A pub for top food, not just a cool ale
SOMETIMES, a review is about checking out a newly-opened restaurant, somewhere fairly high-profile, to let people know what it’s like.
On other occasions, you want to recommend a little-known gem.
And sometimes, a reviewer just has a really excellent meal, and can’t help but rhapsodise about it in print.
The Bridge Tavern is neither littleknown nor newly-opened, but it is absolutely class.
I’d visited plenty of times before for a drink, but after popping in for tea and being pleasantly stunned by the food, I was desperate to rave about it here.
WHAT’S IT LIKE INSIDE?
It feels like a drinkers’ pub – not in the old-fashioned, cheap-bitter-and-pork-scratchings, lingering-smell-from-before-the-smoking-ban kind of way, but in the new, microbrewery-and-a-thousand-beers-to-choose-from, slightly-industrial-interior way.
The scrubbed wood and cosy bookshelves of the interior are offset by the burnished metal of the bar and the gleaming stills which sit at the back, busily churning out the next batch of impressive booze.
The combination leaves it feeling at once comfortable and stylish, modern and yet inherently pub-like – and one with a nice buzz about it
WHAT ARE YOU DRINKING?
This is a pub, so the drinks are obviously pretty important, as is clear from the enormous bar, absolutely covered in taps.
The range of beer is pretty extensive, as they supplement their brews with a huge number of well-chosen casks, including plenty from the excellent Wylam Brewery (whose Hickey the Rake ‘limonata pale’ I particularly recommend with food – light, citrusy and refreshing, but still very much a beer).
A few ciders are thrown in for good measure, and judging by the range of bottles behind the bar, spirit drinkers are well-served too.
AND THE FOOD?
In a place like this, I’m expecting a few posh-sounding burgers, and maybe a fancy nacho plate, something perfectly pleasant for soaking up your fifth pint, but nothing to write home about.
What I get, when I take up the clipboard menu to go to order at the bar wouldn’t look out of place in the sort of fine-dining, sit-down restaurant which would probably be far less fun to hang out in.
Delicate crab on toast with a subtle touch of curry-spiced mayonnaise, or perfectly soft North Sea squid with butterbeans, bacon and chilli, a unusual, salty-savoury, incredibly moreish dish of which I could have eaten several bowls.
Mussels are cooked with beer and some kind of punchy black beans, which taste a bit like the ‘burnt ends’ you’d get in a really good barbecue place – it’s weird, but it works.
For mains, the star has to be the slowcooked beef hash: melting soft beef, crisp-yet-soft potatoes, rich, irony greens, topped off with a runny duck egg. Yum.
SOMETHING SWEET?
A small but respectable dessert section draws us in. My sundae is summer in an overfilled glass: tangy sorbet, rich clotted cream, refreshing, half-frozen strawberries and honeycomb which shatters and sticks in my teeth but I love it. Slightly posher is a sort of ‘deconstructed’ strawberry tart, with shards of light puff pastry, more strawberry sorbet, rich flavours of white chocolate. Both are light, sweet, and lovely.
OVERALL MPRESSIONS?
I regret writing The Bridge Tavern off as just somewhere for a drink for so long. It’s a great place to eat – though it remains a nice drinking spot, too.
Price-wise, you’re looking at the top end of pub prices. Mains go for between £9 and around £14, which really isn’t bad for what you get. If you want three courses, the ‘lights’ (which we treat as starters, and you can, but honestly they would probably fill you up for a small meal) hover between £5 and £8.
To sum up my attitude: it’s good there, for far more than just a drink. I hope I’ll be back before long.