Food ✪✪✪ Ambience ✪✪✪✪✪
Service ✪✪✪
133 Linthorpe Street
Middlesbrough
TS1 5DE
01642 243 552
www.theforkintheroad.co.uk
Accessibility? Yes
Gluten free? On request
It was with some relief that I found this restaurant looking, and tasting, much like any normal place.
This isn't like your average restaurant; it's a not-for-profit set up by Andy Preston, chair of the CEO Sleepout charity, to be a place where ex-offenders, recovering addicts and the long-term unemployed can get a second chance through employment in catering. Hence the name.
Thankfully, they avoided any schlocky fit-out and plating opportunities this back-story offered. Would the room be done out like a jail cell? Would we be shackled to the table? Would there be sauces served up in hypodermic needles? You may laugh, but we live in a world that includes cereal cafés and chefs that think it a cracking wheeze to serve dishes directly onto the back of diners hands. When restaurateurs offer not just a nice meal, but an “experience”, strange things can happen.
Thankfully, there was not a jot of that sort of thing. The fit-out is one of the loveliest and most impressive I have seen for some time. It feels new and fresh, but not awkwardly so. There’s a whole raft of seating options, from Chesterfields and armchairs to banquettes and bar stools. We took a table in the window, the better to indulge in a spot of people-watching.
The restaurant has been given a thorough lick of a nice shade of greenish-blue, with outbreaks of richly stained wood and brass.
There’s a splash of that same blue on the menus and their website, together with a simple but effective fork logo. I don’t usually comment on branding, but whoever is responsible for The Fork in the Road’s corporate identity has done a fine job; it’s consistent, and clean. This is an outfit that has thought about what it's doing.
But how was the food?
When a restaurant has such a commendable reason for being, I always fret that the cooking won’t be as compelling as the purpose; after all, I can’t taste a set of ethics. Happily, there was plenty to enjoy during the meal we cobbled together from a set menu priced at £19.95 for three courses, a lunch à la carte and an additional menu of specials to celebrate “British Pie Week”.
