Whitechurch Durham

Food ✪✪✪✪
Ambience ✪✪✪✪
Service ✪✪✪

29 Church Street Head
Durham
DH1 3DN

0191 386 8897

whitechurchdurham.com

Accessibility? Yes
Gluten free options? Yes 

There seems to be a bit of an imperative for new restaurant businesses to be able to offer something at all times of the day. If you have the staff, the kit and the premises to pull it off then it makes a lot of sense. Rent and rates need paying whether the doors are open or not; might as well make money from the brunchy crowd as well as those in the market for a nice dinner. Somebody dropping in for a coffee might come back next week for their birthday dinner, and so on and so forth.

Brinkburn St Brewery

Food ✪✪✪
Ambience ✪✪✪✪
Service ✪✪✪

Unit 2
Ford Street
Ouseburn Valley
Byker
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE6 1NW

0191 338 9039

brinkburnbrewery.co.uk 

Accessibility? Yes
Gluten free options? Yes 

Have we reached peak craft beer yet? Such is the hectic and exponential proliferation of flavour-forward fermentation that I’m finding it hard to keep tabs on Who’s Who among North East brewers. Not that I’m complaining, you understand. The choice of pint - or two-thirds, or whatever - in a decent pub is so far in advance of the state of things ten or fifteen years ago as to be unrecognisable. And, for those of us who like our imbibing to come with a side order of narrative integrity, that pub is ever more likely to be the tap room of the very brewery who made the stuff in the first place.

The Impeccable Pig

Food ✪✪✪✪
Ambience ✪✪✪✪
Service ✪✪✪✪

Front St
Sedgefield
Stockton-on-Tees
TS21 3AT

01740 582580

impeccablepig.co.uk

Accessibility? Yes
Gluten free options? Yes

Sedgefield’s a nice spot, isn’t it? I can see why Tony Blair was happy enough to be parachuted in - sorry: choose to relocate - all those years ago. As we parked up opposite St Edmund’s Church on a Saturday afternoon that grudgingly offered some pale wintry warmth, everything felt comfortable, genteel and agreeable. It was all very... nice.

This probably helped to persuade Ramside Estates to plough a reported £1.5m - it’s always a big round number, isn’t it? - into refurbishing what used to be The Hope on Front Street and turning it into The Impeccable Pig, a restaurant with rooms. What they’ve done is very impressive, but also probably necessary for a venture of this size; with respect to almost everything about the place, they’ve found that magic sweet spot in the Venn diagram where the circles of quality, accessibility and affordability overlap.

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.

The Punch Bowl Hotel

Food ✪
Ambience ✪✪✪✪
Service ✪✪ 

125 Jesmond Road
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE2 1JY

0191 239 9566

Accessibility? TBC
Gluten free options? TBC

punchbowlnewcastle.com 

Where to start with this one? Tell you what, let’s start at the bottom and talk about the toilets. 

I had entered the Punch Bowl in a hurry, a meandering pre-dinner walk through Jesmond Dene having rendered me in fairly urgent need, if you get my drift. I clocked that the loos were where I remembered from the olden days, before this place had been closed and reborn. I pushed on the door of the solitary cubicle and was relieved to find it vacant. It wasn’t until I rose from the facility that I found I was facing a worrying set of choices.

A panel attached to the side of the toilet had a series of buttons on it, offering either rear or front oscillation, “massage”, “dry” or “De-odor/self clean”. Other buttons invited me one to adjust the water pressure and/or the nozzle position. I didn’t see a nozzle. What nozzle? What fresh hell was this? Why were lights flashing? Did I do something wrong? It dawned on me: this must be one of those fancy Japanese-style bogs. What the…?

