The new retail park on the edge of Bishop Auckland features sprawling, square units filled with massive supermarkets and huge home accessories outlets that crush the spirit out of my soul.
The Bake, on the edge of the retail park car park in Bishop AucklandBut, on the plus side, we were able to park, for free, right outside the door and walk straight into the unit that has recently been occupied by The Bake, a Lebanese restaurant with a couple of branches up in Newcastle.
Despite the echoey, Arabic music, and the lights beneath our seat which changed colour, the restaurant was still a shopping mall unit. It is not for those who wish to dine out in a dark country pub with a roaring fire and antique prints over the walls, especially as the automatic door kept opening and shutting and letting in cold blasts with the incessant stream of delivery drivers. It was like dining at Matalan near the tills.
There were, we reckoned, about 80 seats, mostly taken on the pre-Christmas night we tried it out, and those close to the open plan kitchen area could watch the shawarma kebab being carved – The Bake is trying to pull off a remarkable cultural change in which what was once derided as a drunk’s late night snack becomes a cosmopolitan culinary experience.
The menu is large and varied: kebabs, wraps, salads, grills, parmos and speciality dishes like mandi, machboos and oozi, all leading up to the Bake Mega Grill, which was an amazing amount of shareable meat for £59.99.
As we looked it over, we were given a complimentary basket of flat breads accompanied by nice garlic and tomato dips and a pot of very good lemon-infused olives.
They didn’t prevent me from opining about the madness of the planning system which allows all these units – next to The Bake were shells which will soon have restaurants called Little Sicily, Uno Momento and Wok n Roll transplanted into them – to spring up cheaply on green fields when, a mile away, there’s a town centre full of characterful but leaky Victorian buildings which are being left to rot until the state is shamed into giving a private developer a grant to restore them.
Thankfully for my wife, our starter promptly arrived. We were sharing Sambousek Lamb (£6.50), which consisted of four crescent-shaped pastry parcels of minced lamb and onions.
They were great. I feared they would be all chunky pastry, but, no. Despite being deep fried, the pastry acted as a light wrap with loads of gorgeous, moist, tasty lamb with a hint of onion inside. Absolutely great.
The vegetarian moussakaFor her main course, Petra, my wife, had ordered vegetarian moussaka (£9.99) and a Fattoush salad (£5.20) from a menu that had plenty of interesting vegetarian options.
The Fattoush, that we didn’t really need because so much salad came with our main coursesI had gone for one of the most expensive dishes, the Bake Mixed Grill (£18.80), which consisted of four skewers of lamb and chicken done two ways each: kaftah (or minced) and cubed.
The Bake Mixed Grill: four skewers and three salads The meat was very good. In fact, two of the four skewers were probably so good that they should be classed as sensational. The lamb cubes were divinely tender and superbly smoky, while the marinade on the minced chicken was sublime.
My kebabs came with nice chips and three simple salads – green, white onion and red cabbage – plus a garlic dip so it was a very well rounded plate.
Petra was just as impressed with her moussaka of aubergine, peppers, chickpeas and tomatoes, all carefully cooked so they could be individually tasted. Her dish also came with the three salads, so we had no need for the Fattoush, even though it was a nicely presented green salad with tastes of parsley, mint, radish and sumac running through it.
Both dishes were so large that we were grateful we had shared the starter and that there were no desserts on the menu.
The complimentary mouhalabieh, a cold and very pleasant Middle Eastern milky pudding But, as The Bake had only been open a couple of weeks, we – and, indeed, most guests that night – were given a complimentary mouhalabieh, a cold Middle Eastern milky pudding flavoured with delicate rosewater and a sticky strawberry sauce. It was light, not too sweet and rather good. The head chef had only started making it a couple of days ago apparently with a view to it being added to the menu.
It was brought to us by a maitre d’, who we had seen working the tables all evening – with his trim beard, bringing character to the shopping mall unit.
With soft drinks – diners may bring their own alcohol – our bill for two, including our over-ordered Fattoush, came to £58.06.
For all of my preconceived misgivings, I had had some truly memorable food that had been expertly cooked with flavours that departed from the norm.
We paid up and departed into the horizontal, cutting rain. But we didn’t have to hurry through dimly lit town centre alleyways to find the car, or plodge across a puddled country car park – it was there right outside the door beneath a streetlight on the flat tarmac. Perhaps there is something to be said for dining in a shopping mall.
The Bake,Bishop Auckland Leisure & Retail Park, DL14 9AATel: 01388 335155
Surroundings: 5Food quality: 9Service: 9Value for money: 8