Eating Out review of The Blitz Restaurant, Newton Aycliffe
Today there is ketchup and mayonnaise, milk and sugar, and pepper and salt on the table, but 80 years ago, the Aycliffe Angels must have stored 4.5 inch shells, or their parts, against the wall before the shells were despatched overseas to be fired by field guns at the enemy.
Above the condiments tableRoyal Ordnance Factory 59 at Newton Aycliffe employed more than 17,000 women during the Second World War and made more than 700m bullets and shells in the hundreds of buildings across its 867 acres.
Some of those buildings survived the post-war conversion into a business park, which still has straight streets running through it so the original grid lay-out can still be traced.
The Blitz Restaurant and ROF59 The munitions factory’s administrative block is now the ROF59 trampoline and climbing wall activity centre accompanied by The Blitz restaurant, and so today there is nothing more aggressive than a load of sweaty-faced kids clobbering each other with pugil sticks.
The restaurant is in a classic wartime utilitarian building, square and without architectural adornment, which gives it an austere 1940s feel, and to make a connection with VE Day, we visited on Saturday.
It was, almost to the day, the 80th anniversary of the worst accident at Aycliffe when eight workers in the testing workshop were killed in an explosion so powerful that nothing remained of four of them. They died just six days before the war formally ended on VE Day.
READ MORE: HOW THE ANGELS OF AYCLIFFE WERE ROCKED BY A DEADLY EXPLOSION JUST DAYS BEFORE VE DAY
ROF59 activity centre embraces its past. Not only are there clues to its previous purpose still on the brickwork, but there are wartime front pages and Angels memorabilia on the walls which contain the memories of amazing stories and efforts.
Caliber Ammunition Cans on the tablesIn The Blitz, the table numbers are displayed on the distinctive-shaped steel Caliber Ammunition Cans in which soldiers kept their bullets.
The restaurant serves the same food as goes to the activity centre café where parents were fiddling with their phones while their children burnt off calories enjoying themselves. The menu, therefore, is limited. There’s chicken curry (£7.95), a variety of 12 inch pizzas (£8 to £10.50), and several burgers, from a spicy bean burger for £8 to the cheese and bacon burger, which I ordered, for £11.
A poster on the wall at ROF59We had The Blitz to ourselves, which meant I could roam around looking at the items on the walls. One poster, for Bombs Away laxatives – “keeping our boys regular since 1945” – must have been a joke, but there is a fabulous story about how it came about.
Apparently, when the Nazis over-ran Norway, they requisitioned all the occupied country’s canned sardines which were sent to the U-boat crews.
The British Special Operations Executive supplied the Norwegian resistance with croton oil, produced in India, which were then secretly used in the canning process instead of vegetable oil, the pungency of the sardines masking the foreign taste of the oil.
Croton oil is known as “atomic laxative”, so the effects on the submariners in a contained environment under the waves must have been truly explosive as their bombs went away.
The food in The Blitz had no such aftermath. In fact, for a children’s play area, it was pretty presentable.
Petra, my wife, had a large roast potato with baked beans and cheese (£7.50) (above). The potato skin had been rubbed with oil and probably salted so it was surprisingly tasty. There were plenty of beans and grated cheese, although it could have done with a little greenery.
Theo enjoyed his ham and pineapple pizza (£10) (above), which was reassuringly burnt around the edges so it looked to have been handstretched, and had a generous topping.
And my burger (above) was fine: a juicy patty, a bit of interest added by the cheese and bacon, accompanied by lettuce and tomato. I also got a little bowl of creamy coleslaw, plus onion rings and some very good chips. I would not have liked to gone bouncing on a trampoline after consuming that lot.
With acceptable coffees from a machine, the bill for three of us came to £37.30.
A display of Angels memorabilia at ROF59The food at The Blitz is very much activity centre food for children and parents rather than for a destination restaurant, but it was clean and fresh.
It is a great that such a building with so many traces of important history is open to the public so they can soak up the spirit of the The Blitz and VE Day.
READ MORE: EATING OUT REVIEW OF LITTLE SICILY IN BISHOP AUCKLAND
However, I also wondered how many of the children happily bombing around in the play areas, bouncing on the trampolines and climbing up the walls, know of the story of the building, of their town, perhaps of their grandmothers’ involvement, and does it matter if they don’t?
The Blitz,
ROF59
Durham Way South, Aycliffe Business Park, Co Durham, DL5 6XN
Tel: 01325 728 222
Website: rof59.co.uk
Ratings
Food quality: 6
Service: 7
Surroundings: 8
Value for money: 7