Not half bad for a corporate pub.

WE’VE been driving past The Old Farmhouse at Morton Palms, near Darlington – usually on our way to some trendy eaterie in Yarm – for years.

“We should try that,” Sylvia has suggested, on more than one occasion. I’ve resolutely driven on. “It’ll be awful,” I have replied. “It’s an identikit gastropub where the deepfried onion ring is king and run by one of those ghastly pub companies that are slowly but surely extracting the lifeblood out of the British pub etc., etc.” Regular readers, and Sylvia, will get my drift. I have banged on about this in the past – at length.

Sorry, but I’m passionate about this.

Last Monday night, a deadline loomed. A review had to be written and we didn’t have time to stray far from home.

As we have “done” a few Darlington places of late, it had to be somewhere out of town.

And that, of course, is a problem.

Any decent pub, having been stowed out for three days looking after the Friday and Saturday night and Sunday lunch trade, has a bit of breather on a Monday. Or at very least the chef does. After all, who eats out on Mondays apart from travelling salesmen?

So, out of desperation more than anything else we found ourselves at the Old Farmhouse.

And I was ready to give it a good kicking. Some very preliminary internet research had revealed that it is, indeed, part of the “Vintage Inns Collection” a pub chain owned by Mitchells and Butlers, one of the UK’s biggest pub and restaurant companies.

Their other brands include Toby Carveries, O’Neills, Harvester, the Sizzling Pub Co and Scream.

What else do you need to know about homogenised British pub culture?

But I am not one to harbour a grudge and as we walked through the door, I vowed to keep an open mind.

First impressions were favourable. While the interior is a bit corporate gastropubby (muted green and cream colour scheme, beams, partflagged floor), it is not unpleasant.

Centre-stage was a long bar dotted with hand pumps offering a range of real ales, including the excellent Sharp’s Doom Bar bitter from Rock in Cornwall. There was also a short but good value wine list from which we picked a lemony Prosecco for £13.95 and found a table at one end of what is a very large eating-cum-drinking area.

Amazingly, the nearby radiator was on but we were not complaining. For August it was decidedly chilly outside.

The menu was gargantuan.

There were “sharing plates and nibbles”, starters, six seafood dishes, a series of meat, game and poultry dishes, grills (including four steaks), burgers, “country pub classics” and then half a dozen specials. The total number of main courses offered totalled more than 40, which means two things. Either the Old Farmhouse has a phenomenal turnover, or the freezer and microwave play a major role in the kitchen.

While the car park always seems busy and there were a goodly number of people in who didn’t look like travelling salesmen, we rather think the latter is the case on the strength of the two main courses and a dessert we sampled.

Sylvia thought her 9oz rib-eye steak, “seasoned chips”, yes, onion rings, chargrilled plum tomatoes and garden peas (£11.95) was very acceptable.

The rib-eye was quite tender, quite flavoursome and spoton medium. The accompaniments were OK although she was puzzled by the “seasoned”

chips which she thought very unseasoned.

My two 4oz venison steaks (£16.25) had seen the freezer at some point, I reckoned. A little tough in places, they came in a very good mushroom cream sauce, but the roasted beetroot, red onion and fennel were strange plate mates. It didn’t help that the fennel was well past its best.

I finished with a summer pudding (£4.25) which wasn’t an individual pud but a slice from a cake. Too much bread, too few berries, but the crème fraiche was a nice touch.

Service was a mix of order-atthe- bar and at the table, and cheerful with it. There was a slightly confusing system involving numbered wooden spoons so the staff could match orders to tables, but it seemed to work. The bill was £46.

It wasn’t a bad meal, in truth.

Quite serviceable in fact, and the staff were very willing, but no part of it ever really hit the heights.