Beadnell Towers

Food ✪✪✪✪
Ambience ✪✪✪✪
Service ✪✪✪✪

The Wynding 
Beadnell 
Northumberland 
NE67 5AY 

01665 721 211 

beadnelltowers.co.uk 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free options? Yes 

There’s nothing so refreshing as having your jaded assumptions assailed and disproved by the jolt of actual experience. A number of dud lunches over the last few years have taught me to be suspicious of restaurants and hotels with a particular focus and financial outlay on the look of the place, particularly when that look seems to have come straight from the pages of Ideal Home magazine. Beadnell Towers has, according to the blurb, had £3 million pounds thrown at it, with Dynargh Design creating a “true ‘boutique’ hotel concept” for a new owner, property developer David Wilson. 

The Ship Inn, Wylam

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

Wylam 
Northumberland 
NE41 8AQ 

01661 854 538 
theshipinnwylam.co.uk 

Accessibility? No 
Gluten free? Yes 

When walking into a pub for the first time, I have a list of things to look out for that normally indicate whether or not the cooking is likely to be decent. Neither big television screens farting out rotating news nor tartan carpets are on that list. The Ship Inn in Wylam has both, as well as a number of other features that you'd expect to find in the category of establishment we call “country pub”.

The thing is, it is definitely an actual pub. Some restaurants claim to be pubs, but try grabbing a seat at the bar and you’ll soon find you’re in the way of service. Not here. There were plenty of locals chatting over a pint while the world fell to bits in real time on Sky News. The fact that The Ship is also serving accurately cooked dishes hewn from fine ingredients in a room which hasn’t been Farrow and Balled to death only made me love it all the more.

The Travellers Rest

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

Front Street 
Witton Gilbert
County Durham
DH7 6TQ 

0191 371 0458 
www.travellersrest-wittongilbert.co.uk 

There are two pubs near Durham called The Travellers Rest. One is in the sleepy little village of Witton Gilbert, just off the A691, and is the subject of this review. The other, in Belmont, is a low-slung lump of brick with billboards advertising Sky Sports and a “Thursday Sizzler night”. That’s the one that Google Maps took us to. 

“Are you sure it’s here?” Mrs Diner asked, her voice betraying real concern as we watched a staff member cleaning out the ashtrays on the picnic bench just prior to opening. 

I checked and, chastened, we hot-footed west towards Witton Gilbert. All of which pre-meal jeopardy was fine because I knew that once we’d actually found him, we were likely to be brilliantly fed by Ruari Mackay.

The Salt Cove (Park Hotel)

Food ✪ 
Ambience ✪✪ 
Service ✪ 

The Park Hotel
Grand Parade
Tynemouth 
Tyne & Wear
NE30 4JQ 

0191 257 1406 
www.saltcove.co.uk 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Allegedly 

As we wound our way through the throng at the bar to our table in the dining room the sound of Pulp’s “Do you remember the first time?” was playing. For once, yes, I most certainly could. 

You see, decades ago I worked at the Park Hotel during a school summer holiday. I remember a huge scary head chef with a talent for vulgarity, a tall and very camp head waiter, and a diminutive wine waiter, who was Portuguese. One day the head waiter was ill and so the wine waiter deputised. I’ve never seen anyone so proud, pompous and nervous all at the same time.

It was the regular “Bank Managers' Lunch” where the besuited heads of all our local branches got together -  20 of them around a large banqueting table. Lamb chops were on the set menu; I was promoted to wine duty. I had just poured everyone a glass of Niersteiner Domtal when the little Portuguese waiter, covered in sweat, emerged from the kitchen carrying a huge platter displaying 40 neatly arranged lamb chops resting on a bed of watercress. 

He approached the head of the table and, with a theatrical flourish, presented the dish to the regional head of (I think) Lloyds Bank. In doing so, he didn’t realise that beneath the layers of chops and greenery was an ocean of scalding hot gravy, which poured like a river into the top man’s crotch. He leapt skywards, taking banqueting table, cloth, and all my neatly poured glasses of wine with him. The Portuguese waiter burst into tears and ran out of the restaurant, never to be seen again. 

