Opening another Chapter

Alan Thompson was a sub on the Gazette in Middlesbrough. Whatever the heat, he got into the kitchen. Ten years ago, Alan shifted his feet from under the sub-editors' table to open Chapters hotel and restaurant in Stokesley, steered it into both the Good Food and Good Hotel Guides and has now opened a second place further down the street.

Chapters Bistro and Deli - he might perhaps have called it Chapters Two - is next to the police station and of similarly high quality.

Perhaps the gentleman was somewhat miffed, therefore, when this inky trade acquaintance took one look at the blackboard outside, strolled in and before you could say "My dear Alan, I trust you are well" pointed out that they couldn't spell "pastries" for pastry.

Alan, who reads these columns, supposed that the apostrophe must have been misplaced. There wasn't one. It had been spelt "pastrys", the sub-editor had been asleep on the job and the solecism was released onto the suitably shocked streets of Stokesley.

We all make them, of course, and the lad hasn't dropped many more, but it would have been fun making a shorthand note at the inquest,

Born in Middlesbrough ("a spit away from Ayresome Park") he has long nurtured a love of things Mediterranean, a passion reflected in the swish new place.

The guy even looks Italian - black clad, svelte and swarthy, as if he'd paid about a zillion lire to some Venetian plastic surgeon to have "Hickton is God" (football fans will understand) removed from his forearm.

Two hundred years ago the premises were the Shambles, the meat market, became the fire station and for 80 years have been Armstrong's shop. The initials GH 1913, carved on a beam, belonged to George Hetherington who was the first man to fly over Stokesley, the Biggles of the North Riding.

Alan, 45, designed the reincarnation himself and - hail fellow, well Med - finds it impossible to hide his enthusiasm for it. Almost everything is native Spanish or Italian - unpasteurised cheeses, 15 different salamis, line caught tuna, proper pasta, organic flour, gourmet oils, Spanish cooking chocolate, up-market olives. Even the lighting is from Milan.

Customers may have the fresh fish grilled out the back, and are invited to taste test in the deli. "Some people have just pulled up a chair and dived into all the olives; cheeky beggars," says the owner, cheerfully.

Meals may be taken in the caf or from the marble topped bar where we sat with a couple, of beers - Italian, of course - polished off a plate of antipasto and remembered the dear old days.

He misses the camaraderie, if nothing else, wonders if he could handle the new technology. "Child's play," we said and were at once turned into a typewriter.

Tostados - up-market toasties, as may almost be supposed - might have been chicken, grilled peppers, pesto and spinach or Italian style shrimp; pasta dishes - around £6 - included smoked salmon, salmon and spring onion risotto, spaghetti, shrimp and fresh tomato sauce or there was a paella of king prawns, chorizo, mussels, squid and saffron rice. Alan knows every ingredient, every trick.

Specials included chicken, gorgonzola and pancetta salad (£6.50), fresh crab salad (£8.50) and fresh Italian pork sausages - Milanese, almost inevitably - made deliciously from the shoulder with a touch of sage and onion and lemon and served with aubergine mash, peperenata and parmesan shavings. (£6.95.)

We followed with a confection of fragrant brioche, strawberries and creme fraiche, espresso coffee and a glass of grappa (or some such), an Italian cognac without which, says Alan, espresso would never be the same.

Whilst it should be made clear that this was one of those very rare occasions on which the restaurant owner stood the treat, it represented a heady reminder of faraway places.

The sub standard is terrific. Has ever it been otherwise?

l Chapters Deli and Bistro, High Street, Stokesley, North Yorkshire. Open all day and in the evening from next week. No bookings.

FOR as long as memory allows, before the motorway if not before the motor car, there's been a little eating place alongside the A167 between Darlington and Coatham Mundeville. Originally Brookland - Brooklands, perhaps - it became Marie's and after two years closure has re-emerged as the Country Cottage Caf, "Cottage" may be a little too grand.

"A most unimposing building, more like an enlarged garden shed," writes Albert Guest from Huddersfield, and thereafter everything is superlatives.

Wonderfully clean and thoughtfully decorated surroundings, reports the uninvited Guest, well cooked food, charming ladies - Catherine and Maria - in attendance.

The Breakfast Club went, discussed the difference between golden syrup and treacle - something to do with refinement, apparently; this column was never much into refinement - heard from Mr Macourt that the "British Rail" breakfast now offers smoked eel. Slipped down nicely, apparently.

The Country Cottage opens from 7.30am-4pm, does two breakfasts - All Day (£2.50) and Hungry Man's (£3.75) - and among several spelling mistakes also offers "pouched eggs".

There were three. "I enjoyed them immensely," said The Boss.

"We're cooks, not scholars," said Catherine.

The hungry men ate accordingly: a good, generous, traditional English breakfast lacking only a few slices of fried bread. Outside, a horse and trap had pulled off the main road. Its nosebag may not have been as enjoyable as ours.

LAST week's note on the disappointing turn-out for the real ale festival at Shafto's - part of the delightful Whitworth Hall estate near Spennymoor - drew a response both from hotel owner Bill Gates and from Ken Weaver, chairman of the Durham branch of CAMRA. Ken says that none of them knew anything about it; Bill - the former Middlesbrough centre half - admits they might have done things differently. We're getting them together.

BAKEWELL tart will never be the same. Once an inoffensive almond cake, it has acquired a new and notorious alter ego after a murder investigation in the Derbyshire town of that name, which has earned for the editor of the Matlock Mercury a chestful of well merited awards. Nor have we heard the last of the case, or of the unfortunate young lady from Bakewell.

We mentioned it because there was home-made Bakewell tart at the unoriginally named Herriot Tea Room at Sion Hill Hall, at Kirby Wiske, between Thirsk and Northallerton.

The hall itself overflows with antiques. In the grounds, Falconry UK offers everything from "Hawk walks" to flying displays. "Eagles, hawks, kites, falcons and owls will swoop and dive around you as you sit in a beautiful English garden," it promises.

The tea room is upstairs, promises "a little taste of yesteryear", offers afternoon tea - sandwich, cake, coffee combinations, all home-made - for £4.75. The Bakewell tart was fine.

....and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you would call a monster that ate its mother's sister.

An aunt eater, of course.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/leisure/eatingowt.html