Thali Tray/Arch 2 Brewpub

Food ✪✪✪✪
Ambience ✪✪✪
Service ✪✪✪

Stepney Bank
Ouseburn
NE1 2NP

07446 011 941
newcastlebrewingltd.co.uk 
thalitray.co.uk 

Accessibility? Yes
Gluten free options?Yes

Where can you eat a curry in a brewery, followed by a pudding in a different brewery, followed by watching snooker’s Steve Davis perform in a leftfield electronica act, all without having to walk more than a few hundred yards? This might sound like some fever dream, but no, this was the shape my actual evening took last night as I tap these words out. So where was I? The impossibly cool Ouseburn, obvs.

For as long as I've lived round these parts, the Ouseburn has always been home to some excellent pubs. A very fine summer’s day could be spent flaneuring between The Cumberland, The Free Trade, The Tyne and The Cluny. But over the last few years things in the valley have really gone a bit next-level, with actual breweries setting up and opening their doors to punters, as well as a smattering of top-rate food businesses taking root.

Banyan Newcastle

Food ✪ 
Ambience ✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪ 

3 Monument Mall 
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7AL 

0191 814 7478 
www.arcinspirations.com 
Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes 

Sometimes I reckon that, what with having spewed out nearly half a million words on the topic, I know a thing or two about the restaurant industry. At other times, I’m left thinking I know nothing at all. The subject of this week’s review made me feel the latter, and how.

Beeronomy

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

Hood Street 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 6JQ 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes
0191 260 2454 
www.beeronomy.com 

I know the ol’ catering biz is well known for its quick-sharp comings and goings, but sometimes I can’t keep up. 

The last time I ate chef Ronald Robson’s food was in the spring of 2017 at The Merchant’s Tavern down at St Peter’s Basin, where he was brought in to make their menu a bit more serious. It wasn’t quite a success, or at least not on the night I tried it. I subsequently discovered he’d moved on round about the time of my visit, so I wasn’t really eating his food at all. Just as well – I wasn't very enthusiastic.

The Holy Hobo

Food ✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪ 

Jesmond Three Sixty 
Jesmond 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE2 1DB
 
0191 281 3010 
www.holyhobo.co.uk 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes 

Anyone who spends a bit of time writing about restaurants will quickly find themselves the target of press releases declaring this or that new opening to be the hottest thing since sliced hype. You soon become inured to the over-familiar and breathless tone of these communiqués, with their exclamation marks and awful words like “tantalising” and “fully-loaded”. 

Off the top of my head, precisely none of the greatest meals I’ve ever eaten came after having reading PR blurb. A number of the most awful ones did though. Funny that. 

Nonetheless, every now and then I stumble across some release that is so vibrantly bonkers I find myself drawn to check out the place it purports to describe, like a sick moth to a roaring flame. Which explains why my friend and I recently found ourselves in what used to be Mr Lynch, but has recently been rebranded as, ahem... The Holy Hobo.

St Vincent

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

29 The Broad Chare 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 3DQ 

Accessibility? Yes Gluten free? Yes 

0191 232 1331 
www.saintvincentncl.co.uk

You might think that after so many combined years in the biz, Terry Laybourne and his team at 21 Hospitality Group would lose their edge; that their extraordinary ability to give the people what they want, just before they know they want it, would become dulled. A visit to St Vincent will soon set you right: they’ve only gone and done it again. It’s a little beaut.

The Laundrette

Food ✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪ 

48 Westgate Road 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 1TT 

0191 261 2334 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes

www.thelaundretteuk.com

Walking past Newcastle Central Station towards Grey Street and clocking the billboard for The Laundrette, I couldn’t help but think that the barrel of restaurant themes was showing distinct signs of having been scraped too far. Why name a restaurant after a service that nobody needs anymore and which is scarcely glamorous? And what kind of specialism is their tagline “Cocktails and Carbs”? 

This Newcastle opening is the group’s third, the other two being in the Manchester area. The original, in the pleasant suburb of Chorlton, is housed in what used to be an actual laundrette, so fair enough on that score. But Cocktails and Carbs? Pff. If the alliterated naming of a drink type and nutrient group is reason enough to open a restaurant chain then we’d better brace ourselves for “Pilsner and Proteins”, “Lilt and Lipids” and “Vodka and Vitamins”. All coming to a mixed-use development near you soon. 

As it happens, the theme has more bark than bite, as the menu turned out to be fairly standard summat-for-everyone fare including pizzas, burgers, salads, steaks and quite a few dishes with few or no carbs at all.

The French Quarter

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

Arch 6 Westgate Road 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 1SA 

0191 222 0156 
www.frenchquarternewcastle.co.uk 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes 

Despite the fact that almost every decent chef in the world cut his or her teeth on basic French cooking techniques, and despite the huge numbers of Brits every year who jet off to holidays in the Dordogne or the South of France, I’ve always thought it a bit odd that Britain has so few real French restaurants. 

