The Crown, Mickleton (From The Northern Echo)

Crown jewel

5:44pm Tuesday 23rd August 2011 in Reviews By Mike Amos

JOLLY Jack Robinson, lovely man, ran the Rose and Crown at Mickleton for getting on 20 years. Blessed with a kind heart and idiosyncratic charm, he particularly relished Yorkshire Day – August 1 – when Echo photographers would picture him with a Yorkshire pudding in his hand and a white rose between his teeth.

South of the Tees, Mickleton had been in Yorkshire for 1,100 years. The only problem was that, since 1974, it had been unceremoniously shifted to County Durham.

Not even a borderline case, Jack simply refused to accept it. Every August 1 he’d declare UDI for Mickleton, usually in the compliant company of Ms Hannah Hauxwell, the erstwhile hermit of Baldersdale.

Hannah, said Jack, was his 32nd cousin, but maybe once or twice removed.

When he retired, he moved to the house next door. When he died, in June 2008, one or other of these columns lamented him greatly. “Jack Robinson was a licensee in the days when pubs were run by characters,” we said.

“Now they’re run by managers and the two aren’t synonymous at all.”

In the week of his death, ironically, a notice had appeared on the pub door announcing its closure “until further notice”.

The door may once or twice been ajar thereafter, some valiant efforts made at resuscitation, but little really happened until September last year when the pub was bought by Andrew Rowbotham and his family, who began a wholesale transformation. They reopened at the end of May.

Mickleton’s in Teesdale. Andrew had once run a seaside steak bar in Spain, still has the Riverside Restaurant at Startforth, across the bridge from Barnard Castle, but since he’s originally a Consett lad may be quite happy – unlike Jack – to find himself back in the blessed County Palatine.

County Durham, it’s fair to say, may be equally pleased to see him.

“The pub has transformed the atmosphere of the village,” writes a local. “It’s like the real world has broken through the road blocks.”

We went for Sunday lunch, at once astonished by the renaissance. It has re-emerged simply as the Crown, probably to draw a line between the celebrated Rose and Crown at Romaldkirk, a couple of miles away.

Several other things swiftly become obvious – that the family friendly pub has found a winning formula, that for the quality of cooking and ingredients the menu represents excellent value and that Jack would have struggled to find the netties.

They’re no longer out the back.

That there appear to be three female and just one male no doubt reflects local need.

The lady spotted a look-at-me sort of chap, who clearly fancied himself as the local Beau Brummel.

“Should I tell him he’s peed all down his trousers?” she said.

Perhaps he couldn’t wait.

We were seated next to the unlit wood-burning stove and to a basket of almost-blanched logs.

What we hadn’t noticed is that, frosted into the four corners of every new window, is a little white rose of Yorkshire, in affectionate memory of Jolly Jack.

The Sunday lunch menu offered eight or nine main courses, including shellfish spaghetti, Mediterranean vegetable lasagne and locally sourced roasts. What’s particularly commendable is that most are available in kids, regular or “extra large” sizes and that even the extra large would usually bring change from a tenner.

She’d begun with a home-made trout fishcake and salad, the fish from the Grassholme reservoir that’s almost out the back. The Yorkshire pudding starter – of which Jack Robinson would greatly have approved – was among the very best in memory, the gravy fresh and recently made. The “wet salad”

proved to be a thoughtful little bowl of mint and onion.

One of us followed with perfectly pink roast beef – top-class roast potatoes – the other with dressed crab with salad, new potatoes and a little bowl of lemon mayonnaise.

Those familiar with the Jack Spratt nature of these columns will be startled to learn that the crab was mine. It may not have sidetracked from Grassholme reservoir, but it was made to feel greatly at home.

Puddings had something of the school dinner menu about them, cornflake tart and things. The golden syrup sponge may have sounded similarly prosaic but was almost lyrical in its lightness; the lemon meringue tart was about nine inches high, possibly a world record, but wholly defeated its intended recipient.

The place is convivial, child-friendly – we sat near a perfectly behaved eight-month-old baby called Ivy – and had three real ales A high-quality, three-course Sunday lunch might well cost less than £15, a pint £2.50.

Homemade cakes and the Teesdale Mercury are also on the bar. Even at three o’clock they were still coming in.

Not everything’s perfect. A place this good really shouldn’t be offering condiments in silly sachets, the service remains a little roughedged, non-diners may feel a little marginalised, though there are locals at the bar.

Though Jack Robinson may hardly have recognised the old place, the dear old Tyke would almost certainly have appreciated its quality, its value and a date already in next year’s diary.

“We’re having a Yorkshire Day, Jack would have wanted it,” says Andrew. It’s not bad for a pub in County Durham.

􀁧 The Crown at Mickleton, Teesdale, DL12 0JZ. Tel: 01833-640381. Open seven days from 10am, no problem for the disabled, booking strongly advised.

ACOUPLE of miles up the road in Middleton- in-Teesdale, the Bridge Inn has a sign proclaiming “Good food every day, except Tuesday and Wednesday.” It doesn’t say what sort of food it serves on Tuesday and Wednesday.

NOT two years since they breathed new life into the Raby Hunt at Summerhouse – a hamlet a few miles west of Darlington – the Close family will find themselves in the 2012 Good Food Guide.

Back in December 2009, the Eating Owt column had thought it “terrific, impressive from the start.” The GFG clearly agrees. “A delightful, family-run restaurant with satisfying, imaginative cooking.”

The family is Russell and Helen Close, who had a B&B in Hamsterley, and their son James, who was a golf professional but now heads the kitchen brigade.

Other North-East newcomers in the 2012 Guide include the Bay Horse in Hurworth, the Bridgewater Arms in Winston – between Darlington and Barnard Castle – the Bruce Arms in West Tanfield, near Ripon, also enthusiastically reviewed hereabouts, and the Fox and Hounds in Goldsborough, near Whitby.

A couple of miles down the coast, the celebrated Magpie fish and chip restaurant makes its 32nd appearance.

ALL with which we’d quibbled at the Raby Hunt was grammar and spelling, not least the egregious “Loo’s” as a sign to the toilets. It made the column come over all Clint Eastwood….Every which way but loo’s.

…and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you get by crossing the white of an egg with a nuclear warhead.

A boom meringue, of course.