Mike Amos finds the seating hard, but the eating easy-going at Chadwicks Inn (From Living Northeast)

Mike Amos finds the seating hard, but the eating easy-going at Chadwicks Inn

12:37pm Tuesday 20th April 2010 in

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Mike Amos finds the seating hard, but the eating easy-going at Chadwicks Inn.

MALTBY’S on Teesside, just south of Thornaby, a pleasant and probably quite affluent little village with a pub, shop, village hall, livery stables and what may be the smallest Methodist church in Christendom.

Until last year the end-of-terrace pub was called the Pathfinders, named after RAF crews who flew from nearby Thornaby airfield.

Now it’s Chadwicks Inn, no evident apostrophe, run by former Middlesbrough and Darlington footballer Gary Gill and his wife, Helen.

The parish council minutes – note to aspirant journos, always read the notice boards – seek to correct their earlier claim that Gary’s wife is called Carol and his business partner David Brown.

Though Pathfinders photographs still hang in the foyer – the very least, perhaps, that they could do – the place has been transformed.

A first impression – definition of a cushion, someone who bears the impression of the person who last sat on him – was therefore both worrying and misleading.

The dining chair sagged uniquely, a real bones-ofthe- backside job as those seeking loose change might suppose. A replacement was cheerfully allowed.

It was Sunday lunchtime, our booking for 1pm, the place rapidly filling. Chiefly they were families.

There seemed, indeed, to be more Moses baskets than the mother and baby clinic at the Israelite General Hospital.

All were impeccably behaved, for babies. Inevitably there was a certain hubbub – what clever folk call ambient noise – making the music machine even more unnecessary.

If they must persist with the wretched things, I shall have to invent a sort of thermostat – The Boss thought it could be called a grumpyoldsodometer – which would cut in when other noise reached a certain level. Say 1.5 decibels.

Main course is £11.95 – “roast grand reserve” rump of beef, pork, chicken or halibut – two courses £14.95, three £17.95. A pint of Timothy Taylor’s admirable Landlord bitter, expertly kept, was £3.10. We said it was quite an affluent village.

The potato, bacon and thyme soup was smoothly blended, and came with good crusty bread, but might have taken a period of intense concentration to discern the second and third ingredients.

The Boss began with a seafood salad – little heaps of crayfish, tuna and herring with bits of greenery – which she thought perfect. It came on something a bit like – exactly like – one of those “rustic” house nameplates you see outside country stores.

Josiah Wedgwood (or someone) hadn’t invented pottery, she supposed, for food to be served on bits of wood.

They’d probably agree in Stoke-on-Trent.

She followed with the halibut with spinach and a sauce of cream, tomatoes and things forgotten. I had the pork, sourced from the very farm from which someone had pinched the caravan.

This was top class, thoroughly in the pink, great crackling, attractively presented. The Yorkshire pudding was fresh, the buttered carrots impeccable, the duck fat-roasted potatoes seductive.

Four puddings embraced strawberry cheesecake, sticky toffee, lemon possett – on another bit of wood, perhaps a signature dish – and a generous and wholly delicious creme brulee with a couple of bits of shortbread baked in.

Efficient service is by black-clad young ladies, like the Chadwicks of old. Coffee’s an additional £2.35 each. All in all it was a very good lunch.

■ Chadwicks Inn, Maltby, Middlesbrough TS8 0BG. Tel: 01642-590300. Two-course set lunch £11.95, three courses £14.95. Early bird menu from 5pm. Dinner main courses around £16, exclusive of side orders. No problem for the disabled. ■Don’t miss Mike Amos’s Eating Owt column in The Northern Echo.