Sad to say there was almost as much ineptitude on display on our recent visit, just without any of the pride, and a good deal less comedy. It’s a safe bet that in twenty years I’ll still be recounting the bit I’ve just told you as opposed to what must now follow.

Chadwicks Inn Maltby

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

High Lane 
Maltby 
Middlesbrough 
TS8 0BG 

01642 590 300 

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

They say that in the restaurant trade, the better the food quality, the tighter the margins. Good ingredients, talented chefs and reliable equipment all cost money. It’s not easy to make economies of scale at the highest level of cooking. And the fickle public can be weirdly reticent to shell out much more for a complex, multiple-ingredient plateful of real quality than they will for a burger. Not that I’ve got anything against a good burger of course, but you get my drift. 

Which is why many chefs are faced with a dilemma: focus on the serious stuff that shows off their skills, or bring in the punters with a few sure-fire crowd pleasers? At the very lovely Chadwicks Inn in Maltby, just south of Middlesbrough, they’re doing a good job of both. On the one hand, this is definitely still a pub, with an actual bar where you could happily have a pint without feeling weird, so perhaps the fact that they serve burgers and fish and chips is fair play. On the other hand, they’re also offering delicious, appealing dishes of some ambition, as evidenced by their brace of AA Rosettes and a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

St Mary's Inn

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

St Mary’s Lane 
St Mary’s Park 
Morpeth 
Northumberland 
NE61 6BL 

01670 293293 
www.stmarysinn.co.uk 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes 

Walking through the doors of St Mary’s Inn recently gave me an odd feeling of déjà vu. 

When the place closed in May 2017, the company behind it (which also owns Jesmond Dene House), cited issues with the Bellway development that was growing around it, and for which it had been envisaged as a community hub. Well, it reopened in August of this year, and while there may be a new chef and general manager, pretty much everything else is just as I remembered it.

The Cheviot

Food ✪ 
Ambience ✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪ 

The Cheviot Hotel 
Bellingham 
Northumberland 
NE48 2AU 

Accessibility? No Gluten free? Yes

01434 220 696 
www.thecheviothotel.co.uk

Taking a right at the roundabout where the B6318 meets the A68, and heading north toward Kielder and Scotland, light immediately seems to get a good deal scarcer. 

At this time of year, travelling at night, there is a strangely hypnotic quality to this section of highway. Headlights pick out the straight white lines on asphalt which stretches, without the interruption of a bend, for miles ahead. The only variety is provided by a series of dramatic dips and peaks. The pitchy darkness to each side of the car is disorientating, making it hard to tell whether you’re hooning up or down a slope, other than by the feeling in the pit of your stomach. It’s like being on a long, dark Tron-inspired rollercoaster. 

My latest trip to these parts served as a slightly depressing reminder that it isn’t just light that this area around Kielder lacks. Good cooking is in as short supply as photons. While the world-class gloom brings visitors from all over the world, keen to peer into the infinite murk of deep space, there continues to be nowhere of truly stellar quality for them to eat. It is a mystery of intergalactic proportions.

Pentonbridge Inn

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

Penton 
Carlisle 
CA6 5QB 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes 

01228 586636 
pentonbridgeinn.co.uk 

Sometimes the restaurant trade moves so fast that I struggle to keep pace. If you wanted an example of the ephemeral impermanence of existence, you could do at lot worse than to keep tabs, as I try vainly try, on which chefs are cooking where. 

Case in point: Pentonbridge Inn, just outside of Longtown in Cumbria. It was only late last year when, to a fair harrumph of fanfare in the trade press, husband and wife chefs Jake and Cassie White, ex of Marcus Wareing and Hélène Darroze, left the bright lights of London for the rather less likely venue of Penton, just a few hundred yards south of the Scottish Border. There was some excited chat on the part of the owners about the possibility of Michelin stars, of improving local food supply chains and even of Longtown becoming a notable “food town”. 

