A READER recently took us to task for reviewing breakfasts on the grounds that it wasn’t most people’s idea of a meal out.

Breakfast was too basic, too functional, too much a matter of fuelling up at the beginning of the day to be worth devoting 800-plus words to describing.

Well, we disagree. Breakfast is the best meal of the day, surely? Certainly we felt so after last weekend’s visit to a certain farm shop.

But a farm shop is a farm shop, isn’t it? A draughty barn filled with some good things but also some dodgylooking produce that you wouldn’t touch with a bargepole. And usually only reached by navigating a slippy farmyard reeking of over-cooked slurry. Lovely.

But we found an awardwinning farm shop and café which turns all those perceptions on their head. This farm shop is as good as they get – and it has got the honours to prove it.

Knitsley Farm Shop and Café, near Consett, has picked up so many awards it has a web page devoted entirely to all of the gongs it has collected since 2010. It goes on and on. The honours trail culminates in it being judged UK Farm Shop of the Year in 2013 by that august publication, the Meat Trades Journal.

But we didn’t head for a blasted North Durham hillside on the wettest and windiest of Saturday mornings to check out the artisan chutneys and homemade preserves. Our hearts’ desire was breakfast in the Granary Café, which had been highly recommended.

We thought we would get there early, on the way to somewhere else, and arrived just after its 10am opening to find the large car park – nicely tarmacked, not a cowpat in sight – already full and a steady stream of heavily laden shoppers pouring out of the converted stone barn, which is the farm shop.

The café is reached via the shop and there’s clearly an exit-via-the-gift-shop method in this madness.

However full you are after your café visit, you have to be strong-willed not to pick up something tasty-looking on the way out.

We were lucky to get the last table available in the 40-seater café, which is decked out in a simple rustic fashion – tiled floor, plain white walls, stripped beams and sturdy pine furniture.

Darlington and Stockton Times:
The interior of the Knitsley Farm Shop and Granary Café

The breakfast menu is pretty no-nonsense too. You can make a mix-and-match selection from all the English breakfast staples, have a straightforward full English, smoked salmon and scrambled egg, or ‘Black Pudding & Co’ – sliced black pudding with soft poached eggs, sprinkled with bacon pieces and served with granary toast soldiers.

Sylvia mixed and matched with fried egg, two sausages and bacon. I had the full English (£8.95), which was served with toast, butter and marmalade and a glass of juice (orange, pink grapefruit or tomato).

This was a top breakfast.

Firstly, the sausages and bacon are sourced from the farm’s own animals or from near neighbours, slaughtered at a local abattoir and butchered on-farm. The pork sausage was close-textured, encased in natural skin, well seasoned and slightly herby – an ideal breakfast sausage. The bacon was equally good, thickly cut and mildly drycured.

The eggs, mine poached, were goldenyolked and again sourced from the farm.

My full English included the farm’s own black pudding – loose-textured, quite a high fat content but delicious – mushrooms, some very lightly sautéed potatoes and some barely roasted cherry tomatoes.

The granary bread – thick, crunchy and baked in the farm’s own bakery – came with plenty of butter and a nicely bitter-sharp marmalade.

Sylvia had a hot and strong latte with her breakfast. I had a pot of tea – two tea bags and plenty of hot water to top it up with.

We felt well looked after by the staff, who seemed under a fair amount of pressure given the numbers and the high turnover. It was clear we had been lucky to get a table as soon as we arrived.

Others had to queue, albeit not for very long, to get seated. Apparently, it is always like this at weekends.

Our bill was a pretty reasonable £17, so we had only to negotiate our leave through the shop, which is something of a challenge in itself.

Darlington and Stockton Times:
A breakfast at Knitsley Farm Shop and Granary Café

Firstly, because it is very crowded and, secondly, because it is very impressively appointed and even more impressively stocked. All the goodies we ate in the café were available for purchase in the shop and quite a few found their way into our basket. Our shop bill was rather bigger than our breakfast bill.

Ratings:

Food Quality: 9/10

Service: 8/10

Surroundings: 8/10

Value: 9/10