Singapore bling

Named not after the half-time meat draw but after the internationally renowned hotel in Singapore - where in 1902, the island's last tiger was shot while minding its own business beneath the billiard table - it's the new restaurant at the born again Croft, long the Croft Spa Hotel, three miles south of Darlington.

We once lived in Croft, surrogate side of the river, walked the bairns though the formative woods, watched Sunday morning soccer where the sub was equipped with a net on the end of a 15ft pole, in order to fish footballs from the Tees.

The Croft Spa usually seemed pretty quiet, which may be why owner Malcolm McKee sought planning permission to change the hotel into flats. Opposed by the locals and rebuffed by the council, he has instead spent a lot of money on re-inventing the entire hotel.

He'd holidayed in Singapore and was much taken with the elegance of Raffles, named after Sir Stamford Raffles, the island's founder. After Singapore surrendered to the Japanese in 1942, the hotel was also the place where the ex-pats gathered to sing "There'll always be an England".

Though prints of the way things were hang in the Croft's lounge area - penny farthings on the road out the front, open air swimming pool out the back - it is imaginatively, extensively and rather agreeably transformed.

On the grounds that you win some and you lose some, an early grumble, however. If the initial impression is of inspiration and perspiration, the second is of a central bar with the fearfully familiar fonts of meretricious mediocrity. All that effort and an affront of identikegs? In Singapore they'd sling their hook.

The confident young staff, conversely, were admirable from first encounter - hardly their fault that they comfortably outnumbered the customers. It was Wednesday evening; the Croft was quiet yet again.

Raffles, once the ballroom, is now like a Winter Garden in October. There's a large mural down one wall, masses of sub-tropical greenery - "it's all fake," admitted the waiter, candidly - lots of intricate carving and a couple of very big cats, one of which appeared to be a lion.

"They don't have lions in Singapore," I said.

"It looks a very Chinese lion," said The Boss.

"They don't have lions in China, either..." The other might have been a tiger, though the waiter thought it a jaguar and a black panther was also promoted.

The manager wasn't sure, either. "I just call it Tiddles," she said.

We'd last eaten in that room with the Darlington Pig Discussion Group several years ago - and pigs might have flown, it could have been supposed, before something as improbable as this would have happened in Croft-on-Tees.

The menu, wisely, makes no such attempt at Singaporean simulation. "Little Simon's brilliant in the kitchen, I guarantee you'll not be disappointed," said the waiter, aged about 17, his faith almost entirely well founded.

Cooking and inventiveness were admirable, presentation picturesque, cost entirely reasonable - about £58 for two, including good coffee and lot of sweeties, but without drinks.

A little freebie starter comprised goats cheese in a parmesan crisp basket and some pretty tracery dabbled about. "Another six of those and I needn't have anything else," said The Boss.

Subsequent starters included meadow mushroom soup with shitake fritters (£3.75), seared tuna with a nicoise dressing and basil oil ("Wonderful," The Boss thought) and a terrine of pressed ham, potato and parsley, topped out with pease pudding.

The celebrated Mr Terry Laybourne, who specialises in such simple complexities, would have been pretty pleased with that one.

Main courses ranged in price from "breast of chicken, fondue of leeks, spaghetti, carrots and sauce bois boudran" (£9.90) to "grilled beef fillet with mushrooms, dauphinoise potato and horseradish coleslaw" at £17.95.

The lamb was cooked three ways, said the menu - none of them terribly memorable - with a crispy potato thing (a little translation there) and shallot puree. The lady's spiced monkfish cassoulet with red lentils and caramelised pok choi was a significant and star rated success, however. "Great idea, cleverly carried off," she said.

Four puddings, plus a cheeseboard, included banana bavarois with caramelised banana and toffee ice cream, and an exceedingly good basil infused creme brulee with peppered strawberries and some cracking shortbread.

It all seemed worth a flutter, anyway. A Croft original, undoubtedly.

l The Croft, Croft-on-Tees, near Darlington (01325) 720319. Good looking bar menu, two course pensioners' lunch £5.50, three course Sunday lunch £11.95. No smoking in the restaurant and in some other public rooms; no problem for the disabled.

UNABLE to attend yet another award ceremony at Beedle's fish and chip shop in Bishop Auckland - more awards than hot suppers, it might almost be supposed - we snuck in a couple of nights earlier. It really is very good.

The heavyweight Peter Beedle, known unimaginatively as Chippy in his days as a flying pig goalkeeper with Cockfield FC - he was pretty good at that, an' all - was elsewhere. Two young assistants coped competently.

Fish and chips were £3.40. The fish and the batter were as good as anything in recent years, faultless in every respect. The chips, about half a stone of them, would have kept a tatie picker busy all morning.

The shop's open 11am-10pm six days a week, sells all the usual other stuff and some that's more unexpected. It's just off Cockton Hill Road, opposite Cockton Hill WMC. A worthy winner.

FED up - aren't we all? - with dishes which "nestle" or are "drizzled", David Kelly in Darlington is back from Crete with news of two of the local specialities: "curdled milk" and "entrails on sicks".

ALL ingredients are organic and unrefined, said the menu - unrefined? Aren't we all? - and spoke also of a "wholemeal role", though it's likely they meant a bit of bread. We'd thus assumed the Cart House cafe in Hardraw to be vegetarian, until coming upon the home cooked ham further down.

Whatever its role, it's probably unique in the area - simple, cheerful, wholesome and with neither a sausage nor a chip in sight.

Hardraw, famed for its waterfall, is on the Pennine Way near Hawes - five or six tables within, three without, one of them occupied by an actor who'd got a part robbing Aidensfield filling station in Heartbeat.

You don't actually see my face," he told his friends. Not much for PC Rowan to go on, then. "Fellman's lunch" includes Wensleydale and Cheddar cheese and home made chutney, veggie burgers were meaty in all but substance, pea and parsley soup thick and thoroughly enjoyable, home made cakes and things in abundance. Open winter weekends.

LUNCH at the Eden cafe and brasserie at Sunderland Museum: as Mr Michael Winner would observe, the celery and courgette soup was historic.

The museum has a lion, too. This one roars at the touch of a button and appears to be called Wallis, as was King Edward VIII's little less fearsome mistress.

The cafe has a good reputation, offers lots of club, ciabatta and less exotic sandwiches, plus salads and hot dishes like peppered beans on toast - new one, that - for £2.95.

Visitors who've had their fill might even get to watch the chap feeding the fish in the Winter Gardens down below.

We followed with a gently spiced beef and Guinness stew - not casserole, this was Sunderland - served in a giant and largely flaccid Yorkshire pudding, the bowl decorated with about a dozen saute potatoes.

There simply wasn't room to eat it all: not without making an exhibition, anyway.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what's purple and 4,000 miles long.

The grape wall of China, of course.

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