Something of a Chinese puzzle

Lunchtime diners can usually pig out for under a fiver, return like some oriental Oliver remorselessly to the trough, augment the sweetcorn soup - as we did the other night - with spare ribs, spring rolls and sundry spicy bits.

They have become hugely popular, not least with families and students. So why - a Chinese puzzle - do I feel so innately uncomfortable there?

Is it how the floor is constantly being swept, like Arnold the barber's in Shildon, or the way the self-service queue resembles Bishop Auckland Grammar School on chocolate pudding day or that the table manners, generally, leave even more to be desired?

Is it the relentless music, the shearing of frills or simply - let's be honest - because it all seems a bit uncouth?

Durham's latest of the generous genre - "ultimately the best and biggest," it boasts - is Lau's Buffet King in the riverside Millburngate shopping centre. There's another in Newcastle's Chinatown. Unable to accept the invitation to the opening 19 days ago, we looked in last Tuesday evening with Paul Hodgson, secretary of Spennymoor Boxing Academy and buffet king for the day.

It was 6.58pm. Were we able to be seated, satiated and out into the sunshine by 7.30pm, said the waitress, it would be £5 99 a head. After that we would not only turn into pumpkins - no, no, that was Cinderella - but the cost would be £7.99 including a second course of Peking duck and "new" dishes hitherto unseen (if not entirely unimagined). We opted for the back shift.

At lunchtime and until 5pm it's £4.99, or £2.99 for those over two-years-old and under 4ft 11ins tall. Our elder son would have been charged full whack before his fifth birthday.

There are 155 additional seats upstairs, closed circuit television, more fans than Scunthorpe United. Notices warn that anyone sitting down will be charged whether they eat or not, adding that the management is sorry for any inconvenience.

In England that's what's known as cold comfort, in Peking there may be a different phrase altogether.

Soup - as surely sweetcorn as Henry Ford's cars were black - is strictly the only starter, sits in twin tubs like a 1950s washing machine but probably tastes different from Hoover water.

This was a Tuesday, early doors, out of University term time and before the school holidays. Still the place was filled, the diligent staff constantly sweeping, cleaning, fetching, carrying, directing to table. None appeared to be more than about eight stones, though possibly twice that when they started. Whilst posing a clear threat to more traditional Chinese restaurants, the new generation could affect WeightWatchers, too.

We dived in, the only obvious deterrent to unbridled gluttony the risk of third degree burns from the tongs. Maybe there were 30 or 40 main course dishes and the clock had barely acknowledged half past seven before more arrived from out the back.

It was a bit like first footing, only for midnight read 7.31pm and for shortie and black bun read mussels and prawn foo yung.

Hodgy considered it quite wonderful, returned with a plate no less fulsomely festooned than the first, finished with about six slices of cake and a grape.

"I wondered why they'd thrown a cordon round me, they must have thought I was going to explode," he said. It wasn't one of his greatest one liners.

It is hard, another part of the puzzle, to know what to say about the food: substantial certainly, hot mostly, tasty partly. Mixed and generally mismatched. A pint of cider was £2, a Coke £1.50.

It is harder still to imagine a romantic dinner-a-deux there, or taking the Bishop of Durham. It worked for Jack Cohen, though: success seems also to have crowned Buffet King.

HALFWAY down the corkscrew bank to Saltburn sands, the Spa Hotel has been much improved. The restaurant with views over the setting sea seemed particularly attractive.

A lengthy menu included a carvery and "free starter" for £5.50. Order at the bar, said the fetching blonde behind it.

We decided on the "that vegetable medley" and a prawn stir fry, returned to the bar and waited. Like everyone else, the blonde - fetching and carrying, perhaps - was nowhere in sight.

After five minutes we walked out, found the chip shop near the station both about to close and exhausted of fish and instead ate Spam fritter and chips whilst waiting for the flyer. It was the first time we'd had Spam since Monty Python was little, and it was great. This column knows how to live.

THE man who supposed that golf was a good walk spoiled probably pitched it about right, though there are still one or two affable enough golfers around.

Though the car park was well filled, there seemed to be more on the course than in the clubhouse at Stressholme Golf Club last Tuesday.

It's Darlington's municipal course, has the same name (rather unfortunately) as the sewerage works and had recently been re-invented as a good value, open-to-all pub/restaurant with pleasant views across the greenery and prints of old golfers and older Darlington on the walls.

We lunched with Janet and Peter Chapman, she a former curate of St Cuthbert's in Darlington and about to become priest-in-charge of Banbury on the back of an interview in which (for reasons too theological to elaborate) she proclaimed that her mission statement was God, justice and chocolate and offered a bar between them to her interrogators.

"I couldn't have given them one each," said Janet. "It might have been seen as a bribe."

Both adult and children's menus are lengthy, well varied and sometimes surprising. Sandwiches are served from 10am, lunch from 11.30am, dinner from 6.30pm. The other two shared a "Best friends" combo plate of deep fried dippy things; we started with asparagus soup - hot but in need of a little more vigour. Good bread.

Janet had a large and rather very well presented Caesar salad with pine nuts but wondered if the combination actually worked; Peter enjoyed his salmon. A substantial club sandwich with "lattice" chips and salad was impressive at £3.45 save for the fact that the segments of the sandwich were held together by cocktail sticks which, myopically, we failed to notice.

Unless you have ever had a cocktail stick up the left nostril, it's hard to explain how painful it is or how difficult to prevent tears in front of company. The club sandwich should henceforth be served with a hazard warning, or by a bloke paid periodically to shout "Fore."

With coffee, two courses for three amounted to £22. Green and pleasant, undoubtedly.

....and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you call a stolen fish supper.

Poached salmon, of course.

Published: Tuesday, July 17, 2001