting Colmans fish” says their website. So Ali missed a treat, and the Queen did too, but the walls of Colmans are covered with photographs of other celebrities who made it past the water sculpture and into the white-tiled inner sanctum.

Blyth Boathouse

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Quay Road 
Blyth 
NE24 3PA 

01670 369052 
Accessibility: Yes 

Last week I received a plaintive tweet from someone called Lee Gibling, asking simply, “Nothing listed in Blyth?” 

This website may be the North East’s most comprehensive guide to eating out, but the town of Blyth hasn’t yet appeared on its culinary map. That’s because, up to now, I haven’t received a single recommendation for one of its eateries. 

Two weeks ago Blyth Boathouse opened its doors to the public. Of course I waited the obligatory seven days to let it iron out any teething problems and get some feet under its brand new tables, and I also chose a quiet lunchtime, to give the kitchen a fighting chance. Perhaps I should have waited a bit longer.

The Mizen Head

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Lucker Road 
Bamburgh 
Northumberland 
NE69 7BS 

01668 214 254 
www.mizenheadhotel.co.uk 
Accessibility: Yes 

[Note: the owner of The Mizen Head, Alex Watson, tragically died at the end of November 2016, at the age of 30.  This review was written more than two years earlier.]

I must congratulate owner Alex Watson. The pure white sand of Bamburgh has always been a desert for foodies. His restaurant with rooms now offers a decent meal after a long walk on Britain’s best beach. 

I love Bamburgh, and the lack of good food has always been an embarrassment when I recommend the area to visitors. Now it can have a Secret Diner Recommended sticker on its door.

Latimer's Seafood Café

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Latimer’s Seafood Deli & Café 
Shell Hill 
Bents Road 
Whitburn 
SR6 7NT 

0191 529 2200 
www.latimers.com 

Closed Mondays (exc bank holidays) 
Tues-Sat 8am-5.15pm (last orders) 
Sun 9am-4.30pm 

There’s nothing finer in life than a long walk by the sea with a dog. Provided there’s a dog-friendly pub or café at the end of it, preferably with very good food. 

On a warm sunny day, the North East coast is the best in the world. You may recall we had one a few weeks ago, a warm sunny day that is. That was the day Mrs Diner and I took Diner Dog to Whitburn. We were in search of fish. 

Not just any old fish, but reputedly the finest fish in the North East. Our goal was the award-winning fishmonger that has won the custom of Terry Laybourne and Jesmond Dene House Hotel. It’s a place of pilgrimage for fish lovers: they sell fish brought in by the day boats in the harbours up and down the coast, from Eyemouth to Whitby. They also have a café.

The Old Boat House

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The Old Boat House 
Leazes Street 
Amble 
Northumberland 
NE65 0AA 

01665 711232 

Accessibility: Yes 

I’d happily travel a hundred miles for fresh fish. Sadly the closest many people get to it are the vacuum-sealed offerings on the counters of Waitrose and Morrisons. Spread out on ice with bits of plastic parsley and bowls of defrosted scallops, it may look fresh enough, but it’s nothing like the real deal. 

I’ve never understood why our region doesn’t have a proper fresh fish shop in every town. It’s so sad that they’ve all closed, because the North East is supposed to be famous for its fishing. 

The best way to enjoy really fresh fish in the North East is to find a very good restaurant, preferably close to where the boats come in. And you can’t get any closer than The Old Boat House in Amble.

The Staith House

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57 Low Lights 
North Shields Fish Quay 
NE30 1HF 
0191 270 8441

thestaithhouse.co.uk 

Every day 11am – 11pm 

Accessibility: Yes 




[SECOND VISIT: In March 2014 The Staith House, to whom I gave four stars in January, launched a monthly tasting evening in conjunction with Bon Coeur Fine Wines.  I was invited because the chefs - former Masterchef finalist John Calton and his business partner James Laffan - wanted to show off their skills. 

It was a three-hour, seven-course, six-wine gourmet evening to remember, with delicate crab in blood orange mayonnaise and fennel, a fish course of skate and sole, steamed in fish stock on a feather bed of samphire, caper and sprouting broccoli, and an incredible plate of lamb – shoulder, tongue, belly, fillet, in fact, done so many ways (it even had a round of melted ewe’s cheese), I half expected a poached eyeball to wink at me. 

This grande bouffe was only £50 a head, including the wine. 

You really should book next month’s event (April 10th), because this could be the best value, most honest, earthy, freshest tasting-menu on offer in our region.]  

When I reviewed Irvin’s Brasserie on North Shields Fish Quay last year, one of my few real complaints was the terrible view. The big picture windows overlooked the rubbish-strewn car park of a rundown old boozer called The New Dolphin. 

I’m sure the owners of Irvin’s were delighted when The New Dolphin was transformed into The Staith House; what might make them less happy is that their new neighbour brings some serious competition.

Irvin's Brasserie [CLOSED]

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The Irvin Building 
Fish Quay 
North Shields 
NE30 1HJ 
0191 296 3238 
www.irvinsbrasserie.co.uk 

Wed/Thurs 10am – 10pm 
Fri/Sat 10am – 12am 
Sun 9am – 7.30pm 
Closed Mon & Tues 

[IRVIN'S BRASSERIE CLOSED DOWN IN JULY 2017]

 
Richard Irvin was a fishing pioneer. His steam-powered trawlers were the envy of the world’s fleets, and a century ago he had more than 90 boats, with smart headquarters on the fish quay in North Shields. 

The building is still there: R. Irvin & Sons Ltd. But now it’s a spacious, laid-back brasserie. 

The building sits rather uncomfortably in tatty surroundings. I know the fish quay has been improved a bit over the years, but it’s a missed opportunity for the north east. A straggly row of pubs and restaurants, many offering cheap Italian meal deals, and a couple of fish and chip shops scarcely makes it a tourist destination.