By Alexa Copeland

FROM BAFTA award-winning actors to a 1980s pin-up girl and a Conservative government minister, Crombies Restaurant in Darlington has welcomed them all.

The restaurant, in the town centre’s Tubwell Row, celebrates its 80th anniversary this year and can reasonably claim to be the oldest such eatery in Darlington.

Opened in 1934 by British Guyana-born Alexander Jamieson Crombie and his wife Katherine, the venue soon established itself as a favourite amongst Darlington residents.

It also became a popular haunt for actors working at Darlington Civic Theatre.

Big names in showbusiness such as Arthur Lowe, Tom Baker and Jimmy Cricket have graced Crombies, either eating in the restaurant daily or staying in one of the eight guest rooms that used to exist in the cavernous building.

In fact, there still stands the table at Crombies where former pin-up girl turned actress Linda Lusardi met her actor husband Sam Kane 16 years ago.

When Alexander Crombie stepped down from the helm, his daughter Christina carried on the family business with her husband George McCallum.

The pair also oversaw the running of a hotel, Sandside, in Runswick Bay in the 1950s when British beach holidays were still booming.

Many Darlington residents who frequented Crombies would then go and spend their holidays at Sandside, contributing to the sense of kinship between regular customers and the Crombie family.

Today the restaurant remains under the guardianship of Alexander Crombie’s granddaughter Maureen and her husband Frederick Stehr who took over the business in 1978.

The couple recently took a hiatus from the industry but returned this year and are determined to restore the venue to its former glory.

They have refurbished the premises and refocused Crombies on providing quality home-cooked meals at good prices using local suppliers.

Mr Stehr says he is hopeful for the restaurant’s future, although he concedes a lot has changed in Darlington since the days when people were queuing round the corner for a seat at Crombies.

“It is getting tougher by the year,” he said. “Not only because of the competition, but because running a family business you mainly have to be very hands-on and do most of the work yourself.

“Also as a small business it is very difficult to meet costs such as VAT and employee costs.

“We can’t charge as much as the evening restaurants so you are working with very small margins.”

Mr Stehr recounts the days when the restaurant was famously busy and even hosted a Conservative minister for agriculture for lunch.

It served as a meeting place for a broad range of community groups such as the Darlington Cactus Society, town-twinning and writers groups, as well as being a favourite amongst farmers visiting the cattle market.

But over the years Mr and Mrs Stehr have noticed an apparent dwindling in the demand for such community-focused daytime restaurants.

Nowadays Mr Stehr said people are more likely to buy a pasty from Greggs and eat in the street than they are to regularly sit down for lunch together.

“Things do change,” he said. “People’s eating habits change. We have seen it over the last 20 or 30 years; we used to get more families coming in, but now I think people are more likely to take their children to McDonald’s.”

It is not likely that any of the Stehr’s three children will take over the restaurant once Frederick and Maureen step down for good, but Mrs Stehr is hopeful that the Crombies name and legacy will live on.

She said: “I would like to see it carry on, and this is what our predicament is really, to find that person who can understand the concept of it being so well-known, as much in the villages as in Darlington, and keep that tradition.

“It doesn’t mean being old-fashioned, it’s about keeping the values of good home-cooked food and providing a nice atmosphere for customers.

“That is what we would like to see continue.”

And who knows, perhaps Alexander Crombie’s original recipe for success does have all the ingredients to help the restaurant enjoy another eight decades of business in Darlington.