Plenty of high-end gaffs are sort-of French of course, what with their extensive wine lists, long-reduced sauces and occasionally terrifying service, but that’s not what I’m thinking about. I’m talking platters of meats and cheese reeking of farmyards, with bread and good wine. I’m thinking of simple, satisfying dishes such as pot-au-feu, choucroute and properly made coq au vin or boeuf bourguignon. I’m talking real French food, like you get all over France. And which I love. 

Is it some kind of oh-so-British reverse snobbery, or is it a lack of good ingredients, or sufficient skill and time in the kitchen? I guess it’s a lot less hassle to open up some half-arsed “Italian” or “Asian” place, slinging duff pizzas, gloopy sauces and similar crimes against decency. Or maybe it’s the recent but pervasive suspicion that French food isn’t what it was, that these classic dishes have kept it mired in ossified tradition (a view which, on the whole, prompts me to exclaim “C’est des conneries!”). 

Whatever. Suffice to say I was more than excited to learn that Hexham’s reliably good Bouchon Bistrot is no longer the region’s only thoroughly francophile restaurant. The fabulously named Cedric Boc-Ho and his partner Catherine Metcalfe have opened up The French Quarter in the railway arch that used to house the awful Sausage Emporium.

Colonel Porter's Emporium

Food ✪✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪✪ 

Milburn House 
Dean Street 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 1LF 

0191 261 7600 
www.colonelporters.co.uk 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes 

I think it was Will Rogers, the American actor and wit, who observed: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. I agree: for me, my first impression of a restaurant affects the whole tone of the meal. If I walk into something that looks like the reception of a Marriott hotel, any poor chef is going to have an uphill battle to convince me I’m going to like anything I’m served. 

I know I should be more tolerant, but we’re all programmed the way we are, right? It’s evolution’s fault, not mine. So let me admit to you one of my own, deep-seated bigotries: I’m really not keen on themed restaurants. I know, I know: I should give them a chance. But just one look at a menu that features needlessly odd “ye olde” spellings, over-use of the word “curious”, or prolonged and irrelevant stories to justify the fit-out of the place, and my hackles start levitating. 

In my defence, this intolerance does at least result from painful personal experience. Time and again I’ve found that the amount of effort a restaurant puts into its theming is in inverse proportion to the care it takes over its cooking. A recent visit to The Botanist in Newcastle bore this out (nice decor, shame about the lunch), as did a less-recent one to the ironically named Dr Feelgood in Sunderland (since closed, unmourned). 

All of which preamble serves to underscore what a pleasant surprise was in store when I tried the food at Colonel Porter’s Emporium, a place so rammed with theme I half expected the desserts to arrive on a log-flume.

The Botanist

Food ✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪✪ 

Monument Mall 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 7AL 

0191 261 6307 
thebotanist.uk.com 

“I’m a bit disappointed,’ said our friend. “I thought we’d be drinking out of watering cans and eating from wheelbarrows”. 

And then, right on cue, a white chocolate and peanut butter mousse turned up in a garden trowel. Her face lit up. 

“That’s more like it!” 

The Botanist, you see, is pretty much the ground zero of the whole food-not-necessarily-served-on-plates thing. Of course they didn’t invent it, but they can sure take a lot of the credit/blame for keeping the trend going into 2017. They have hanging kebabs, watering-can cocktails and those trowels, all the better to fit in with their wistful gardening and flora theme. 

Normally this sort of pretentious nonsense would set my teeth right on edge, if not send me tailspinning off into some violent rant. If that’s what you’re here for, then I’m sorry to disappoint. Blame the service, which was unerringly charming, or the view, which was Grey Street, but, in spite of myself, I rather liked it here.

YOLO - You Only Live Once

Food ✪ 
Ambience ✪✪ 
Service ✪✪

14 High Bridge Street 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 1EN 

0191 230 3002 
www.yolotownhouse.com 

YOLO Townhouse is set over three floors and is part of a terrace, hence: Townhouse. As I climbed the stairs to the top floor I caught myself thinking “yep, this is a townhouse”.   But YOLO? 

Five or six years ago it was bang on-trend for kids to have this acronym emblazoned over their baseball caps after, if memory serves, the rapper Drake, who released a track that coined it. 

YOLO stood for You Only Live Once: time is short, so go on, get another large Chardonnay down you. That kind of thing. So why would a brand new bar and restaurant in a smart townhouse in 2017 want to name itself after a stale yoof slogan from 2011, especially one quite so butt-clenchingly, teeth-grindingly empty and awful? Good question. 

