The Firepit, Front Street Tynemouth

Mar 20 2011 Sunday Sun

MRS EATS said she was fancying some sea air so we headed out in the Eatsmobile to Tynemouth, where we’d heard a regular haunt on Front Street had recently become a whole new dining experience.

The Arch, an old favourite, is now known as The Firepit and, as regular readers know, we will always try to make a point of returning a few years down the line to venues to see how they are doing.

The Firepit is a modern venue which now offers steaks and grills most of the time but, on a Sunday, has maintained the traditional Sunday lunch offering.

It has a ground-floor entrance with dark wooden floors, vibrant red walls and a dramatic staircase takes you to a busy, first-floor dining room dotted with dozens of pictures of movies stars past and present.

The restaurant seats around 30 and, at the end of the dining room, there were two huge booths where two happy families were already eating together.

The Sunday lunch menu offers a single course for £7.95, two courses for £10.95 and three courses for £13.95. There was one veggie option available for both sections.

We were aiming for three courses, but first of all we had to choose our starters and mains. The young, friendly waitress was straight over with the menus and, while we made our choice, we were served bread and butter.

Our relaxation was helped along by a sup or two of white wine and a beer of the bottled variety, as they don’t serve any booze on tap.

The lure of a fishy duo – prawn cocktail with smoked salmon – as ever proved too much for me to resist, while She Who Must Be Fed went for the stuffed beef tomato with mixed peppers and mozzarella.