Wallach's Cafe, Colburn (From The Northern Echo)

Exclusive account

5:16pm Wednesday 27th July 2011 in Reviews By Mike Amos

BACK in the dear old days, when workmen’s club trips came teeming, steaming into Redcar, the highlight was usually Aunty Betty’s egg and bacon pie, rapturously eaten by the boating lake. Until now there’s been no egg and bacon pie remotely as good, not least because of the insidious, cross-Channel invasion of something called quiche (which, as widely is acknowledged, real men don’t eat, anyway).

Then we went to Wallach’s Cafe on the Broadway in Colburn where, at the moment of arrival, Classic FM played Fanfare for the Common Man. It was as if it were Psychic FM, as well.

Colburn’s near Richmond in North Yorkshire, a mile or two along the road from Catterick Garrison. Colburn Broadway should thus not be confused with the slightly better known New York Broadway, the one where they say the neon lights are bright and where, reputedly, there’s magic in the air.

If not magical, Wallach’s is a very pleasant place – immaculately kept, lots of home baking, friendly, honest and inexpensive. Andrew Wallach serves, unobtrusively. Christine, his wife, was out the back making – making, mark you – lemon curd.

We started with thick, creamy, manifestly home-made pea and ham soup with six or seven slices of warm, freshly-made bread with good butter. Ultimately, we were offered a bag to take home that which was uneaten.

The egg and bacon pie was almost sinfully nostalgic, inch-thick and sumptuous, the accompanying chips piping hot, firm, fresh and delicious. Hold the pie to your ear and you could still have heard the sea, still heard the chap with the megaphone on Redcar sands wondering if there were any more for the motor boat.

It cost £5.50, inclusive of tea or coffee.

The quiche came with generous fresh, salad.

In no danger of emasculation, the lady asked for salad dressing. It was made specially.

It was the cakes about which reader Nigel Metcalfe had especially enthused, however.

“Divine,” he wrote and “divine” the lady thought her coffee cake.

It is a simple, splendid, simply splendid place to have a bite to eat – a place worth seeking out – but that little eulogy doesn’t even begin to tell the story.

CHRISTINE Wallach was born into the Exclusive Brethren, a worldwide religious sect whose name has the advantage of succinctness. Members live by a strictly scriptural code, forego worldly pleasures, attend daily services, and, wherever possible, restrict their dealings to other Brethren.

She met Andrew through the sect, had seven children, recalls that even before the seismic events of 1994 she would sometimes get into “scrapes” for being too friendly. “Andrew had to control me,” she says.

Then one night – four in the morning – her two sons arrived home drunk from a snooker club. Since there was no way they could attend a 6am service, the whole family stayed away.

Andrew and Christine were at once “shut up” – suspended; their daughters left home to stay with other Brethren. Sometimes Christine talks of what happened next as escaping, sometimes as being thrown out. The latter may strictly be truer.

“It wasn’t easy. For six months it was just a big, black hole – no daughters, the boys in an absolute mess and I never saw my parents again.

“At first I still wore my long skirt, still had my hair down to my waist but it was terrible.

People we knew just looked straight through me in the shops. What happened was appalling.”

Seven years later, in 2001, they moved north – “It was better for everyone” – thought about the Lakes and settled in Newton-le-Willows, near Bedale. “It’s lovely, we’re so lucky to be in this area,” says Christine. “The Lakes was so crowded, you couldn’t even walk on the pavement most of the time.”

She’s 66. The woman who talks of having been “dry and dead inside” is now outgoing, warm and friendly. “I had completely to reinvent myself,” she says. “I even had to go to John Lewis’ to learn how to put make-up on.”

She and Andrew now run a “social enterprise” bakery offering work opportunity to those with drug problems, released prisoners and – through Help for Heroes – former soldiers.

The scheme is being extended to the cafe.

At 62 she gained a degree in food systems and quality assurance – “I could be en environmental health inspector, I probably know more than he does” – and hopes to complete a masters.

The woman once not allowed to vote, or to watch television, is now secretary and vicechairman of the local Conservative party branch, stood at the last council election and is in demand as a public speaker – even at the mayor’s ball in Northallerton.

She’s now a committed Church of England member and has won awards for direct selling, both kitchen utensils and Christian books.

“I always say that the first half of my life has been a preparation for the second half,” she says. “My uncle worked in a factory until he was 95. I hope I’ve quite a long way to go yet.”

It hasn’t been easy. They’ve not seen their daughters for getting on five years or 11 of their 18 grandchildren at all. “One child was once very ill in hospital. My daughter rang and obviously wanted me to see her, but it was against the rules. We snuck in anyway.

“It’s horrid; that’s what I speak about – how we escaped the Brethren and rebuilt our lives.

You go through these dreadful experiences and if you don’t resist, it will ruin your life. I’ve seen it happen to so many people.

“People allow it to eat away like a canker and it destroys them. Bitterness is hopeless but I was angry with the Brothers for years, more for the children than for me. I was indignant about what I thought was injustice but I can’t turn the clock back. It made me what I am toda.It was my training ground, really.

“Tyhe girls know the door is always open.

They can come in the back if they like. We’d always be delighted to see them.”

Andrew listens quietly, supportively, though doubtless he’s heard the story many times, before his wife has to go back to her lemon curd.

Broadway is proving the most improbable of stages, and Christine Wallach a star.

Unworldly

FOUNDED in the 19th Century, the Exclusive Brethren has a 40,000 membership worldwide, with 300 local assemblies in 19 countries. They are said to subscribe to a “universal moral standard”, dictated by strict adherence to the Bible and belief in the family unit. Attendance at daily services as a family group is said to be “an essential factor.”

The sect faced considerable local opposition earlier this year when – after a 14-year search for suitable premises – they sought planning permission to convert a workshop and stables at Chester Moor, near Chester-le-Street, into a gospel hall.

Their website says that they practise “separation from evil” – “shunning the conduits of evil communication, television, radio and the Internet.”

Members are also forbidden to vote, attend university, take out life assurance, keep pets, visit places of entertainment or enjoy “worldly pleasures and pursuits.”

They are free to give charitably, however, and are said to enjoy “considerable wealth and influence”.

The Chester Moor application drew 37 letters of objection, some citing an “alien” influence on a close-knot community.

As well as the usual stuff about slamming car doors at 6am, they also claimed that their peace was already disturbed by the nearby RSPCA cat rescue centre. Durham County Council approved the application, nonetheless.