The partie’s over

MR Harry Blackwood, esteemed former editor of the Hartlepool Mail, wrote to Eating Owt in August 2003 about David Coulson, an 18-year-old from Wingate in County Durham who’d become head chef at the White Hart in Hart Village, a few miles west of the Pool.

Harry had been much impressed, absurdly thought the lad looked like Jamie Oliver – perhaps it was a mis-typing, maybe he cooked like Jamie Oliver – his only caveat that “if he cooked like that in Wingate they’d think him a nancy boy”.

We’d gone, and were little less enthusiastic.

“He is a young man who ought to be encouraged,”

the lady of the house concluded, though the blackboard posed question marks over his spelling. “Put it this way,” said the column back then, “if he can’t manage ‘grannery bread’ he’d better not offer Mediterranean vegetables”.

Dave had been at Wellfield school, spent four years on Sheffield United’s books as a promising centre half and, distraught at being released, chose to get into the kitchen instead.

He subsequently worked back in Wingate, where they didn’t think him a nancy boy at all, at the much-acclaimed Seaham Hall Hotel and as executive chef at Wynyard Golf Club before returning as head chef to the Castle Eden Inn, where he’d spent time as a nipper.

At the end of last year he’d been runner-up on Masterchef, thought it the culinary equivalent of sparring with Mohammed Ali if not of being floored by a 16st centre forward. Keen to catch up, we headed for Castle Eden one Sunday and, though it was only 1pm, were a week too late. Michel Roux, a Masterchef judge, had offered the boy David a chef de partie job at the renowned La Gavroche in London. Whittington was on his way: encouraging, or what?

Castle Eden, off the A19 near Peterlee, was once home to Nimmo’s brewery – where they produced proper 4X before some artless Aussies made off with it – and to a magistrates’ court which for some reason sat on Saturdays, hearing cases of furiously driving a milk cart and being drunk in charge of Horden Colliery.

These days the inn, once the brewery tap, is described as an “eating and drinking house”.

In the old days they called them pubs.

The website supposes that in the year since young Coulson’s arrival, the number of weekly diners had risen from 40 to 800. Many seemed to be there that Sunday, and goodness knows how many more, had Sunderland not simultaneously been playing Newcastle United.

Though St James Fields is next door, the pub seemed happily free of much interest in such hyperventilated happenings.

The bar had salty roast potatoes, four hand pumps and a pile of newspapers from which the Sunday Times seemed altogether more popular than the News of the Worldly.

The restaurant was full; we ate in the bar – main course £9.95, two courses £12.50, three £14.50 and some fresh thinking on the menu.

A substantial, hearty and well-made ham hock broth terrine may have carried young Coulson’s mark; the lady’s smoked salmon came with a caper salad and was greatly enjoyed.

Main courses were rather more prosaic. The Boss thought her grilled cod fine but the “crushed potatoes” were little more than soggy mash, the cauliflower cheese was insipid and the vegetables lukewarm and uninspiring.

The tender belly pork came with a Yorkshire pudding that may only be described as carbuncular, a huge thing that cast a shadow over the plate like a partial eclipse of the Sunday.

She loved, however, a caramel souffle with walnut praline. The bread and butter pudding was tangy but would have been better had custard and ice cream not been served together.

Service, generally efficient, was let down by the failure to deliver coffee when requested and the need to have it removed from the bill. They serve until 8pm, not quite the last orders record.

The erstwhile king of the Castle, meanwhile, has donned his partie hat at jolly Gavroche, vowing one day to return to the North-East with a Michelin star trailing behind him.

He is to be wished well. It will be yet another case of Coulson to Newcastle.

SAY what you like about the Rockliffe Hall Hotel, but they clearly have a well-oiled – that is to say, well-run – PR machine. The Guardian is the latest to send its restaurant critic on a rare foray from the capital, the guy duly overwhelmed by quality, innovation and value (three-course set dinner, £35.) Sadly, the poor pianist strikes a wrong note yet again. “I know these spaces, with their potential for deathly hush, makes restaurateurs and hoteliers anxious but having someone tinkle Killing Me Softly and Stairway to heaven honestly doesn’t help.” The Sunday Times said something similar last year. Whisper it pianissimo, but the chap’s getting a bad press.

IT is a considerable, if temporary, disappointment to find the Rat Race ale house – that midget gem on Hartlepool railway station – steel shuttered.

A notice explains that he’s gone to Camra’s winter ales festival in Manchester. Apologies for absence may get little more reasonable.

A subsequent walk from the far-flung Fens estate back to the station finds the Causeway, Cameron’s erstwhile brewery tap, closed, too.

Closer yet to the source, so close it’s in Brewery Street, the Blacksmith’s is open but, dolefully, has no draught beer. “We’re waiting for the delivery,” says the barmaid.

Happily, the Cameron’s visitor centre (and Strongarm shrine) has no such stricture – everything but customers, though there’s a school party upstairs.

“They don’t get a free pint, we have to give them orange juice,” says the barmaid.

A sign outside points to One Life Hartlepool.

This appears to be a hospital.

The bar’s atmospheric, wooden floored, almost a mini-museum in itself – lots of old advertising material and the inevitable hanging monkey. The Strongarm’s in predictably excellent fettle and an IPA, the brewery’s flavour of the month, also available.

There are 12 special brews each year, in 2011 ranging from Hurley’s Irish Ale – which may or may not be a tribute to King Charlie – to a return for Nimmo’s XXXX (see under Castle Eden, above.) It’s all going very agreeably until the dray arrives.

Offered a free drink – canny job, mind – the chap in the fluorescent jacket says he’ll have a pint of Fosters.

Whatever they say about not giving up the dray job, this should be a sacking offence.

Cameron’s great staple, happily, goes from strength to strength – or at least a steady four per cent abv. They’ve been brewing in Hartlepool since 1865. If anything happens to Strongarm, the ravens really will have flown the Tower.

􀁧 The visitor centre is open 10am to 4pm, Monday to Saturday. Brewery tours – “a fascinating story of entrepreneurial activity, innovation, social history and political manoeuvring”, says the website – can be arranged from Monday to Thursday on 01429-868686 or via visitor.centre@cameronsbrewery.com BARELY a fortnight after we expressed serious reservations about the Abbey Inn at Byland, near Thirsk – gorgeous pub, desultory service, Mad Hatter menu – the lease holders have left. “Adverse trading conditions” are blamed. The next lot might try serving soup from a soup bowl, too.

…and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what’s brown, hairy and wears sunglasses.

A coconut on the beach.