The County, Aycliffe Village (From The Northern Echo)

County bonhomie

5:39pm Friday 20th January 2012 in Reviews By Chris Lloyd, Deputy Editor

Chris Lloyd seeks a little political correctness and takes The Northern Echo Editor and a Tory guest for a mid-day meal at The County in Aycliffe Village.

THE County in Aycliffe Village has been a coaching inn for roughly 200 years, but its real brush with fame came ten years ago when the Prime Minister and local MP, Tony Blair, took the French president, Jacques Chirac, there.

Those were the days when the leaders of the two countries were so close that they were not just on speaking terms, but on dining terms.

These days it is rather different: when David Cameron passes Nicolas Sarkozy, there’s barely a flicker of acknowledgement, only the slightest flap on the shoulder.

Certainly there’s nothing as convivial as “passez moi le salt, Jacques”.

When a Top Tory, who once had Mr Cameron campaigning for him when he stood for an unwinnable Durham seat, accepted the editor’s invitation for a bite to eat, it somehow seemed appropriate that we should take him for some bonhomie to the County.

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The Great North Road coaching inn is now a restaurant on a tranquil village green. It has been successfully bypassed by traffic although not, judging by a healthy occupancy rate of tables, on a windy Wednesday lunchtime, by diners.

From an attractive variety of starters, priced at about £5.50, the editor and the Top Tory immediately entered into an entente cordiale and ordered the soup of the day: sweet potato and rosemary. I went for deep fried Mordon Camembert.

For main courses, the Top Tory ordered Confit of Duck (£13.95). The editor, conservatively, went for steak and ale pie (£10.50) while I extravagantly opted for the pan-fried haunch of venison (£17.95). It was only after I’d ordered that I realised that I’d broken all my restaurant rules. In this very column only two months ago I wrote that “only a fool orders gooseberries”

because the mean-spirited berry is always unpleasantly bitter. And yet the Mordon Camembert was to be combined with a gooseberry compote.

Another restaurant rule is not to allow oneself to be suckered in by exotic, but unlikely, combinations on the menu. For instance, I believe fruit and meat, sweet and savoury, do not mix: duc a la orange is an unnatural French concoction that would turn anyone as Eurosceptic as a Tory backbencher.

And yet the venison was to be served in a sweet chilli and dark chocolate sauce: two unnatural combinations on one plate. I’d been beguiled by the exotic promise of Roast Salisfy without considering the rule-breaking consequences.

BEFORE I could veto my order, the soup arrived with an exquisite swirl around the bowl. The Top Tory said he liked it almost as much as he did Margaret Thatcher, enthusing over the perfect balance between the sweet potato and the rosemary which, he said, was noticeable without being overpowering.

“It’s definitely homemade,” he said approvingly, “and it is properly hot.”

My plate contained three wedges of deep fried Camembert and a handful of miserable berries.

I tackled the cheese first. It was excellent: a crispy coat and a melty creamy middle. The only quibble was that it could have been a couple of degrees hotter.

Then I plucked up courage to approach one of the little round green blighters. As my fork pierced its rough skin, it shot poisonous bile at me. But oh what a combination it made with the Camembert. Its stridency brought new life to the creamy mildness of the cheese: a piquant pairing, and a triomphe.

The editor moved on to describe the meat in his pie as “succulent”. This seemed to exhaust his vocabulary, as he said his gravy was “nice”

and the thin pastry was “good” – although he rapidly plundered the thick cut chips to keep his starch levels up.

The Top Tory was far more effusive. “The duck is falling off the bone as it should be,” he noted, peering into his plate like a mechanic peers under a bonnet into an engine. “It is tender yet the skin is crispy in all the right places and the sauce is not overpowering.”

It took me a couple of mouthfuls to be won over by my alien choc-meat combination. The sauce was dark and thick, but it wasn’t richly chocolately and it was certainly not sweet. Instead, it gave the venison – not the most expressive of meats – a real character. And then the modest chilli kicked in, adding a warming pizzazz.

I was won over.

By now, we’d run out of time for dessert, and the Top Tory, like all good Tories, was concerned about his expanding figure. He felt that, for the sake of his trousers, he needed to cut back, even though, at £4.50, the prospect of caramelised cream rice pudding with vanilla plum jam seemed another tantalising taste combination.

We cut straight to the coffee – brewed and manly, and a top-up was offered by the watchful waitress immediately the bottom approached.

Picking up the bill, it was just over £60 for two courses, soft drinks and coffee for three, which seemed extremely fair with some startlingly good combinations along the way.