Crook may have had more facelifts than Elizabeth Taylor. Every time you open the paper there's news of an urban regeneration programme, or a town centre improvement funding partnership or a grot spot awareness week - and all commendable, no doubt.

The municipal men could do much worse, however, than to get themselves up the street to the Lennium restaurant. From there, things look better by far.

Officially it's a cafe, restaurant and takeaway, the name apparently intended to be Millennium but cut down to size when the graphic artist went back to Hong Kong half way through the design stage.

We say "apparently" because Fong Choi's English isn't quite perfect, and the tale might have lost something in the translation.

The logo is an old Chinese sailing ship. Junk food it isn't.

Though several readers had recommended it, we went with trepidation. The closest that Crook might hitherto have come to Chinese culture is the curiously designed Civic Centre, known to more cynical locals as the Pagoda.

Reservations are at once dispersed, however, by the warmth of the welcome from Mrs Choi, a tiny lady with a waistcoat of many colours and a smile of pure white.

She and her husband Ming, who cooks, arrived in Crook from Carlisle, where someone opened a disco above their previous restaurant and drowned out their attempts.

It's fairly small, comfortably but not claustrophobically furnished, Reginald Dixon (or someone similar) playing Come Dancing tunes on the music machine. We struggled to recognise them: one which might have been Rasputin, Lover of the Russian Queen turned out instead to be It Was on the Isle of Capri That I Found Her.

The menu's lengthy, prefaced by a little homily along the lines that when ancient Brits were still eating mammoth pie the Chinese had beluga banquets and with best Bollinger to follow. The cooking is relatively simple and highly effective.

Mr Choi, who speaks hardly any English, hovers in the background like one of those old Chinese kitchen hands in spaghetti Westerns - and why, incidentally, a "spaghetti" western. The guy knows his spring onions, anyhow.

We started with a two person combination of spring rolls, spare ribs, crispy won tons, prawn toast and seaweed, a marker in both freshness and flavour for the rest of a first class meal.

It's odd that the Chinese are so fond of their seaweed, though, a product which most closely resembles what at Mrs Gerard's chip shop used to be called scrappins and which is best reserved for weather forecasting.

When hands wet from the finger bowl found it difficult to open the bag in which the little towels had arrived, Mrs Choi was on hand, smiling, in a moment. The lady is a star.

The Boss followed with king prawns with ginger and spring onions and a bowl of noodles with bean sprouts, we with sizzling duck and orange, attractively presented, with a Cointreau sauce.

It sizzles spectacularly when the sauce is poured, doubtless with precautions to stop smoke detectors going off or the place burning down. Crook fire brigade has enough on its plate tackling derelict house fires in Willington without dashing down to the Lennium every five minutes.

The sizzler was terrific, the duck fresh and tender, the sauce aromatic. The king prawn dish offered a further example of doing simple things very well.

A bloke walking past with his dog pressed his nose against the window, like the little boy that Santa Claus forgot; on an adjacent table they were having a four person birthday party.

"I could have been down the club tonight," said one of the lads,cheerfully.

A banana fritter was more experimental than essential, the batter futher evidence of a light touch in the kitchen. The bill, with a couple of soft drinks apiece plus tea and coffee, reached £39.20. Unlike Crook town centre, if you believe all you read in the papers, there was little room for improvement.

The Lennium, Commercial Street, Crook (01388 764030). Open seven nights from 5.30pm and Thursday to Saturday lunchtime. Special lunch £4.50. Fine for the disabled.

SAVE for the three o'clock shutters on Friday, about which we grumbled unsuccessfully last year, Darlington CAMRA's Spring Thing festival at the Arts Centre seemed to go better than ever last weekend.

Some thought it a pity that the York festival coincided. The resourceful, like the extravagantly bearded Alastair Downie from Frosterley, got the train to take the strain.

Darlington's delights included Tabatha the Knackered, Porridge Stout, Riley's Army Bitter - named after the chap who lead the Jarrow March - and Feethams Farewell, made by Darwin Brewery in Sunderland in valediction to a much loved football ground.

"Hoppy with snappy carbonation and lingering bitterness," said Darwin, though Darlington fans (it is much to be hoped) will feel no bitterness at all.

Whilst the Arts Centre does food, Mr Eric Smallwood had smuggled a secrecy of Taylor's pork pies. The day was utterly complete.

WERE there still an award for Britain's best pub fire, it would surely go to the bright blazing Ancient Unicorn at Bowes, just off the A66 near Barnard Castle.

The welcome's equally cheery, Jennings beers in good fettle, Addlestone's cider also on draught. That we didn't eat was because it was en route to Penrith FC, holder of the Albany Northern League's tea hut award and home of the best meat and potato pie this side of Accrington Stanley. One for the future, though.

LAST week's column observed the habit among waiting staff of stating the obvious - "There's some vegetables for you," as if a delivery of concessionary coal had alternatively been expected.

It reminded Nick Loughlin, the Echo's sports editor, of an incident a couple of weeks back at a Hartlepool United sportsmen's dinner - guest speaker Sir Bobby Charlton - at the Mayfair Centre in Seaton Carew.

Nick's table ran out of roast potatoes and gravy. Asked for more, the waitress returned with a covered serving tray.

"What's in there?" they asked.

"I haven't a clue," she replied, and walked away again.

It was green beans. They haven't had their gravy yet.

IS it old age, or did the Black Horse in Tudhoe once offer authentic food - and with a German owner, too? We mention it because the reborn pub opens its Four Corners restaurant this weekend, featuring Spanish, Greek and Italian dishes on a Hail Fellow Well Med menu. Initially it's open Friday and Saturday evenings only: bookings on (01388) 813446.

THE one time we were in Billingham Constitutional Club was to interview the late Kevin Howley, still - Blackburn v Wolves, 1960 - the youngest FA Cup final referee.

A Cons Club regular, he was a lovely man who ran a football match by the strength of his personality and not the colour of his cards. "Mind," he added, "when I cautioned them they stayed cautioned."

Players, Kevin added, were overpaid, pampered prima donnas - and that was 11 years ago.

We mention it because, in the light of our recent notes on rip-off prices, someone rang to say that the price of a pint in the Constitutional Club begins at 63p and rises to 74p for Tetley Imperial, Kevin's Favourite.

No Cons trick there, then.

...and finally the bairns wondered if we knew what you call a group of people who dig for fossils.

A skeleton crew, of course.

Published: 01/04/2003