Feathers flies high in food league

Apr 4 2008 by Jane Hall, The Journal

Most pub landlords would be happy to survive their first 12 months in business. Rhian Cradock and partner Helen Greer have instead cooked up an award-winning storm since taking over one of Northumberland’s remoter watering holes. Jane Hall reports.

YOU need a stiff drink by the time you pull into the car park at The Feathers Inn at Hedley on the Hill.

Even non-imbibers might be tempted to down a pint after making the steep ascent (it’s a second gear job in places) from Stocksfield up a road with more twists and turns than an Inspector Morse story.

That’s if you can find the road for Hedley on the Hill. Northumberland County Council seems to have an aversion to signposting this small village high above the Tyne Valley. A clue lies in its name, however. It’s not called Hedley on the Hill for nothing.

Those brave enough to make the engine-straining journey heavenwards will be rewarded on two fronts. The first compensation is the panoramic view across Northumberland and Tyneside in this airy location (you can see why gliding enthusiasts have made it a base). The second is Hedley’s one and only pub, The Feathers Inn.

From the outside The Feathers doesn’t look anything special. Perched at the village’s highest point, the solid stone building lies sideways to the main road. It looks as if it will withstand the worst the weather can throw at it, and probably has. It’s what lies behind the green doors to the public bar that is the draw: a warm welcome from enthusiastic staff, a roaring fire, local real ales and award-winning food. The Feathers has long had a reputation as a dependable place to stop off for a meal. But in the past 12 months it has entered a different culinary league.

It was recently voted Northumbria Dining Pub of the Year 2008 by the Good Pub Guide, and celebrity chefs Gary Rhodes and Brian Turner last November chose Rhian Cradock, of The Feathers, as their North East UKTV Food Hero.

The 27-year-old chef narrowly missed taking the national Food Hero title in a hotly contested TV final.

There are those who strive – and fail – all their lives to win such accolades. Yet The Feathers has picked up two of the most prestigious food titles within a matter of weeks. As the inn specialises in championing traditional North East dishes and local, seasonal produce presented with the minimum of fuss, perhaps this success isn’t too surprising.

What is astonishing is that Rhian Cradock and partner Helen Greer, 30, only took The Feathers over on April 2 last year. Add to this that Rhian has come to cooking via an archaeology degree from Liverpool University, and The Feathers’ rapid promotion from pleasant rural eaterie to one of the North East’s dining hot spots is even more remarkable.

As is the admission that neither of the plaudits has been sought – they’re down to public support. “It’s great, it’s fantastic,” Rhian enthuses. “Who wouldn’t be pleased? But I wouldn’t put myself forward. I’m not that sort of person.

“We owe both these awards to the public. The UKTV Food Hero award was all down to the village and the local community. They nominated us and the public voted for us. I suppose it comes down to us supporting the local community and they in turn have supported us.

“Getting the dining pub of the year was the biggest shock. We just got a letter in the post one day saying we’d been awarded the Northumbria Dining Pub of the Year 2008. We knew absolutely nothing about it.

“Again that was down to the public putting us forward. But unlike similar awards, the Good Pub Guide is totally independent. They don’t tell you they are inspecting you and no money changes hands.

“It’s a welcome pat on the back and shows we are doing the right thing in offering food that people like rather than anything over-complicated. If you’ve got wild mussels on the menu, then you want to present them in the simplest way possible.”

Simple is a word that crops up often in Rhian’s conversation, along with flavour and quality. Which is why he believes The Feathers will never become Northumberland’s first Michelin-starred establishment. “Not that I hanker after a Michelin,” he says quickly. “I really don’t want to do the type of food you need to do to get a Michelin. I like simple food, and Michelin is not about being simple. We just want to keep The Feathers a traditional country inn.”

Rhian and Helen took over from Marina Atkinson, who had run the pub for 27 years. The couple, who met in a restaurant in Liverpool where Helen was waitressing and Rhian cooking to fund his way through university, had spent nearly 18 months looking for the right place to take on in the North East.

Rhian hails from Burnopfield in County Durham and he and Helen, a Merseysider, felt drawn to this region with its abundance of quality food and drink producers when they decided the time was right to leave behind the safety net of secure jobs in London and set up on their own.

Rhian had been senior sous chef at the National Portrait Gallery and chef at Chez Bruce, while Helen, who has a degree in psychology from Manchester University, was working at Great Ormond Street Hospital in neurophysiology and clinical physiology.

The couple had not been looking for a pub, but as soon as they saw The Feathers they fell in love with it.

Rhian, who credits a great aunt with instilling in him his love of cakes, pies and traditional North East food, hasn’t made life easy for himself since installing himself in The Feathers kitchen. He changes the menu daily to reflect availability and seasonality.

He does get Mondays off, however. It’s the one day the pub doesn’t serve food. Anyone dropping in for a pint and plate of beer-battered North Sea fish will find the only chewing going on is by parish councillors discussing village politics. For Monday night is meeting night at The Feathers.

“This is very much a community pub,” explains Helen. “One week it’s the parish council, the next the leek club, then the WI. There is something on every Monday. But the villagers make sure everything is done on a Monday because they don’t want to be detrimental to our business. If we aren’t successful, then they know we won’t be here.”

Not that Rhian and Helen can take an evening off. As they have found, running their own pub is a 24-hour-a- day job. “You need a lot of energy and stamina,” Rhian admits. “We are working from 8am to 1am. It is hours you couldn’t do if you didn’t have the enthusiasm.”

Enthusiasm is something Helen and Rhian have in ladlefuls, especially for the sort of food once served up daily in the region’s homes but which, due to health scares and lack of time, has now all but fallen off the domestic menu. Dishes like homemade black pudding; devilled chicken livers and lambs’ kidneys; ham and eggs and slow-cooked rabbit followed by such delights as steamed marmalade sponge or apple crumble and vanilla custard.

Some recipes date back centuries, though a 21st Century steak and kidney pie might be unrecognisable to our 17th Century forebears.

But diners at The Feathers between April 8 and 12 will have a chance to be transported back 260 years when Rhian recreates dishes made popular by the original Mrs Beeton – Hexham- born Hannah Glasse. Hannah’s The Art of Cooking Made Plain and Easy was a bestseller in Georgian times. Now she is all but forgotten, Rhian hopes his tribute to the original domestic goddess, who grew up just miles from Hedley, will enthuse others.

Such delights as soused mackerel; salmagundi (a salad of layers of lettuce, sorrel, chicken and anchovies); mock turtle soup; pigeon pie; venison pastry; lamb ragoo; baked cod’s head; dressed carp; roast rabbit (hare fashion) and quaking pudding (blancmange) await those brave enough to try. Rhian admits the food may not be to everyone’s taste.

“All the dishes are very strongly flavoured, probably because the meat would have been off, and the fish is very salty. You couldn’t do it today. But it is a very interesting type of food from a very interesting local woman.”

“What interests me about her,” Helen adds, “ is that Hannah wasn’t just the first British woman to write a cook book – before that they had all been French – but that she wrote for relatively ordinary people and was very successful at it. She seemed to unerringly know what people wanted.”

Just like Rhian and Helen.

It shows we are doing the right thing in offering food that people like rather than anything over-complicated