End of an era for another rural pub

Apparently his regulationaverse Conservative coalition partners, particularly the Chancellor, are not keen on the idea.

Last weekend, I stumbled across a perfect example of what the “pubcos” are doing to the British public house.

Pardon the rather inelegant but I believe absolutely accurate and appropriate description: basically, they are screwing them.

Yes, I know, I’ve wanged on about this before and apologies if I’m boring you but this is important. Read carefully. Note well.

Pubcos expanded aggressively in the good times, building up massive estates thanks to cheap money. Now they are struggling to service their debts. Some are selling pubs (a good thing), others are extracting ruinous rents from tenants and forcing them to sell the beer at daft prices.

The result: an endless merry-go-round of tenants failing to make a go of it, good tenants getting fed up of working themselves into the ground for nobody’s benefit except the pubco, and pubs empty for months on end while the pubco tries to find a mug to commit financial suicide.

And now to my chosen cause celebre which illustrates this general point spectacularly well.

Five years ago, Paul Grundy and wife Kathryn took on The Bridgewater Arms at Winston, the former village schoolhouse, betwixt Barnard Castle and Darlington.

After a slow-ish start, business eventually grew on the back of Paul’s skills in the kitchen and Kathryn’s frontof-house charm. It was reviewed favourably in this column shortly after opening and began to pick up prominent guide listings and customers, who travelled some distance for the seafood which Paul had learnt to cook so expertly in his days as the head chef at the celebrated Black Bull at Moulton.

All was going swimmingly in the teeth of double dip recession etc until, with the end of the tenancy agreement looming in July, the pub’s owner offered a fresh deal on what Mr Grundy feels are ridiculous terms.

We are not privy to the details of negotiations but they appear to have reached deadlock and the Grundys will give up The Bridgewater in three months’ time and their impeccable staff will all be out of a job. It seems absolutely daft, diabolical, crazy, and downright sickening that the pub owner’s efforts to squeeze the last bit of revenue out of a thriving business will result in it being wound up.

The Grundys don’t deserve this and neither do their staff and customers.

We were customers last Saturday, in the company of the Oldfields: Bill, who writes the Eating In, column every fortnight for us, and his wife Sue. Bill, of course, is a restaurateur with his eponymous establishment in Durham and, because he’s in the business, hard to please. And he rates The Bridgewater very highly.

We ate eight dishes between us (four starters, four mains) and everyone was pretty much faultless, starting with the lightest of Lincolnshire cheddar cheese and spinach soufflés (£8 a piece) which the ladies fair swooned over for their texture, delicate savouriness and structural perfection (no slumping here).

Bill’s mussels (£8) were fat juiciness personified and bathed in a classic not-toosalty cider, and sweetly garlicky tarragon and shallot cream sauce.

My warm salad of chicken livers, stilton, belly pork and apple (£8) managed to maintain the equilibrium between the meatier elements and the salad which is so often tipped in favour of the former and leaves the greenery soggy beyond salvation.

Our only criticism of the starters was that they all stretched the definition somewhat. Some might find them too substantial and the generous proportions certainly contributed to our later decision to give desserts a miss.

The mains were exceptional.

The three fish dishes – seabass fillet and king scallops on stir-fried greens with sweet chilli sauce and crème fraiche (£22) for Bill, monkfish wrapped in bacon on a curried prawn risotto (£22) for Sue and turbot on a shellfish and pesto risotto (£22) for me – were perfectly cooked and presented.

Both risottos were richly creamy (Sue found hers a little too much and failed to finish) and Bill thought the sweet chilli and crème fraiche worked really well with the greens.

Sylvia raved about her tender and pink roasted loin slices and cutlets of lamb (£21) served with a leek and potato cake and rosemary gravy.

We also shared a dish of vegetables – mange tout, broccoli, carrots and new potatoes – nicely glazed and slightly crunchy.

The bill for four of us was £164. That included a bottle of unoaked chardonnay, a bottle of Prosecco and pint of Speckled Hen bitter.

With the Grundys’ tenure at Winston now limited to three months, “buy now while stocks last”. Mr Grundy says if anyone knows of some restaurant premises available, they should give him a ring.

And who owns The Bridgewater Arms, you might ask?

It is Greene King, sometimes described in CAMRA circles as Greedy King.

They can sue. My defence, m’lud, is fair comment.