WE'D not been in Chinatown two minutes when they brought on the dancing boys, and the paint your dragon and the gentleman drumming up trade. It seemed quite welcoming, really.

Newcastle's Chinatown is centred on Stowell Street, a kick in the artefacts from St James's Park. Mr Michael Meacher had visited a few days earlier, officially to repudiate the suggestion that the foot and mouth crisis might have been started by pig swill made from Chinese restaurant waste.

Like the epidemic, the unfounded rumour had spread nonetheless. Stowell Street reckoned its takings 40 per cent down. Mr Meacher ate humble fry.

Save for the crowd chasing the dragon, last Tuesday evening did seem particularly quiet. It was a cross-cultural beastie, it transpired, firing away to promote the opening of a Japanese place called Fujiyama in Bath Lane, to which we hadn't been invited.

If being the back end of a pantomime horse is among show business's less alluring opportunities, it is at least a fairly sedate seasonal occupation. The dragon's rear is much more strenuous, even the symbolic bucket of oats offered only to the head. What's known, presumably, as starting at the bottom.

For no particular reason we dined at the Shangri La, which means "Earthly paradise", Before some Miltonian headline writer becomes excited this was neither Paradise Lost, Found nor Regained - rather, as Mr Billy Fury sang in the sixties, halfway to Paradise, instead.

A notice outside offered "Special seasonal banquets" for £11.50 and professed that it was the first Cantonese restaurant with a disabled toilet.

Inside, Michael Lam - Mr Shangri - fronted with much professionalism whilst the tapes played something akin to the Beijing version of St Mary's school choir, a winsome gathering of oriental young ladies singing Anglo-American tunes.

Just as we expected them to break into Diddle Diddle Dim Sum My Son John, they turned instead to Way Down Beside the Swannee River (in Chinese) and a Sino-sentimental Home on the Range. (The Boss not only claimed to know the German words of Yes We Have No Bananas but to have heard a senior MP - not, presumably, Mr Michael Meacher - singing them on the radio. This, as they say in Teutonic parts, was neither nichts nor summat.)

The other set dinners were £15, £18.50 and £26, the latter including baked lobster with ginger and spring onions. So middle-of-the-road we were in danger of being run over by a passing dragon, we opted for the £18.50 event - three starters, choice of two main courses, fresh fruit and coffee. preceded by about seven stones of prawn crackers. (Seven stones of prawn crackers would probably overflow St James's, but readers will understand the hyperbole.)

The Chinese, by and large, don't make soup, but gloop. This, crab meat and sweetcorn, was the same non-specific mess of potage.

The crispy aromatic duck was much better, however, accompanied as always by pancakes in which to enfold it, and the chicken and beef satay and spring rolls were terrific, the spring rolls possibly even better than that.

Maybe 25 were in, almost all female, and perhaps the busiest restaurant in the area. Not Stowed-out Street, anyway.

A dozen main courses included monk fish with season vegetables, Szechuan style shredded beef, sliced duck in oyster sauce and "king prawns with cashew nuts and a birds nest."

We ordered scallops with broccoli (very good, the fish wife thought) and steamed chicken with ham and mushrooms which had little distinctive flavour and the texture of a football ground burger. (There are those who swear by football ground burgers; it is to be hoped they know more about their football.)

Orange and grapes followed, good coffee, abundant mints. The darkening street seemed little busier, the Mr Forty Per Cents perhaps more greatly affected by the popularity of Chinese buffets - Wok This Way, Charlie's, Chinatown Express - which replicate Jolly Jack Cohen's adage about piling high and selling cheap. At Shangri-la, too, no one will ever go home hungry.

Shangri-la, 38-42 Stowell Street, Newcastle. (0191-261-2289). Open seven nights and Monday-Saturday lunch. Fine for the disabled.

COMPARED to promoting real ale in some parts of Co Durham, the Pilgrim Fathers probably had a cushy number.

The first beer festival at Shafto's, part of the Whitworth Hall estate near Spennymoor, had a wonderful setting, fragrant walled garden and just eight customers adrift in a posh marquee when we looked in at 10pm on Saturday.

A dozen cask ales included six from Castle Eden, others like Gladiator, from the Hadrian Brewery on Tyneside, and Fiddler's Elbow from Wychwood in Witney. Other times during the four day festival may have been busier; they've a real problem, nonetheless.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you call the world heavyweight champion biscuit.

A tough cookie, of course

Published: Tuesday, May 15, 2001