Quick preview of Bandstand!, a new venture from the Deep North team.
It opened in Exhibition Park in the summer, following the demise of Urban Green which previously ran the site before it closed earlier this year. It was never bad before, just very ‘functional’ I suppose. Quick coffee, bit of cake, nothing that’s gonna blow your socks off.
With the venue now back under council control, the Deep North team stepped in, alongside Newcastle ice cream institution Ciccarelli’s, which are doing the same and reopening the sister café over at Paddy Freeman’s Park under the same council deal.
It would have been easy for Deep North to just bang out a doughnut shop serving takeaway coffee (a bit more like the Ouseburn spot), and my expectation was pretty much that. But after announcing ‘evening services’, I came out of Bandstand! (excitable exclamation mark theirs, not mine!) pleasantly surprised this week.
While day-to-day you can expect brunch and a more rounded offering — Allpress coffee, matcha, breakfast-y plates, and of course, doughnuts — they are also running Fri/Sat nights as a more ‘traditional kitchen’. We popped along on the opening night of the small plates.
If you’ve been to the location before, it’s pretty no-frills café energy. Nice place to sit outside in the summer, and obviously stunning access to the park which does a lot of the selling. Whether the footfall/lack thereof is a blessing or a curse, TBC.
The venue always had a wood-fired pizza oven, which is now being used properly — look at this ‘lil ‘nduja-spiked Neapolitan number.
Predictably/annoyingly/safely: choose depending on how you feel about them, the menu claims to be about ‘small plates’. In reality, there’s only a handful of these, and obviously the real move is to get a few of these, as well as a pizza.
They’re simple plates, but interesting enough to justify existing. Padrón peppers are made a lot more interesting with a spicy dukkah and labneh, taking this from ‘just another plate of peppers’ to something with a bit of pep.
Cannily, everything is a bit ‘dippy’ – which, if you’re ordering pizza, makes sense. Save those crusts.
Alongside these we got super ripe peaches and oozy Stracciatella which was probably when it clicked for me. They’re doing simple ‘3–4 things on a plate’ and doing it well enough to justify the £7. It’s not that hard! With a few rolls of salty Parma ham, this is a lovely little dish to pick at.
Similarly — ‘steak, anchovy crema’ doesn’t give away much for a tenner, but it’s a competently cooked piece of rump. Star of the show here, the anchovy crema hits all those salty bagna cauda-adjacent cravings. No, it was never going to be the best piece of cow you’ve ever eaten, but it more than does the job here.
The real surprise was the pizza, which was about as good as you could hope for. Sure, the standard for Neapolitan has risen to the point where nearly anyone with an Ooni/Roccbox can produce something decent, but this was well-baked, and ticked the boxes you need from a modern Neapolitan. Soft but chewy crust, and decent toppings, although the Gorgonzola on this was a bit lost. If you came here and had a drink and a pizza, you’d leave happy.
Natty wines and beers make it more of a late-night hangout. Expect beers from Wylam, just across the park, somehow cheaper than at the brewery itself (about £6 a tin), plus a few Full Circle staples. Wines are familiar (Judith Beck, Salamandre, “Samurai” Shiraz) but that’s not a slight. It means you can enjoy a couple of better drinks with your picky bits. They punch harder than you’d think they would for a venue like this. And that’s fab.
Service was well-intentioned but a little slow. It was opening night though, so I’m confident you’ll get a swifter experience. Either way, get yourself along to Bandstand! I’m rooting for it.
It’s genuinely interesting to see a venue like this try something else. Come after work on a Friday night for a couple of drinks and plates — nothing daft — wander over to Wylam afterwards, and you’ve got yourself a cosy little evening. Bandstand! might exist in its own little universe in Exhibition Park, but on this occasion, it hit all of the right notes, ones that I wouldn’t have expected it to be able to play at all.
Contact: instagram.com/thisisbandstand
Address: Exhibition Park, NE2 4PZ
Opening: Mon–Thurs 08:00–17:00, Fri–Sat 08:30–22:00 Sun 03:30–18:00 (check as liable to change)
