Hjem

Food ✪✪✪✪✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪✪✪ 

The Hadrian Hotel 
Wall 
Hexham 
Northumberland 
NE46 4EE 

01434 681 232 

www.restauranthjem.co.uk 
Accessibility? Not currently 
Gluten free? Yes, but call to discuss
Vegetarian - Yes, but please pre-order

Sometimes it takes a fresh pair of eyes to help you find something special in your own back yard. An outsider can get excited about things that might have grown mundane to a local; a stranger with genius and skill, can transform the banal, rendering it new and fresh again. Revelatory: that’s my opening salvo in trying to describe the experience at Hjem, a wonderful new restaurant in the village of Wall, just north of Hexham.

The Raby Hunt

Food ✪✪✪✪✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪✪✪ 

Summerhouse 
Nr Darlington 
Co Durham 
DL2 3UD 

01325 374 237 
www.rabyhuntrestaurant.co.uk 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes, but call in advance 

[WINNER: North East Restaurant of the Year 2012/2013/2016]

The paradox of perfection is what makes high-end restaurant cooking such a unique challenge. Every day a chef has to turn up for work and plate up hundreds of dishes, aiming for flawlessness each time, yet knowing deep down that there is really no such thing. The chef is, in a sense, doomed to failure before he even ties his apron: yet it’s only in the trying, over and over again, for that mirage-like moment in which you know that a dish couldn’t be improved by a single grain of salt, that you can really succeed at the very highest level. 

I had cause to reflect on all this as we left The Raby Hunt after a spectacular lunch, trying to figure out why this meal, which I’m happily and easily awarding 6 stars, was better than previous visits I had also pegged at that level (which is the maximum number of stars that will fit comfortably on my Secret Diner window sticker). Ultimately I concluded that chef James Close’s secret is the gentle evolution of dishes, the search for better raw materials and the slow but steady refining of techniques. It makes sitting down in his plush dining room a joy. 

Manchester House

Food ✪✪✪✪✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪✪ 

18-22 Bridge Street 
Spinningfields 
Manchester 
M3 3BZ 

0161 835 2557
www.manchesterhouse.uk.com

I was determined to write this review of Manchester House without mentioning the “M” word. However, they said it first. 

“Yeah, this place is a one-off; Tim Bacon opened it up specifically to try and get the star,” said our waiter, just as we were settling down at our vast four top. 

Tim, the owner of this and several other leading Manchester restaurants, died of cancer just a few weeks before my visit. The star which he craved is, of course, the one that a certain French tyre company hands out to restaurants serving food considered to represent “very good cooking in its category”. 

The contrast between those six prosaically unimpressive words, and the drastic effect they can have on the lives of chefs and restaurateurs is stark. The Michelin star is, to some, the ultimate goal. 

Since Manchester House opened in 2013, two editions of the little red book have been published, and neither included that all-important symbol alongside the description of Manchester House. So what? Well, so more fool the Michelin Guide’s inspectors, at least on the evidence of our lunch.

The Man Behind The Curtain

Food ✪✪✪✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪✪✪ 

68-78 Vicar Lane 
Top floor Flannels 
Leeds 
LS1 7JH 

0113 243 2376 
www.themanbehindthecurtain.co.uk 

“You’ve got to review The Man Behind The Curtain,” Kenny Atkinson wrote to me. 

Who am I to disagree with the man who’s just won Newcastle’s only Michelin star? He didn’t have it then, of course – this was months ago. The buzz amongst chefs about Michael O’Hare’s extraordinary, mad, flamboyant, exquisite cooking, just on our doorstep in Leeds, has been going round chefs’ circles ever since his restaurant opened last year.

