"LIFE is so endlessly delicious” is a quote from New York food writer Ruth Reichl, which is painted in large letters on a wall in The Ship Inn’s pleasant restaurant. The Ship should personalise the quote so it reads: “Our parmo is so endlessly delicious.”

The £13.95 traditional Teesside delicacy filled the huge dinner plate so completely that the chips had to be hidden beneath it. I made a valiant stab at it, but got barely halfway through – and the next night, it filled one of our home dinner plates, and I still couldn’t see it off completely.

In fact, I’m still find bits of it wrapped in tinfoil in the fridge – it is endlessly delicious.

Because of the pub’s name, they try to give things a nautical feel. This, then, cannot have been a chicken parmesan. They must have gone overboard and served me with a whale.

Although a river of tarmac runs past the Ship’s front door – it is on the B1264 into Yarm – it gets its name from a curious 18th Century development. For 50 years, the Peirse brothers tried to make Low Worsall a port on the River Tees. Ships sailed in from Portugal and Norway, but because of the bendy nature of the river, they had to be pulled – or tracked – by man. It was hard, physical work, and the navigators needed somewhere to refresh themselves: the Ship was born. Today, the Ship has an energetic crew who flap in and out of the kitchen doors, attentively serving the surprisingly large dining areas.

As a starter, I opted for a bowl of garlic mushrooms, which was good – creamy, not overpoweringly garlicky, and served with two doorsteps of bread. I knew as I wiped the last of the bread around the bowl that I had made a tactical mistake, but it was too delicious to leave.

Petra, my wife, was more circumspect. She went for chicken liver pate, with red onion and thyme chutney, and a large pyramid of brown toast. “I could happily eat it all day,” she said, but didn’t, wisely leaving room for what was to come.

Her main course was baked cod with a Mediterranean crust of aubergines, peppers, tomatoes and courgettes. There were thin chips, and a citrus butter which added a delicate flavour to a well-cooked dish. By contrast, on the other side of the table… The waitress had tried to warn me that the chicken parmo was an exceptionally large affair, and that there was a smaller version for several pounds less on the menu (The Ship does many of its main courses in cheaper, smaller portions).

It was so large, that when I tried to take a photograph of it, I had to stand up to squeeze it all in to the frame. It was served on a bed of chunky chips with a sprinkling of salad around the side. Despite being a parmo, it didn’t have any parmesan in it – the top was coated in a layer of melted cheddar cheese; then came the breadcrumbs, then a layer of bechamel sauce, and then a whale-sized piece of chicken spread-eagled across the table. But despite its gargantuan size, it was delicious. The cheese didn’t overpower the more delicate flavours beneath it, and the bechamel and the chicken were moist enough to make it easy eating.

It was endlessly delicious. Others that night fared better than me, but I don’t think anyone managed to polish off an entire parmo in one sitting. The waiter took me by surprise by offering to wrap my leftovers, and after a moment’s thought, I greedily accepted his offer.

The next night, the parmo was still very tasty.

And the next, and the next… I looked at the dessert menu. The sticky toffee pudding was described as being “a chunk of home-made sponge”. For possibly the first time in my life, I couldn’t face a chunk of anything, so I had a toffee sundae which had just little chunklets of sponge amid the ice cream.

Petra had an apple and cinnamon crumble, which, predictably, wasn’t small. The apple had beautiful cinnamon hints to it, but the crumble topping wasn’t quite right – our only other quibble was with my chunky chips which I would say were slightly overcooked, but apparently the fashion is to have them brown rather than golden.

With drinks and coffees, the bill was a reasonable £63.65 – although I could have saved a fiver by opting for a smaller parmo, which would have been delicious, but not endlessly so.

Food facts

The Ship Inn,
Low Worsall, near Yarm
01642-780314.
theshipinn2002.co.uk
Not open Mondays

Food quality: 3/5 
Ambience: 3/5
Service: 4/5
Value for money: 4/5