AN indoor children’s play area isn’t one of the features Mrs Eats and I hope to find on our travels around North East pubs.
But if you like the idea of a venue where you can dine while your kids avail themselves of a man-size playhouse, slide and tunnel, the Keel Row at Seaton Delaval , Northumberland, is the place for you.
Mrs E and I remembered enjoying this traditional boozer a few years back , when we were fortunate enough to get a table in the restaurant area.
On this occasion there was no availability there, so we had to settle for the only table available, at the family end of the bar. Our fault, of course, for not bothering to book – which I’d say is a must if you want to be sure of a table in the restaurant on a Sunday lunchtime, judging by how busy the place was.
Pleasingly, it turned out the Keel Row is still offering a starter and a main course for £9.95 a fair few years on from when we last had a meal there. If you’re not wildly hungry, you can also order a ‘small’ main course for just £6.95, with non-roast option including a cheese and broccoli bake and scampi and chips. There is also a gluten-free menu.
We ordered the garlic bread and the pate from the starters menu to tide us over. The other choices were soup (vegetable broth), egg mayonnaise and garlic mushrooms.
The starters were served impressively promptly by a member of staff who was full of smiles for us throughout. My garlic bread was three crusty loaf-style slices of the stuff, served with a simple salad. It served its job as an appetiser without blowing me away in any way.
Mrs E had a similar reaction to her Brussels pate, which came with salad, redcurrants and unleavened bread. She finished it all, but declared that she preferred the pate she buys on her regular supermarket shop.
Our choices for our mains were the half a roast chicken and the mini leg of lamb, which carries a £2 surcharge. Again, these arrived in no time at all.
My first impression was that the ‘mini’ leg of lamb constituted a hefty portion of meat indeed, being almost as big as Mrs E’s half-chicken. The meat came with decent-sized Yorkshire puddings and sensible rather than generous portions of mashed swede, mashed potato, cabbage, sliced carrots and roast potatoes. Mrs E was quick to point out that no stuffing came our way.
On the meat front, I found myself adding lots of mint sauce to my lamb, and suspect it would have been rather bland without it. Mrs E, meanwhile, found her chicken to be on the dry side, and didn’t get through it all. It felt like a case of quantity over quality for both of us.
The vegetables and Yorkshires were inoffensive, standard fare, although the cabbage was a bit too crunchy for my liking, and the mash a bit too lumpy for Mrs E’s.
There was a good number of desserts on offer – I think I counted 12, all £4.25 – and they included apple crumble, spotted dick and a jam sponge.
I had the “chocolate cookie bash” ice cream affair, which was a real treat. It was sizeable without being so big that it became sickly, and proved to be the highlight of my meal.
Mrs E also seemed to enjoy her strawberry and West Country clotted cream cheesecake more than her previous courses, so it was a pleasing end to our meal all round.
Perhaps because it was a little bit trying for us to be seated so close to children playing so enthusiastically – a situation not helped when someone shouted loudly at a colleague in the nearby kitchen – Mrs E and I didn’t want to linger at the Keel Row.
But it deserves credit for its family-friendly set-up, pleasant, obliging serving staff and ability to produce a meal that doesn’t cost the earth in good time.