Of course, I don’t really mind what a restaurant is called as long as the cooking is up to scratch. But when, as here, it’s a grim imitation of better dishes available elsewhere far cheaper, an annoying name becomes the awful cherry on a cake of woe.

Kaltur

*Food ✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪

8 High Bridge 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 1EN 

0191 447 4464 
www.facebook.com/kalturofficial 

[*Oh dear! Never go back should be my motto. But I do revisit favourite places - this time (in early November) it was a mistake, and I've downgraded Kaltur's food and service ratings from 4 stars to 2. Where previously everything was punchy and vibrant, now it tasted greasy, bland and uncared for. Everything was either under or unseasoned. Service was really poor: water was asked for a couple of times before turning up and one dish never materialised, although that was OK as we didn't want any more food by that point anyhow. If I'd been reviewing for the first time today I'm not sure it would even have been 2*. I don't know if it was an off night, they changed chef or whatever, but I thought I'd let you know. In case it was a one-off, here's the original 4* review. If you visit, let me know which you think is correct (see Andy McQuillen's comment below - he had a much better experience)*.]

Let’s do this the other way round for a change, and talk first about the wine. Or, to be specific, the sherry. I knew I was going to enjoy my evening the moment I clocked the list. Seven were listed, all available by the glass. I tried three, and I’ll be back for the others shortly because they were, like almost everything about this diminutive newcomer on High Bridge, life-affirmingly first-rate.

Meat:Stack (formerly The Grind) @ No28

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

27-29 Nelson Street 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 5AN 

0191 447 5590 
www.no28.co.uk 

[From November 1st 2017, The Grind is changing its name to Meat:Stack.  This follows threatened legal action by a London-based cafe/restaurant chain called Grind - see this article for further details]

Call off the search party! Inform the authorities! Stand down the dogs and reassure the fretting relatives! I’ve found Newcastle’s best burger, very much alive and well, in an unlikely spot: a bar just above the Grainger Market. 

I realise that such an audacious declaration may result in tuts, raised eyebrows and worse. You may think you have found patty perfection elsewhere and, yes: everyone is entitled to their opinion. It’s just that in this case I’m right, and, unless you agree with me, you’re not.

Shilling

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

17 Sandhill 
Quayside
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 3AF 

0191 230 5229 
www.shillingnewcastle.co.uk 

Accessibility? No 
Gluten free? Yes 

As my friend and I staggered out of Shilling, which occupies what used to be Rumpoli’s, right underneath the world’s best bridge, we reflected upon the fact that if it had opened just a couple of short years ago I might have raved about it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a decent restaurant serving some very nice things cooked with no little skill and even a whiff of flair and humour. It’s just that where once this would have stuck out like the shy one at an orgy, the whole strip along the Quayside is now a veritable shrine to Bacchus and Ceres. 

Right now, from the fine dining at House of Tides to the informal Barrio Comida, from the gastropubs of the Broad Chare and The Bridge Tavern to the subcontinental style of Ury, via the high-class cafés Violets and Quay Ingredient, not to mention reliable stalwarts such as 21 and Caffe Vivo, Newcastle’s Quayside is a remarkably rich and delicious stretch of real estate. And yet: still they come!

Tapas Revolution

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

Unit S3, Lower Level 
Greys Quarter 
intu Eldon Square 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 7AP 

0191 261 4948 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten-free? Yes
www.tapasrevolution.com

There must be people who like going to the intu Eldon Square. There may even be people who know why intu spells its name with a lower case i. I am not one of those people. 

For me, the ‘i’ in ‘intu Eldon Square’ stands for impersonal, inadequate and inelegant. An uninspiring, cramped space, with low ceilings to match the ambition of some of its chain retailers, it is one of the least glamorous shopping malls in the UK, and yet also one of the busiest. 

It’s not intu’s fault, of course. Why did Newcastle’s glorious frontage of beautiful Georgian architecture have to get in the way of modern commerce so we’re left with a rabbit warren of tiny shops behind the facades? 

Mind you, despite its drawbacks, the intuitive people at intu (that was a guess) are doing something right. For they sure know how to extract our pounds. They’ve recently spent gazillions on a new section called Grey’s Quarter, and filled it with chains like Ask Italian and Giraffe, George’s Great British Kitchen and Smashburger. Fast food to revive flagging spirits. 

When this gastronomic lineup was announced, those of us who favour independent restaurants sighed and tutted. But it’s not all plastic menus and pre-packaged sauces. They have a decent barbecue place called Red’s True Barbecue, which I reviewed quite generously the other week; and now it has Omar Allibhoy.

