Reviews in County Durham

This ordinary English town-center pub offers a surprisingly good Thai-food menu. Nothing over-fancy but very ample portions of good hot spicy food. I visited again recently for the first time since the smoking ban and enjoyed it even more. Now one can see right across the room! And depart after dining without stinking of other peoples' stale smoke. At the same time, the place has been marginally smartened-up without losing the appeal of its unpretentious character or by being prettified. There are excellent tables by the large front window allowing good views of the comings and goings in the Horse Market. The walls have an interesting range of old photographs of bygone local scenes. The draught beers are well kept and not served too cold. The food orders are individually prepared, so expect to wait for about 20 minutes for yours to arrive. A decent lunchtime plate of tasty food for less that £6 can't be bad! It deserves support. (I confess I've never visited this pub/restaurant other than at weekday lunchtimes. Sometimes pubs change clientele and their character in the evenings and at weekends.)

Sunday lunches at the Buck Inn are great value and tasty! Friendly staff too.

I would like to stress my opinion about the shocking standard of food and service i recieved whilst dining in the restaurant. To start with the food standards are becoming appalling, the sizes are small, undercooked and didnt look appetising,it has been so much better than its current standards. we were told that we were not allowed brunch menu at 1230, as it was the main menu only and that lunch menu was not available, even though in other frankie and bennys it is all the time even during the holidays. i heard numerous comments about what i think was a manager which were not pleasent to hear from a group of staff standing around the till area and one of the them swore repeatedly, she was a small girl with black bobbed hair. other than that the manager seemed really nice but the experience was spoilt and i have to say i will not be returning again.

i thought the meal was top class i had a soup for a starters it was full of flavour and had the chicken Parmesan which was the best i had tasted in teesside recommend to anyone

Absolutely superb restaurant. Lovely warm and cosy atmosphere with very friendly and polite service. Food is exceptional quality and portions can be enough to feed a small elephant, so you won't leave hungry. I must recommend the Chicken Tikka Bhuna with Pilau rice, with has extraordinary flavour but not as hot as the Madras, which is also a lovely dish. Myself and my partner now refuse to go to any other Indian restaurant.

I took my family to the Chester Moor for Sunday lunch on 16 December 2007. We often use this pub during the week and find it to be generally quite good, but on this occasion I was very disappointed. Basically all of the meats on offer appear to have been preprocessed, frozen and then resurrected, along with the vegetables. It was so poor that I felt obliged to write to the manager - something I can't ever previously recall doing.

Very cheap food and nice atmosphere.The food was a bit uninspiring and delivered to our table in 2 minutes flat suggesting it was not exactly homecooked...but then I guess you get what you pay for!

The best Indian in Darlington- in fact the best I have had! Really delicious food in a lovely atmosphere with attentive service. Very generous portion sizes, we always eat far too much! A tip though: if you have reserved a table make sure you turn up on time- we were 15 mins late once and the owner/manager was not impressed and had given our table away! It was a busy Saturday night though.

5 full adults meals for under £20, made this excellent value. The food was beautiful, freshly cooked, and real chips.

It's the best Chinese restaurant in the area. I love the Cranberry Chicken fillet and Creamy House Curry. They're chef-special. I highly recommend these 2 dishes.

Great! This place has been done out to a very high standard. I took my staff to their xmas do here and I have to say it was fab! The joiners arms up the road also do great stuff but in a more old fashioned way

Booked a table for 4 last saturday after reading comments on SV site. Greeted by a charming waitress as we entered the door. Meal excellent value with one of the best Parmos in the North. Had to try the Chilli ice cream - fantastic! Staff very attentive and our glasses were never empty for long. This is billingham's best kept secret - don't wait too long to go as I can see it becoming very popular soon and tables will be booked constantly. Going back next week!

We go here regularly the food varied depends on which chef is on duty usually good

the food is good but they use a lot of garlic which is not on the menu especially then chicken and ham pie (not good)

If you like wholesome, home-cooked food in the traditional surroundings of a lovely old coaching inn, then the Ancient Unicorn at Bowes is hard to beat. There's also a good selection of beers including real ales. Worth the trip to the beautiful North Pennines around Teesdale, or go for a stop-over in the well-appointed bedrooms.

I have eaten now at the Joiners Arms on many occasions but I have to say I love it! The thing is that the food is fresh, I know it is because I have seen the chef preparing the veg and he often shows me the meat he has acquired from the local butcher. But what I will say is this....take your family for Sunday lunch and make yourself a profit. This happened to me recently. I took all the outlaws for Sunday roast and all of them were very satisfied with the beef, pork and chicken dinners they received. I asked the waitress to bring the bill to me so as i could pay for it, which she duly did. Then all my guests started dipping their hands into their respective pockets and purses whipping a tenner at a time. There were6 adults and three children in our group and everyone had a coffee and there was a desert or two ordered and the cost was....... £34 I made £16 profit!! Or at least I could have had I not handed them their cash back.

i have been eating here for 5 years now and the food just keeps getting better. the staff are fantastic to. a must for curry experts.

We were last here 3yrs ago and it was excellent, however this time was a no go chicken vindaloo not that spicy and the chicken was tough, nan breads burnt, chicken madras was ok according to the wife,the rice was fine the service was what you could call ok.I don`t think we will be going back until they change the chef.3 years ago fantastic currys 3 yrs on very poor.