Sitwell stirs it up

William visits The Greedy Goose in Plymouth

Prysten House in Plymouth, where part of the ground floor is taken up by a restaurant called The Greedy Goose, is one of the oldest buildings in the city. Indeed, it’s worth relishing as the surrounding architecture is a collapsed and occasionally spiky jigsaw of 20th-century thoughtlessness. Four hundred years ago, when 102 brave souls boarded the Mayflower with a very uncertain future ahead of them, Prysten House was already a 122-year-old merchant’s house.

As its sturdy walls are still intact, if you’re tempted to visit Plymouth for this year’s Mayflower quatercentenary, I recommend that you ponder on the miserable journey of the pilgrims, and the death and disease they fetched upon the Native Americans, at The Greedy Goose.

For it is a cosy sort of dungeon. The windows may be tiny, letting in little natural daylight, and the walls made of local limestone rubble, but there is warm hospitality to be found in this medieval space.

While the restaurant has been open now for some five years, our visit marked the first time it’s permitted babies and very small children. Although, Walter (15 months old) – officially the first small person to dine at The Greedy Goose – would tell you that so beaming and charming were the staff with him that they seemed dab hands at this baby malarkey.

We were also grateful for and impressed at how quickly the little boy’s order of vegetables arrived. For as every parent knows, the key to peace when taking babies to restaurants is to get them food as soon as possible. Even if it means the child throws much of it on the floor, as Walter – of course – did.

And, as ever, I watched him do it with envy. It must be such a hoot. Perhaps critics should have a special dispensation, especially in restaurants where the staff keep asking you how everything is. If you’ve chucked the fish on the floor it might prevent them from asking you if you liked it.

There was no such need at The Greedy Goose. I had a delicious little starter of smoked salmon on charred brioche (I quite like burnt toast and it’s scientifically impossible to toast brioche without burning it), which had small dabs of crème fraîche, little flecks of lemon zest and just the perfect amount of dill (ie not much, horrid herb that it is). My wife Emily was in rhapsody, meanwhile, over her soft and smooth Jerusalem artichoke soup.

She then tucked into a beautiful piece of pork belly, with plentiful fat, Yorkshire pud, roast potatoes and an almost silly number of accompanying little pots. Each one bore vegetables: swede, cauliflower cheese, onions… we could have fed a shipful of starving pilgrims with the leftovers.

I was eating roasted pollock, however, keen for a change to explore the idea of a healthy option for Sunday lunch. The fish was perfectly cooked and came with nicely textured endive, fennel and samphire – although I wish the chef had gone a little easier on the butter. But then Ben Palmer (chef and co-owner) was once a quarter-finalist on Masterchef: The Professionals –a show I occasionally critique on and where the contestants seem encouraged to assault us critics with butter. Tasty, yes. Very. But the pork option was probably healthier.

I continued my health charge by avoiding the sticky toffee pud and chocolate mousse, picking instead the rice pudding. Who knows, it may yet be slowly killing me, but God, it was good. Presented in a generously large bowl, it was caressed in vanilla and made tart with segments of clementine and gingerbread croutons.

It arrived while Emily was off changing Walter. I had just the one spoon, then another one and, so she wouldn’t be cross, had about eight more. ‘Tiny portions here!’ I said on her return. I quite like her withering look, so had another spoonful.