Omni Café

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12 Front Street 
Monkseaton
Whitley Bay
Tyne & Wear
NE25 8DF 

0191 251 2819 
www.facebook.com/omnionthecorner 

Accessibility? Yes-ish. 
Gluten free? Yes 

Sometimes you just know everything’s going to be fine even as the front door clicks shut behind you and you scan the room for the first time. It’s a nice feeling. There are enough reasons to fret in these troubled times without the quality of one’s dinner being added to the list. 

As we left a sullen late winter night outside and stepped into the warm, spice-scented fug of Omni, I knew we were onto a good thing. The fact that at 6.30 on a Wednesday evening we only just managed to snare the last table for two was a strong hint. The warm welcome, the lovely decor and the chatty buzz made by people who are really enjoying themselves, all confirmed that this is a place where they really know what they’re about. And what they are about, in the evenings at least, is Asian tapas.

Saigon [CLOSED]

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6 Bigg Market 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 2UW 

0191 233 0766 
No website currently 

“What’s your favourite food?” they used to ask me at primary school. 

Back then it was chips and Walls pork sausages (mine was a simple childhood of modest pleasures). Now, the list has grown a bit, but most of the items are still pretty straightforward: a creamy risotto with white Alba truffle, a single slice of sourdough adorned with fresh crab, almost anything involving crispy pig. But up there in my gastronomic Mount Olympus there would definitely be one seriously good noodle soup. 

Vietnamese pho, when done well, is a seriously good noodle soup. The trick is to produce an all-healing broth that is both light in body and singing with flavour. Bones are simmered for hours while onions and ginger are blackened into rich, caramel flavours. Add cloves, cinnamon and star anise to lend the thing its sing-song top notes, and I’m in soup heaven. 

There are regional variations, of course, and various meats may be used, but when pho is good, it’s phab. Which is what I was hoping for when I met a visiting friend off the train and we headed for dinner at Saigon, the revamped Vietnamese restaurant in Newcastle’s Bigg Market.

Electric East [CLOSED]

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St James Boulevard 
Waterloo Square 
Newcastle Upon Tyne 
NE1 4DP 

www.electric-east.co.uk 
0191 221 1000 

Lunch: Fri only 
Dinner: Mon to Sat 6 - 9.45pm 

Nearly three years ago Electric East emerged phoenix-like from the ashes of a Newcastle institution called Barn Asia, which I’d only managed to visit once before it fell into administration. 

Based on that one experience, which thankfully I was never called on to chronicle, I reckoned they only got half the name right – it was a bit of a barn, but I could detect little of Asia in its cooking. I found much of it bland, and some actually rather unpleasant. 

That has been my lame excuse for not reviewing its successor until now. However Electric East is well thought of by some, and has even managed a listing in the Michelin guide, so this secret visit was long overdue.