Dacantus

  Food ✪✪ 

Service ✪✪✪✪ 

Ambience ✪✪✪✪ 

30-32 Grey St 

Newcastle upon Tyne 

NE1 6AE 

0191 261 8111 

www.dacantus.com 

If this were a review of a bar rather than a restaurant then what follows would be a good deal more positive. Dacantus in Newcastle’s Grey Street is a really nice bar. 

Gin menu

They serve good wines by the glass and a dizzying array of carefully made gins and tonics. The interior is a dramatic contrast of hefty dark woods and bling-y gold textured wallpaper. The bar itself is a vast chunk of marble and the nice people who tend it really know what they’re about. 

I would go as far as to say this is an excellent bar. However, they also offer a full food menu, which means that they are a restaurant. And I’m a restaurant critic. Oh dear: nice bar, shame about the food.

The Bottle Shop Bar & Kitchen (CLOSED)

Food ✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪✪ 

Waterloo Square 
St James Boulevard 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 4DN 

0191 261 4193 
www.bottleshopbars.com 

Pity the hipsters. Already fretting over whether their vintage specs and organically grown taches (the men anyway) are sufficiently post-ironic, and now they’re having to take brickbats of invective from the media, social and otherwise, poking fun at their Cereal Cafés and fixed-gear unicycles.  

You’ll have seen them: 20- and 30-year-olds with liberal arts degrees and clothes that look like they come from charity shops or Grandad’s attic, urban bohemians into indie rock and witty banter, the men with shaggy hair so long it’s wrapped in a bun at the back, the women with their side-swept bangs and their hipster men. There’s a very funny (but not for the narrow-minded) Twitter account called @getinthesea that pours scorn on these latter day folk-devils. 

Well, eager to swim against the tide of reactionary opinion, allow me to offer them some support. A welcome byproduct of their never-ending search for the retro-novel, is the creation of markets for better-quality, more interesting products for un-hipsters like me. They may have deconstructed cultural norms in Williamsburg, and turned the fashion world back to the past, but they’ve also given us craft beers.

The Bank Bar & Restaurant

Food ✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪ 

516 Durham Road 
Low Fell 
Gateshead 
NE9 6HU 
0191 487 9038 

www.thebanklowfell.co.uk 

You love steak! You want steak! You crave for steak! 

So, slightly creepily, read the menu, making it less like a list of things to choose for dinner and more like a brainwashing session from an evil butcher. Normally I’d prefer not to be hectored by inanimate pieces of card, but in this case, the menu actually seemed to know my mind. I ordered the rib eye.

Bealim House

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

17-25 Gallowgate 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 4SG 

0191 221 2266 
www.bealimhouse.co.uk 

It’s amazing how something that feels a bit quirky today becomes the norm tomorrow, then descends into cliché the day after that. 

I can’t remember the last time I walked into a new gastropub that didn’t have a wooden floor, exposed brick, visible air vents and “funky” lighting. I admit that there are bigger problems in this world than the homogenisation of pub interiors of course, but are there really no renegades out there willing to hide their bricks behind a nice bit of plasterwork, or their floors under a comforting carpet? I get the feeling that there’s only one interior design firm working in the entire restaurant industry, and they’ve been churning out the same idea for the last 10 years.

Dr Feelgood’s Liquor Emporium

Food ✪ 
Service ✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪ 

Timber Beach House 
Off Timber Beach Road 
Hylton Riverside 
Sunderland 
SR5 3XG 

0191 500 7120 
www.drfeelgoodsemporium.co.uk 

Where to start with this one? Perhaps, at the risk of major spoilers, right at the end. 

“How did you enjoy your meal?” asked our waitress.

Mrs Diner killed me with a look.  “Just pay and leave, there’s no point,” it said. 

She was right. It wasn’t that there had been a couple of bum notes, this performance had been an entire symphony of discord. It was like spending an hour strapped to a chair being forced to listen to Beethoven played on recorders by 5-year-olds. Sure, it had been torture, but they were only children, and the cool air of freedom was just a step away. 

Besides, if I told our waitress the truth, she might cry. So we nodded our applause, paid and left. But back to the beginning, when we were still hungry and full of hope. 

The Bank Bar Bistro

Food ✪✪ 

Service ✪✪✪ 

Ambience ✪✪✪✪ 

516 Durham Road 

Low Fell 

Gateshead 

NE9 6HU 

0191 487 9038 

www.thebankbarbistro.co.uk 

Open 9am – 11pm (Fri/Sat 11pm) 

Full menu: Mon – Sat 12-9pm 

Sunday lunch: 12-5pm 

Accessibility: Downstairs bistro only 

Here’s a secret: food critics sometimes dine on their own. 

Not very often, I grant you, for we quite like good company and Mrs Diner is exceedingly adept at keeping my mood cheerful when the chef is doing his best to spoil it. But very occasionally I pop along by myself just to get the lay of the land. Or, in this case, the lay of the table.