Jesmond Dene House Hotel

Food ✪✪✪✪✪ 

Service ✪✪✪✪✪ 

Ambience ✪✪✪✪✪ 

Jesmond Dene Road 

Newcastle upon Tyne 

NE2 2EY 

0191 212 3000 

www.jesmonddenehouse.co.uk 

[August 2018: The bad news - executive head chef Michael Penaluna has left JDH and is now to be found at Wynyard Hall. The good news - he has been replaced by Danny Parker, formerly head chef at Kenny Atkinson's Michelin-starred House of Tides, star of TV and radio and one of the most exciting talents in the region. Danny's new menu, team and ambition can be tested from October. In the meantime, I've revised the food rating to ✪✪✪✪✪]

Two weeks ago I stabbed a razor-sharp steak knife into Newcastle’s Miller & Carter restaurant, comparing their béarnaise sauce to Dulux emulsion paint, and castigating the baby food mush that came with their overcooked scallops, the tasteless risotto and wet, iron-tasting steak. Readers were quick to approve. 

“Ouch!” they went, followed quickly by “Reckon you saved us a few bob”. 

Quite a few bob, in fact, as a Twitter follower of mine called Sprocket Man pointed out: “Not cheap for what it was. Plenty of local places are better for the same money.” 

He’s right. £40 for a terrible meal is a ripoff. £40 for a brilliant dinner in a local restaurant could be worth saving up for. It can buy you an excellent meal in some of our very best eateries, including almost anything from the à la carte menu at Peace & Loaf. I'm grateful to him for inspiring this week's review - my task: find a meal in Newcastle that's infinitely better than Miller & Carter for the same price.

I chose Jesmond Dene House because I’d already re-reviewed Peace & Loaf earlier this year, and I haven't written about Jesmond Dene since 2013, when I gave its tasting menu 6 stars. To be honest, I feared it had gone off the boil and I didn’t want new readers of www.secretdiner.org being misled by an inflated rating.

Peace & Loaf

Food ✪✪✪✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪✪ 

217 Jesmond Road 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE2 1LA 

0191 281 5222 
www.peaceandloaf.co.uk 

It’s all change for Newcastle’s fine dining scene. Recently I reported that Kenny Atkinson’s House of Tides has abandoned his tasting-menu-only policy, and introduced a Market Menu option for lunch and dinner. Now I can reveal that two Newcastle restaurants are adding tasting menus to their offerings. 

In March Artisan introduces a seven-course “nose to tail” menu for just £37.50 per person while, later this month, former Masterchef runner-up Dave Coulson adds a tasting menu for his loyal and enthusiastic clientele at Jesmond’s Peace & Loaf. So loyal are Coulson’s customers, that their votes gave it my Journal Readers’ award in 2014. 

It deserves its success. When I first visited, shortly after its opening in November 2013, I gave it five stars, complimenting its modern, complex cooking, ambition and charm. Not resting on laurels, Dave Coulson tweeted that he wasn’t ungrateful, but he hoped that in due course he’d earn a sixth. 

House of Tides

Food ✪✪✪✪✪✪ 

Service ✪✪✪✪✪ 

Ambience ✪✪✪✪✪ 

28-30 The Close 

Quayside 

Newcastle upon Tyne 

NE1 3RF 

0191 230 3720 

www.houseoftides.co.uk 

Accessibility: No lift – ground floor bar area only 

This is an important week for House of Tides. The “casual fine dining” establishment, which opened on Newcastle’s Quayside exactly one year ago, is marking its anniversary with a pretty radical change of direction. 

Despite warmly welcoming its arrival, along with everyone else who cares about good food in our City, I was fairly hard on the place in my last review. There was no doubt that Kenny Atkinsons’s cooking is exemplary, but I was worried about how viable the place would be with just a tasting menu. Could he encourage loyalty from local foodies with one menu entitled Winter? – last February seemed an awful long way from Spring. 

I also questioned the depth of talent in the kitchen – when Kenny cooked, everything was gorgeous, but how would the brigade cope in his absence? The third, and most obvious problem, was the breathtakingly inept service. With a cloying maître d’ and poorly trained staff, front of house really let the side down. 

But that’s all water under the Tyne Bridge. At Kenny Atkinson’s invitation, I returned to celebrate the restaurant’s birthday and I’m delighted to report that House of Tides enters its second year in excellent shape.

Hedone

Food ✪✪✪✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪✪✪ 



301-303 Chiswick High Road 
London 
W4 4HH 

020 8747 0377 
www.hedonerestaurant.com 

Chiswick is a mixture of sturdy Edwardian houses with traffic jams and noisy overflying planes.  It’s the first bit of London you hit after the M4 from Heathrow. 

