What cards! (From Living Northeast)

What cards!

12:44pm Monday 25th January 2010 in

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Joking apart, there’s plenty to smile about at the Rose and Crown, says Mike Amos.

ONE of the disappointments of fatherhood – there are, happily, few – is that the wretched bairns never appreciate your jokes. Over all these years, the sole exception may have been the one about the two pieces of string who go into a bar. The big ‘un loved it.

If I could remember anything but the punch line – “No, I’m a frayed knot” – I’d not just be retelling it here but turning paternal cartwheels in so doing.

Thus, at any rate, I was really looking forward to recounting when we met for his mum’s birthday lunch the brilliant gag about the mummy’s boy with the tractor obsession.

This should not be considered allegorical.

Whatever the bairn’s obsessions, none of them concerns agricultural equipment.

He was scornful. Not only had he heard it, he said, but it was he who’d told it to me – “and, “ he added viciously, “about ten years ago.”

The birthday was on a Sunday, so we took ourselves off to the Rose and Crown at Romaldkirk, in Teesdale.

Owners Chris and Alison Davy arrived at Romaldkirk about 20 years ago and are highly regarded.

Since then they’ve achieved more guide entries, more unalloyed acclaim and more awards than perhaps any other establishment in the North-East.

First impressions, many of the certificates line the entrance. The gent’s, on the other hand, is hung with seaside postcards of the “Ginger nuts” school of humour.

You can probably get away with it in the gent’s; undoubtedly not in the ladies.

“We sometimes give the ladies a little look when the coast’s clear,” said Alison.

These days they like to call the place the R&C – as in V&A, the ace caff with quite a nice museum attached, or in T&G (a former trades union now poncily rebranded).

The appeal is unchanging, nonetheless. There are panelled lounges with beamed ceilings, coal fires, whitenaped dining room, attentive service.

Three-course Sunday lunch in the restaurant is £17.95; in the brasserie, the usual lunch menu may work out a little more expensive.

The boy, in truth, wasn’t at his best, having chosen to celebrate his mum’s birthday – and the parental wedding anniversary, 31 years – the evening previously and unable to remember where he did it.

The morning had been stormy, the afternoon picked up. We ate in the brasserie, where the best tables overlook Romaldkirk’s ancient green.

Though the place may be much busier in summer, there was a chap flying from Somewhere to Somewhere who insisted that he’d simply had to stop off at the R&C.

He told the pretty young waitress.

“Wow,” she said dutifully and “Wow” several times thereafter as further the story gained wings.

More down-to-earth, we much enjoyed the birthday lunch – the not-so great secret in careful cooking, local sourcing and in allowing food to taste of itself. The menu lists some of the suppliers: fish from Hodgson’s in Hartlepool, meat from Peat’s in Barney, ice cream from Archer’s, outside Darlington. An impressive line-up.

A bacon chop was as good as could be remembered, served with pease pudding, flat parsley sauce and carefully cooked vegetables. The potted game which preceded it arrived with “Earl Grey-infused prunes” – a bit hard to taste the tea – and slightly enfeebled melba toast.

Drinking expensive Argentinian wine, the birthday girl rose with a nice cheese souffle followed by roast salmon with puy lentils. The boy, visibly drooping, started with haggis and neeps – among his father’s favourites – followed with steak and kidney pie, like his mum had a raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake for pudding.

All very happy.

There’s Black Sheep and Theakston’s bitter on hand pump. Might they not be a bit more adventurous with their real ales?

The tractor boy, since you insist, was told by hismum to get a life, went off sadly into the real world but ended a hero after rescuing a mother and her children from their blazing bedroom, smashing the window, inhaling all the poisonous fumes and then blowing them back down the street.

“Amazing,” says the fire chief, “how did you do that?”

“Easy,” says the guy, “I’m an extractor fan.”

Have you also heard the one about our own big boy, the one now sedulously ploughing his own furrow?

Within five minutes of getting home, he was fast asleep in his old bed – and that’s not joking at all.

Rose and Crown, Romaldkirk, Barnard Castle, DL12 9EB.

Tel: 01833-650-213 rose-and-crown.co.uk