Stack Newcastle

Food ✪✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪✪ 
(Sushi me Rollin’ were lovely) 

Stack Newcastle 
Old Odeon Site 
Pilgrim Street 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 6QE 

0191 216 1415 

www.stacknewcastle.com 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? Some 

Honestly, it’s a wonder that there are any shipping containers left for the ships. When Riley’s Fish Shack and Anna Hedworth’s Cookhouse used a couple apiece to open their businesses it had just a whiff of underground cool and felt a bit edgy. When By The River Brew Co opened up earlier this year it was as if the whole “not quite permanent” concept had been weaponised, to very good effect. 

With the advent of Stack, on the site of the former Odeon Cinema, shipping containers have gone full-blown mainstream. Give it a couple of years and we’ll all be living, working and loving in shipping containers. Watch out, Maersk.

Tenji [CLOSED]

Food ✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪ 
Service ✪✪ 

Barrack Road 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE2 4LA 

0191 230 3888 
www.tenjijapanesebuffet.co.uk 

Accessibility? Yes 
Gluten free? No 

[Tenji has now closed, but the owners have opened Stixs within the Stack Newcastle food village.]  

I don’t usually spend a great deal of time reading the comments under my reviews on the Facebook page of chroniclelive.co.uk (where these reviews are also published online).  People can be so cruel. 

However, one caught my eye the other week. Its writer seemed to be upset that I’ve travelled a bit, and thus occasionally compare a local restaurant to one I’ve visited abroad. Apparently this makes me - brace yourself - “elitist”. 

Elitest? Moi?! I very nearly spluttered my 1947 Cheval Blanc (an acceptable vintage for everyday drinking) all over my gold-plated iPad. Clearly something had gone wrong with my PR. I had to act quickly to reconnect with these Facebook followers. Only one thing for it: an ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet.

Aveika

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

10-15 Sandhill 
Quayside 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 3AF 

0191 233 3732 
www.aveika.co.uk 


Restaurant:
Sun-Thurs: 12-10pm 
Fri/Sat: 12-11pm 

I try not to spend too much time casing out places on the net before I visit them. Too much digital overture can give you the wrong idea. Besides, I’m reviewing the food and service, not the web developer. 

This was just as well in the case of Aveika, a new “modern Japanese” joint on the Quayside that has risen from the unmissed ashes of a bar called Chase. A quick scan of their website gave me scant clue as to what they were serving up, but it did provide a clear sense of their target clientele. 

Osaka (CLOSED)

Food ✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪ 

69 Grey Street 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 6EF 

0191 261 5300 

www.osakanewcastle.co.uk 

11am to 11pm daily 

Does Newcastle Council hate city centre restaurants? Grey Street is now packed full of eateries, but its parking meters cost £2.40 for a maximum of one hour only. So lunchtime diners must either rush their meals, or face a parking fine. Every modern city now has meters with hours extendable by phone. Newcastle should wake up and smell the extractor fans: don’t expect to have a thriving restaurant trade without looking after the customers.  

The newest addition to Grey Street is Osaka. At last, a Japanese restaurant in the very centre of town. 

Well, almost. My idea of a Japanese restaurant may not tally with yours. You may like plastic dishes going round for hours on a conveyor belt; you may like trying to throw raw eggs into your hat while a teppanyaki chef grills poor quality ingredients in oily butter. Newcastle has several of those.