42 • The Sunday Times Magazine
gym, café. It seems an unlikely
setting for one of the UK’s most
exciting new restaurants, but open
the mind and the barns and acres
of countryside could be more
off-radar Sweden than a 20-minute
cab dash from Newcastle. I’m
reminded of Daniel Berlin Krog
in the middle of nowhere at Skane
Tranas. After dinner at Pine, that
comparison with one of the world’s
great restaurants stands right up.
In an upstairs room we find half
restaurant, half industrious open
kitchen. There’s so much room
between tables it feels completely
luxurious: fur throws over chairs,
views for miles. The place even
smells heavenly, like a walk in
a forest where, out of sight,
someone is cooking something
utterly delicious.
The food is even more special.
First to arrive is a sparkling broth,
madly beefy without any meat:
roasted yeast and celeriac, sheer
savouriness. It’s like celestial
Bovril, magic miso. From then
on in, it’s one exciting mouthful
after another. The cumulative
effect is almost dizzying despite
occasionally off-putting titles.
“Garden juice” or “Snowball turnip,fennel yoghurt with fermented
plum” are not whispering sweet
sybaritism in my ears.
But the juice is an alive-tasting
emerald shot, vivid, verdant. (The
pal is less keen: “I’m suddenly in
a Nordic spa.”) And the turnip
number is a delicate barnstormer,
the crisp root stripped of its
bitterness, yoghurt set into
something like savoury panna
cotta, hint of sour-sweetness,
a bravura balancing and layering
act. Unsurprisingly, chef-owner
Cal Byerley was formerly a pastry
chef: that precision is the tell.
The novelty of chefs serving
their own food has worn off for the
embarrassingly over-restauranted.
Here, cooking is so extraordinary
you want to know details. Even
their own bread and butter, served
in what looks like a pristine bird’s
nest — I’m not even irritated by
this, or the wine cooler resembling
a dinosaur’s egg — is superb.
A dramatic green herb butter
particularly: baste me, I’m done.
The usual robotic script is
missing too. In a beetroot dish
— one of the many that still swirl
around my head next morning —
the root is turned into somethingIt’s only January but is this
my restaurant of the year?
Pine,
Vallum Farm,
Military Road,
East Wallhouses,
Northumberland;
01434 671202,
restaurantpine.co.ukMarina O’Loughlin
A
mazingly, something positive
has come out of lockdown —
or at least the threat of it. Normally
before a trek to a restaurant I need
to be pretty confident it’s worth it.
(You try submitting expenses for
a complicated schlep you’re not
writing up with a breezy “Nah,
wasn’t really that interesting.”)
But at the time of booking Pine,
another lockdown was looming,
allowing a bit of the old gung-ho.
What’s the worst that could
happen? At least I’d get a trip
somewhere. Elsewhere. Anywhere.
And what an elsewhere it turns
out to be. Vallum is a huddle of
former farm buildings, gift shops,Ta b l e Ta l k
Pine
Northumberland