Cut in two by the relentless A4, quite why properties are so expensive in this polluted congestion zone is beyond me. But it has one redeeming feature: Hedone, which can almost be translated from the Greek as “wanton pleasure” – aptly.

Adam Reid at The French

Food ✪✪✪✪✪✪ 

Service ✪✪✪✪✪ 

Ambience ✪✪✪✪ 

The Midland 

Peter St 

Manchester 

M2 3NQ 

0161 235 4780

www.the-french.co.uk

Accessibility: Yes
Gluten-free: Yes

In the unlikely event that I ever gain an entry in Who’s Who, I’m pretty certain that my list of recreations would include long lunches and sleeping. In my case, there’s a direct correlation between the two. My lunch heaven demands a couple of spare hours and more than a couple of glasses of good wine, after which I am invariably rewarded with the sleep of the dead.

The Black Swan

Food ✪✪✪✪✪✪ 

Service ✪✪✪✪✪ 

Ambience ✪✪✪✪✪ 

Oldstead 

North Yorkshire 

YO61 4BL 

01347 868387

www.blackswanoldstead.co.uk

Mon-Wed: 6-9pm only 

Thur-Sat: 12-2pm, 6-9pm 

Sun: 12-2.30pm, 6-9pm 

The story of how The Black Swan got its Michelin star is a sweet tale about a nice Northern family who bought a pub. 

Anne and Tom Banks used to run a smart B&B at their farm in a tiny North Yorkshire village, so off the beaten track that to find it you’d need to borrow a compass from the hikers in this remote part of the North York Moors National Park. Their nearest beaten track, by the way, is the A19 near Thirsk, which makes this place perfectly accessible from Newcastle and close to those in the south of our region.

The Raby Hunt

 Food ✪✪✪✪✪✪ 

Service ✪✪✪✪✪ 

Ambience ✪✪✪✪ 

The Raby Hunt Restaurant & Rooms 

Summerhouse 

Nr. Darlington 

Co. Durham 

DL2 3UD 

01325 374237 

www.rabyhuntrestaurant.co.uk 

Wed to Sat only: 12-2pm 6-9.30pm 

Accessibility: Yes

***NORTH EAST RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR 2013***

***BEST FINE DINING 2013***

This place is no flash in the frying pan. 

Even though James Close is virtually self-taught, and has only been cooking for a few years, his food is confident, passionate, flawless. That’s why his Michelin star was renewed last month, still the only one in the North East, and why he has won our 2013 North East Restaurant of the Year and Best Fine Dining awards.

The Raby Hunt

Food ✪✪✪✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪✪ 

The Raby Hunt Restaurant & Rooms
Summerhouse 
Nr. Darlington 
Co. Durham 
DL2 3UD 
01325 374237 

www.rabyhuntrestaurant.co.uk 

Wed to Sat only: 12-2pm 6-9.30pm 

As we arrived, Craig, the maître d’, seemed relieved to see us. 

A big party had cancelled only that morning. This could be bad news for a small restaurant with only a couple of dozen covers, but Craig said Chef James Close had created some new dishes and wanted someone to try them out on, if we didn’t mind. 

Was he kidding? Private dining in the North East’s only Michelin-starred restaurant?

Jesmond Dene House Hotel

Food ✪✪✪✪✪✪ 

Ambience ✪✪✪✪✪ 

Service ✪✪✪✪✪ 

Jesmond Dene House Hotel 
Jesmond Dene Road 
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE2 2EY 
0191 212 3000 

www.jesmonddenehouse.co.uk

***BEST HOTEL RESTAURANT 2013***

Years before I went underground, I endured an underwhelming tasting menu at Jesmond Dene House Hotel. It was overpriced and overblown. 

I don’t think Michael Penaluna was in the kitchen back then. He earned his spurs as the understudy of Pierre Rigothier, the chef who brought this restaurant back on track after a period of pretension. When Mr Rogothier went off to Paris to work in a Michelin-starred establishment, instead of hiring from outside, the management promoted Michael. What a good decision that was.