Inn and gout

10:35am Tuesday 13th January 2009

The kids in the Carlbury kitchen didn’t disappoint in the absence of a suffering chef.

WHATEVER its legacy of pantomime and port wine, of Jimmy Edwards and of Giles cartoons, gout – they reckon – can be a real pain in the... It can be bloody painful, anyway.

It’s caused by a build-up of uric acid in the joints, especially the big toe, and is particularly common among men between 50 and 60 and, lest we look forward too greatly to light nights, in the spring.

Alcohol, especially beer, is said to be a contributory factor in the inflammation but since so many other things are, too – not least fizzy soft drinks – it’s probably best just to have a pint and hope for the best.

Alfred Lord Tennyson was a positive martyr to the gout; Charlie Chaplin made a film about it though sufferers may not have found it funny. John Billings, a 19th Century American comedian, observed that the best medicine for rheumatism was “to thank the Lord that it ain’t gout”.

At any rate, the chef at the Carlbury Arms in Piercebridge had phoned in sick with the gout. Alan Parker, the new owner, clocked us on arrival – we’d met at the opening of the Spice Island restaurant in Shildon, about 15 years ago – and preempted matters by announcing the diagnosis.

We were very welcome to stay, he insisted – better altogether than saying that we were very welcome to go – but there were only kids in the kitchen. Whether it was wise to confess as much to a post-Christmas food critic is debatable, but certainly it was honest. We stopped, anyway.

Piercebridge is a former Roman settlement of around 200 people between Darlington and Barnard Castle which not so much bucks the trend as plays fast and loose with it.

Where bigger places have long since lost their last pub, Piercebridge retains two – though both the Carlbury and the better known George have had recent periods of closure.

There are still both Anglican and Methodist churches, too, and a mornings- only post office.

The Carlbury had closed suddenly in August. “It was like the Marie Celeste when we broke in with the agent, tables still set for dinner, beer still in the cellar,” said Alan. The reincarnation had enthusiastically been noted by Mary Everitt in Darlington who emailed about “an Anne Maurice kind of turnaround”, of a “homely and gracious” feel to the place and about excellent value.

Though not even The Boss had heard of Anne Maurice – apparently she fronts a television makeover show, “Maurice” as in Chevalier – Mary clearly had a point. She also thought the soup “to die for”.

It was Saturday evening, early doors, blown in half frozen to death from the match and much encouraged by a large log fire at one end.

Cosy and comforting, though the fire at the other end appeared gasfuelled.

Twenty minutes later, wholly unexpectedly, Mary herself walked in with her husband, Phil. It was their third visit in a month; actions speak louder than words.

From a dinner menu that’s short, simple and therefore probably sensible, a single course is £10, two courses £13.95 and three £17.95. The soup was winter vegetable, suitably blended, perfectly OK but the only likely cause of death under-nourishment.

For something like £4, the portion might most kindly be described as stingy.

The Boss began with smoked salmon and prawn parcels with a little salad, doubtless something which had been made a little earlier but wholly enjoyable. She followed, unusually, with a perfectly cooked haddock, disappointed only that the advertised “crushed” garden peas were nothing of the sort.

The lamb rump came with a rosemary and redcurrant jus, maybe not history’s most tender piece of lamb but a pretty good fist of it. The vegetables were fine, all accompanied by a pint of Jennings’ Cumberland Ale from the sole hand pump.

Puddings are made by a lady, identified only as Mrs O, who hunts with the South Durham. Two or three are accompanied by Archer’s admirable ice cream, from up the road at Walworth.

The apple and blackcurrant pie was exactly as mother used to make, and thus smashing, though the ice cream had been too long out of the fridge.

Alan’s pleased with the way things are going, and may be encouraged by the kids in the kitchen. We enjoyed the evening but, as doubtless they say elsewhere, chacun a son gout.

■ The Carlbury Arms, Piercebridge, near Darlington (01325-374286). No food Monday and Tuesday lunchtime and Sunday evening; no problem for the disabled.

SWEET and sour, an email arrives from the Rev John Chandler, Shildon lad now in Essex.

On December 16, he notes, the little “joke” at the foot of the column asked what was yellow and flickered.

The proffered answer was a lemon with a loose connection. The reverend gentleman, however, points out that on May 13 last year the column ran the same joke – “I have long tried to emulate your encyclopaedic memory” – and said that the answer was a banana with a loose connection.

Which, asks John, is correct. By their fruits shall ye know them.

DARLINGTON has another Chinese buffet, in Gladstone Street, where the public baths used to be, and where we learned to swim (or, at least, not to sink.) Usually it was a Friday evening, so long ago that there was a welcome hot drinks machine half way up Northgate and in the waiting room at North Road railway station, a stove further to restore the circulation.

More recently the premises became an allegedly upmarket restaurant, described by the PR firm two weeks before its opening as “probably the best in the North-East” and three days after that event as “the North-East’s finest”.

It sank like a stone, too, totally out of its depth.

Next door there’s a nightclub, posters promising “Sensual Saturdays”

and in the absence of any decent alliteration, “Fridays”. It also advertises the best of chart, pop and party and “a wiff (sic) of cheese”.

Sometimes it’s good to be past it.

It was lunchtime, £5 a head. In China Red the music machine played the Locomotion, which is still a brand new dance to people like me. I’ve never much cared for Chinese buffets; I still don’t.

OVER two pages, The Guardian ran a piece on pubs offering meals for £1 in an attempt to beat the credit crunch – and still, food for thought, found a chap who reckoned he could knock them out for 30p.

Their York-based reporter drove the 16 miles to the Blue Bell at Boroughbridge, discovered that they weren’t doing food – “I gave the wife the night off,” said the landlord – and instead made the seven hour train journey to Inverness, where the Clachnaharry Inn had advertised a similar quids-in deal.

When he arrived, everything but stovies and oatcakes had gone up to around £1.75. Rampant inflation once again.

... and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew why the peanut went to the police.

Because he’d been assaulted.