HE won a Raymond Blanc scholarship, trained at the legendary Manoir au Quait Saisons, gained numerous culinary accolades, appeared on the Food and Drink programme and famously cooked for British prime minister Tony Blair and French president Jacques Chirac at his village pub in County Durham.

Now, in an apparently classic case of what they say about heat and kitchen, Andrew Brown is selling burgers from the back of a converted London taxi.

On a Friday night in late February, it’s positively perishing out there. “Weather’s just weather,” says Andrew philosophically. “I’ve never been so happy in my life.”

On Friday and Saturday evenings he’s parked outside the Steam Machine Brewing Company, of which more anon, in a distant corner of a Newton Aycliffe industrial estate.

The burgers are wonderful, truly different class. The beer, the unreal thing, is every bit as memorable and as iconoclastic.

It’s a marriage made in heaven, celestially consummated and which hopefully will endure for ever, or at least until I can organise an end-of-season dominoes team outing. Firstly, though, back to Andrew Brown.

HE’D worked in the furniture industry, was made redundant, took a lease on the County in Aycliffe Village – “ten or 11 licensees in as many years” – from Scottish and Newcastle.

Not least encouraged by the Eating Owt column, and by the beer and food guides, the chef/patron soon had the North-East flocking to his dining room door. After Blair and Chirac dined, trade doubled – “literally doubled” – overnight.

The Northern Echo: Blair and chirac

Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac in the County, in 2000

“If the County were Rutland,” Eating Owt observed, “Andrew aimed to make it North Yorkshire.” Soon he bought the pub.

The potential problem, the glitch in the goulash, was that not even the heat of the kitchen could thaw his seemingly frigid exterior – so given to over-formality, Eating Owt observed, that he probably called his father Mr Brown.

Now he’s 51 and can admit it. “Yes, I was a miserable git,” he says.

When recession bit deeply, particularly eating into his business trade, he sold the County to local entrepreneur John Wade and opened the eponymous Brown’s in Grange Road, Darlington. It proved disastrous. He lost most of the family silver, he admits.

The Northern Echo:

Andrew Brown pictured inside Brown’s, on Grange Road, in Darlington, in 2010

“I was very naïve business-wise, encouraged to spend money I didn’t really have and I overstretched myself.

“I was given a lot of advice about buying the place in Darlington and I didn’t listen to it. It failed because I didn’t read the situation properly and I was left with virtually nothing.

“I couldn’t cope with the pressure and I drank too much to convince myself that I could. I was too fat and my physical and mental health were deteriorating.”

After several years of recovery, he has now lost several stones, rarely drinks, seems wholly content beneath his umbrella and his layers of clothing in a factory yard in Aycliffe or on Newcastle Quayside market on Sunday mornings.

It doesn’t rain as much as people say, insists Andrew. It’s the wind that’s the problem up there.

“If you’d told me 20 years ago that I’d be standing in the street cooking burgers for a living, I’d have laughed at you.

“This gives me the chance to blether to people, not just to cook for them. I used to judge them by what they looked like; some of my customers at the County I’d have crossed the road to avoid.

“Things are very much different now. These days I look forward to going to work.”

The Northern Echo: BREW: Nick and Gulen Smith, from Aycliffe Village, have launched their own brewery, The Steam Machine Brewing Company in Newton Aycliffe Picture: TOM BANKS

Nick and Gulen Smith, from Aycliffe Village, have launched their own brewery, The Steam Machine Brewing Company in Newton Aycliffe. Picture: TOM BANKS

HEATED by an overworked stove, the little bar at the Steam Machine brewery is rudimentary, jolly, greatly convivial and hugely recommended.

Our quaffing companion two Friday nights ago was the admirable Alan Courtney, former detective sergeant in Durham Constabulary and chairman of Spennymoor Town FC.

Perchance, we’d just come across a Northern League question-and-answer page from 2008 in which he’d been asked his finest moment as a polliss.

“When the villains on the Woodhouse Close estate in Bishop Auckland started calling me Magnum,” he’d replied, perhaps the only policeman to be named after an ice cream.

NICK SMITH was born in Newton Aycliffe, taught science in Guernsey – “12,000 more a year than the equivalent job here” – abandoned the chalk face when he began Steam Machine with Gulen, his Turkish-born wife.

Partly it was because he’d always been fascinated by brewing, partly because education was changing in ways that he didn’t like. “I didn’t want to teach, retire and die and not have done anything else. It was still a massive gamble, our life savings have gone into this.”

The website speaks of “bold flavoured, new wave craft beers – unfined, unfiltered, unpasteurised and bursting with flavour.”

Since they are neither cask nor bottle conditioned, however, their beers don’t formally meet with Camra’s approval – though they might well win their admiration.

“Real” ale enthusiasts themselves, Nick and Gulen experiment with beer styles from around the world – not just with the minor variations on best bitter which, he says, form most micro-breweries staple diet.

“We don’t so small nuances. We believe that beer is best enjoyed cold and sparkling. If you find one of our beers is crystal clear, it’s probably by accident.”

Taste testing confirms it. On the night, the lowest gravity beer is San Francisco Steam 5.2 per cent alcohol by volume, the highest is a ten per cent Treacle Toffee Stout which costs £6 a pint, may not be supposed a session beer, but, carefully considered, may be worth every last drop.

They’ve had craft beers like Lapsang Souchong-infused porter (7.2 abv), gooseberry tart – very tart – at 5.4 and, ambition lowered, a Table Ale at 3.8.

They’ve been hand-filling and labelling 2,000 bottles a week, now turning more to cans in an attempt to meet demand. The weekend sessions are great social occasions: whatever the technicalities, beer drinking may rarely have been more refreshing.

n The Steam Machine is at Unit 14, IES Centre, Horndale Avenue, Newton Aycliffe. Heading from the A167, leave St Cuthbert’s Way just before the Blue Bridge and drive past Newton Press, immediately on the right, before turning left and heading through the gates and to the far end of the estate. If the gates are locked, ring Nick on 07415-759945. The brew room is open from 3-11pm Fridays and Saturdays, burgers with wonderful toppings from around 4.30pm. Buses from Darlington, Durham and Bishop Auckland stop at Horndale Avenue. Their use is strongly advised.

A FINAL note for foodies: Tim Grimshaw sends a photograph of the sign outside the Pie Shop in West Percy Street, North Shields which even appears to have a vegetarian option. “Nee pie: two x mash, peas and gravy, £1.75.”