This last statement drew a sustained eyebrow-raise from me. I’ve driven through Longtown many times. Let's be charitable: Cartmel it ain’t. Still, the food at Pentonbridge sounded like serious fun. Great, I thought. I’ll pop in for lunch sometime. So we did, a couple of weeks ago on a trip back from The Lakes, but neither Jake nor Cassie were anywhere to be seen. For whatever reason they’ve departed the business inside of a year (they left in May ‘for personal reasons’), to be replaced by Gary McDermott who had previously slung his knives at Carlisle’s Rickerby Retreat and most recently as head chef at Grasmere’s Lancrigg Hall. 

I heard the White’s food here had been superb, but now I’ll never know. What I can however tell you is that, happily, Gary’s isn’t half bad either.

Träkol

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

By the River Brew Co 
Hillgate Quays 
Gateshead 
NE8 2BH 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes  

0191 737 1120 
(online bookings only) 
www.bytheriverbrew.co/trakol 

Sometimes fortune really does favour the bold. When Rob Cameron and Dave Stone of Wylam Brewery/Bridge Tavern/Town Wall fame signed on the proverbial dotted line and agreed, at very short notice, to take on the project of planning a “shipping container village” underneath the Gateshead side of the Tyne Bridge, they couldn’t in their wildest dreams have expected a summer like this one. What a wall to wall scorchio, perfect for street food sampling, or just sitting outside with a lovely view and a nice beer. And pretty handy when you’ve just opened up a massive pub in the middle of it. 

Except that to call ‘By The River Brew Co.’ a pub is a bit like referring to me as fussy; both are true, but also radical understatements.

The Granby Inn @ The Dyke Neuk

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

The Dyke Neuk 
Meldon 
Morpeth 
Northumberland 
NE61 3SL 

01670 772 662 

http://thedykeneuk.co.uk 

I’ve got quite a mouthful for you this week, both in the name of this restaurant, and also in the vast portions that we ate on your behalf. I’ll get round to the latter shortly, but first let’s start with the Who’s Who. 

I’ve visited The Dyke Neuk several times before, as the Wansbeck Valley in which it sits is one of my favourite parts of Northumberland. Despite its undulating hills and sparkling river, this area between Morpeth, Belsay and Kirkwhelpington is a bit of a culinary desert, and sadly the food the Dyke Neuk was never worth writing home about – let alone on these pages. Despite its location right next to Meldon Park, which used to have a decent garden café, it eventually found itself without anyone to take on its lease. In stepped a pair of local businessmen, George Bowman and Craig Taylor, regulars both. 

So far so laudable, but as anyone in the rural pub game will tell you, a solid food offering is what brings that vital, spendy stream of townster folk out at weekends and evenings. Bowman and Taylor hit upon the idea of sub-letting the kitchen operation to an established business and persuaded Michael Hall, head chef at The Granby Inn in Longframlington (3 stars in my book) to be that business. And that’s why for couple of months, we’ve had the geographically confusing but nonetheless accurate moniker: ‘The Granby Inn @ The Dyke Neuk’.

The Bluebell

Food (no stars) 
Ambience ✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪ 

Jesmond Vale 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE2 1PH 

0191 232 1774 
http://the-blue-bell.com 

There are several good reasons to grant anonymity. Journalists and police officers need to look after their sources if they want them to remain useful; in the world of counter-espionage revealing an identity could put an informer at risk; in my case, I stay secret because I don’t want any special treatment – no freebies or backhanders for me. 

However sometimes it’s best to grant someone anonymity just because you’re a generous-hearted sort of chap and you want to spare them embarrassment. That’s why I won’t mention the name of the person who suggested visiting this pub, or the chef responsible for the meal I endured as a result. 

I love getting recommendations for new places. It’s one of the perks of this job, and so I don’t want to put anyone off from getting in touch with a hot tip from the culinary underground. Many a culinary diamond has been unearthed after a solicitous email or DM. Sadly The Bluebell proved not to be one of these.

