Border Lines

On the lash in Newcastle

The 12-year-old was gallivanting on a school trip so the husband and I took the opportunity to go on the lash in Newcastle. Usually we seek our kicks in a northward direction – drawn to Edinburgh like skiers to après ski. However, an impossibly cheap deal for two nights at Premier Inn Quayside (£29/£36) was a siren call.

We romped from restaurant to restaurant barely taking time to digest, managed a gig at the fabled Cluny, and a fly-by The Workplace Gallery (Old Post Office, West Street, Gateshead). We arrived at Workplace to view work by Cecilia Stenbom (Berwick Visual Arts’ resident artist, 2013) via a stroll in the leafy Gateshead Riverside Park, home to a variety of public art.

The Cluny – photo: Evening Chronicle http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/

Some thoughts on a Newcastle getaway:

1. The first notable point is that a city break on Sunday and Monday nights avoids the inevitable Friday and Saturday hen and stag parties (and four-foot inflatable penises).
2. David Kennedy’s River Café. We had high hopes for this North Shields hotspot. Kennedy is a former North East chef of the year and River Café bagged the Observer Magazine’s top café of the year accolade within 12 months of opening. The metro journey was eyecatching enough taking in Wallsend (signs in Latin and English nod to the station’s location near the end of Hadrian’s Wall). Sunday downsides include the ubiquitous Sunday roast. I’m not a fan of huge slabs of beef served with giant Yorkshire puds, however beautifully cooked. I went for crab bruschetta, whole grilled mackerel, and gooseberry fool, the husband had ‘fabulous’ mussels. It was all nicely done and cracking value but somehow not quite the aaah! of delights I’d anticipated. I’d like to revisit on a weeknight and sample a less formulaic menu. Nevertheless, well worth the trip and Fish Quay is a great location.
   

   Fish Quay – photo: Newcastle upon Tyne and Northumberland Daily Photo

3. Back to Newcastle for supper at Café 21, Trinity Gardens. Don’t be put off by the hotel-like décor. We sailed merrily through ‘the finest Provençal fish soup this side of the Channel’ (according to the husband), crushed peas with goat’s curd on toast, scallops and venison. This was tip-top food – the priciest of our visit (no change from £100 for two courses plus a shared cheese plate, cocktails and a bottle of wine) but, we felt, worth the blowout. We also had it in mind to try out a trendy gin bar – we went to Pleased To Meet You on High Bridge and sampled a fragrant French G’Vine and a classic 50 Pounds gin (a name dating from the taxes levied on gin distillers back in the 18th century) – as we sipped we enjoyed a well-chosen playlist alongside a pleasing (but not overpowering) number of other punters and again congratulated ourselves on choosing the tail end of the weekend.
   

   The Lit & Phil – Image – BBC Tyne

4. With a visit to the gorgeous Literary & Philosophy Society, Westgate Road (opened in 1825 and the largest independent library outside London) under our belts, we headed to what the husband dubbed ‘a tearoom run by three bearded men’. The Quilliam Brothers (only two are bearded) purvey over 60 types of tea at their quirky tea-cum-arts café on Barras Bridge. We took ours accompanied by a sprightly Monday-lunch salad of pear and goats cheese with a walnut pesto on the ground floor, whilst those with bendier knees sprawled on beanbags in the basement.
5. The funky Ouseburn Valley (five minutes along the Quay from the hotel) is a former seat of industry – part regenerated, part in progress. Here you’ll find the Victoria Tunnel – 19^th-century wagonway carrying coal from Spital Tongues Colliery to the river – and Seven Stories, the national centre for children’s books. Plus, Artisan in the Biscuit Factory, a restaurant headed up by another North East chef of the year, Andrew Wilkinson.  Here we indulged in truly toothsome salt cod beignets, mackerel with sublime chilli jam on a mouthwatering salad of watercress, coriander and sesame, a pleasingly puffy cheese soufflé and well constructed sea trout with sea veg and baby clams (although perhaps not enough clams and not sure which was sea veg!). Overall a cracking meal – we’ll be back. I wish there were time to tell you about the delicious Geordie tapas we sampled the following day at Broad Chare, Quayside (fun and tasty nibbles but rather grumpy service). Alas I have run out of space. As had my stomach when we boarded the train home.

Of course, there’s no place like home. Back in Berwick I have since enjoyed toothsome lamb (Queen’s Head, Sandgate), wonderful mussels and lobster (Audela, Bridge Street), candlelit cocktails (King’s Arms, Hide Hill), and a fruity pint at the Curfew micropub (Bridge Street). And now I must lie down!