WATER, water everywhere and maybe two reasons for it.

One's the undiluted vileness of the chemically polluted beer generally available in restaurants, the other the stratospheric mark-up on a bottle of wine.

A few weeks ago there was even a world bottled water championship, or some such, won (memory suggests) by a canny drop from Harrogate.

At Ministers in Sedgefield they sell Gleneagles, described on one website as "luxury water" and in the company's own publicity as "water of unrivalled purity."

Years ago we were on a northbound train passing through Gleneagles when an American who'd been drinking something else of unrivalled purity awoke with a start and asked if it were Wolverhampton.

He was informed, not unreasonably, that Gleneagles was some way past his intended destination. "Not Wolverhampton, Birmingham?" he asked, emphasis all on the wrong syllables, and returned at once to his slumbers.

There's nothing wrong with Gleneagles Water. A Well Man's Clinic would give it a perfectly clean bill and the bottle is undeniably if unnecessarily elegant.

Trouble is that at Ministers the bill was £4.50 a bottle and - without wishing to get aerated - for that you should be able to go down to a spa shop and buy a bucketful.

The restaurant, of course, is named in deference to Sedgefield's most famous non-resident, though the Blairs did have the head wetting there after little Leo's baptism a few doors down.

Really it should be Prime Ministers. There are photographs of Anthony Eden, local lad made good, Douglas Home, Winnie and Jolly Jim Callaghan. Tony Blair's image is above the specials board, a look on his face as if he'd just sat in the trifle.

On the bottom of the menu there's also a quote from Harold Macmillan. Not the one about sensible men never directly challenging the Roman Catholic Church, the Brigade of Guards or the National Union of Mineworkers - a view which, had he lived, he might have wished to reconsider - but the 1957 observation that most of the people had never had it so good.

That only two others were there to pass an opinion may have been because there is no special midday menu, not even in a place like Sedgefield where there are lots of ladies, perhaps even gentlemen, who lunch.

Whilst the pub over the road loudly proclaims two meals for £4.95, nothing outside Ministers even whispers that there is 20 per cent off the carte, and 10 per cent off specials, at lunchtime. Even with the discount, three courses for two was £37, another £9 for two bottles of Gleneagles greatest.

The Boss subsequently did a price check at Tesco in Catterick. Most litre bottles of water were under £1, the most expensive - Welsh water - was £1.27.

We had visited, coincidentally, on the day that war broke out. The attentive would have noted the tape playing Go Now (Moody Blues, 1964) and Unchained Melody, recorded a year later by the Righteous Brothers.

The Righteous Brothers must not be confused with Blair and Bush, nor even Mr Blair and M Chirac, with whom the Prime Minister dined a few miles away at the County in Aycliffe Village. These days it wouldn't even be Smoky Joe's Chippy.

The restaurant is attractively furnished, particularly comfortable chairs and tables decorated with something that might have been mistletoe. Though entirely efficient, the waiter was of the school which announces every item - "There's some vegetables for you" - as if the diner had been expecting a load of concessionary coal to be dumped in front of him instead.

We started with slightly sweet warm bread and deep fried king prawns with a pleasantly light sweet and sour sauce and with a potato crepe topped with a smidgeon of smoked salmon and some creme fraiche. The Boss thought the crepe "flabby".

She followed with sea bass in a pesto sauce, enjoyed both, we with an uncertain pork fillet, Ministers without portfolio, in a sage and white wine sauce on black pudding mash. It wasn't a bed of mash nor even a cot, rather an undersized miss-mash. The other vegetables were fine.

Fortified by another bottle of wine, we ordered puddings. The "pear and Bramley apple crumble" had indeed crumbled - vanished, vamoosed - leaving what virtually amounted to a little pot of stewed apple and some vanilla custard for £3.95.

The Boss considered her banana ice cream with butterscotch sauce in a brandy snap basket just the thing for a sweet tooth day.

If there is to be Ministers' question time, therefore, here are some puzzles with which to begin. Why open at lunchtime and make so little effort to attract custom? Have recent events caused a potato (or even a black pudding) famine? If a litre of water is to be £4.50, can we at least have something back on the bottle?

AT the Pizza Express in Darlington, the salad nicoise (£7.30) was fine but too salty. A standard bottle of Coke was £1.55. We decided against asking for a bottle of water.

ALL those embittered thoughts on restaurant beer were underlined at the Bishops Bistro in Bishop Auckland, where it wasn't even decent Boddington's. It is a lone criticism, however, and like Boddington's Bitter best swiftly disposed of.

The Bistro, once a newspaper office, is opposite the reborn General Hospital, run for almost 25 years by Charlie and Kate Davidson and with no sign of diminishing enthusiasm or ability. Last time we were there was with the late and much lamented Voracious Vicar, during one of his periodic diets.

The diet had included lots of garlic bread with his soup, and that was just for starters. "It's to ward off evil spirits," he'd protested.

It's also a regular Tuesday lunchtime haunt for Arthur Hare and Joe Brown-Humes, retired two thirds of the once familiar legal firm of Hewitt, Brown-Humes and Hare.

Joe was otherwise engaged, Harold Hewitt - who became a judge and turned 86 last week - generally gets in on Wednesdays. In working days they'd often lunched together at the Wear Valley - long derelict, now demolished and with new offices about to appear on the site. They're for Hewitts, as now the firm has become.

Arthur arrived anyway, and recommended the chicken curry. Since we were half way through a robust, full flavoured and thoroughly enjoyable venison casserole it had to be one for the file.

The French onion soup, for many a years a Bistro favourite, again proved triumphant, but they do everything from sandwiches upwards. As the Vicar once remarked, it is Bishop Auckland's salvation.

THANKS to all who helped recall that the HMV dog (Eating Owt last week) was called Nipper. "Born in Bristol, same as me," added John Constable from Butterknowle.

John also points out that while Mansfield Bitter may still be "distinguished", as last week's column suggested, it is no longer made in the Nottinghamshire town which gave it its name. The brewery closed early last year after being taken over by Wolverhampton and Dudley.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what has antlers and sucks your blood.

A moose-quito, of course.

Published: 25/03/2003