The Craster Arms

Food ✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪ 

The Wynding 
Beadnell 
Northumberland
NE67 5AX 

01665 720 272 
www.crasterarms.co.uk 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Yes 

Things are happening in the village of Beadnell. The last couple of years have seen a bunch of new holiday homes shoot up, as well as a few changes to the dining options for locals and visitors. Last summer I thoroughly enjoyed a sun-drenched lunch at the slightly eccentric Beadnell Towers, but that has since been sold and is now closed for a major refurbishment. 

Beadnell’s Salt Water Café, which does breakfasts and café-style lunches before turning itself into an evening seafood restaurant, is already in my ever-expanding in-box of impending reviews. However, according to our friendly waiter at The Craster Arms, all three Beadnell establishments are now part of the same business. He told us that the plan is to go down the “luxe” route with Beadnell Towers, while Salt Water Café will cut a more cosy, homely look. On the other hand, it’s pretty clear from its massive and wildly varied menu that right now The Craster Arms is all about volume.

The Rat Inn

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

Anick 
Hexham 
Northumberland 
NE46 4LN 

01434 602 814 
www.theratinn.com 

Accessibility? No 
Gluten free? Yes 

There are plenty of reasons to re-review a restaurant: a change of chef, breathless praise from a normally reputable source, or just the depressing passage of rather too much time. Any one of these would probably justify a return visit, but when all three are present and correct, it’s time to make a booking. As was the case with The Rat Inn.

The Black Bull Inn at Frosterley

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

Frosterley 
Co. Durham 
DL13 2SL 

01388 527 784 

www.blackbullfrosterley.com 
Accessibility? No 
Gluten free? Yes (call in advance)
 

Whilst so many new restaurants give themselves a swift veneer of fake venerability by adding the odd shelf of leather bound books or a few antique fixings, it’s nice to find a genuine old English pub. As you push against the heavy wooden front door of The Black Bull at Frosterley to reveal a cosy ancient inn, you would think you'd found tavern heaven. Look carefully, though, and you’ll realise that this isn’t an accident, but an act of careful, loving design by its owners The Davis family. 

copyright The Black Bull Inn

Having bought the place in 2005, they sought to restore it to what it might have looked like a couple of hundred years ago. In similar fashion to the McCoys' achievement at The Crathorne Arms, this included filling the place with all manner of personal effects including clocks, portraits, antique furniture as well as Duncan Davis’s own rather more contemporary photography. 

With flagged and wooden floors, small rooms, open fires, exposed beams and - praise be! - no music or television to distract from the gently thrum of background chatter, it is a delightful place to end up, especially after a longish drive through the impressive if moody Weardale scenery. Frosterly’s claim to fame used to be its limestone – you can find Frosterley Marble on the floor and pillars of Durham cathedral. Now it’s known for the Black Bull.

The Ship Inn, Ouseburn

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

Stepney Bank 
Ouseburn Valley 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 2PW 

0191 222 0878 
www.facebook.com/shipouseburn/ 

Accessibility? No
Gluten free? Yes 

Alright, vegans: this one is for you. Except that, actually, it’s for everyone. Let me explain. 

It has not been easy to find somewhere in the North East to heartily recommend to those following a strictly plant-based diet. There was the Painted Elephant, but it closed a while back. In spite of their apparent popularity, The Bohemian and Grumpy Panda both wound up with 1-star reviews, thanks to their over-reliance on pretendy meat products which tasted bad and had weirdly grim textures. Surely someone could put a menu together using actual vegetables, beans, legumes, seeds and all the rest of it, and still make it taste nice? Well, they have now. 

Make no mistake: The Ship Inn isn’t just for the flesh-shy. Mrs Diner and I, committed carnivores both, enjoyed a recent lunch there as much as we have any meal for quite some time. There was talent, invention, colour and variety on display in every dish we tried. The meal was a pleasure.