PORTION control is a difficult aspect of the restaurant business. One person's generous helping is another's miserly one. How can proprietors get it right?

An attempt at tackling this problem is made at The Falcon in Hilton, near Yarm, where almost everything on the extensive menu is available in a "small" or "regular " portion. However, although we believe ourselves to be of average appetites and modestly chose small portions for our starters, a starter and a main course combined were so substantial and left us so full, we couldn't even bring ourselves to contemplate the dessert menu.

The generosity of the servings at The Falcon may help to explain its popularity, a popularity which could become an issue in the village. The Saturday evening we were there, the large rear car park was full and the cars were lining both sides of the village main street. Inside, The Falcon was certainly busy but by no means full.

Hilton's proximity to the community said to the Europe's biggest housing estate - Ingleby Barwick - and that community's notorious lack of facilities may also be a factor in The Falcon's popularity.

The pub had been recommended to us by a village resident who said the food was a cut above the average for pub grub and who, while warning of its busy trade, said it retained the atmosphere of a village hostelry.

That turned out to be an accurate assessment. The front of the pub has a traditional bar with plenty of seating for drinkers and those wanting bar meals while a large dining room is to the rear. We had taken the precaution of booking and were shown to a corner table next to an artificial plant festooned with flashing Christmas tree lights. We couldn't make up our minds if this was a job forgotten on Twelfth Night or an all-year-round feature.

The menu featured a large range of pastas, risottos, steaks, curries, stir-fries and also some "chef's specials". The length of the menu and working out what a "small" or "regular" portion might mean took a while to digest.

We were given plenty of time to do this but after making our choice the starters arrived almost immediately which made us wonder if the chef was psychic. Sylvia's chicken goujons with barbecue sauce(small portion - £4.50) were mountainous, suitably tender and crispy but very hot, so hot that the one I pinched promptly burnt the roof of my mouth. Served me right, I guess.

My Stilton and Guinness pate with gooseberry sauce (small portion - £4.50) intrigued me on the menu but turned out not to be particularly exotic. Served with melba toast, the strong Stilton flavour overwhelmed the Guinness but despite that the sweet/sour gooseberry sauce worked well with the cheese. I'm not sure if it was what I expected but it was agreeable nevertheless.

Sylvia threw caution to the wind in the choice of her main course, opting for a "regular" sized (10-12oz) freshly battered cod (£7.50 - a "small" one, 7-8oz, is £5.50). It was certainly large, encased in a crispy and light batter, and clearly fresh but perhaps it had been a tiddly-bit over-cooked. The home-made chips which accompanied it were chunky to the point of being more the size of chops than chips and were assembled into a small tower block.

Things were on a similarly grand scale with my medallions of pork cooked with apricots and cream (£13.95 - only one "size" available). The medallions were of the proportions last seen cast in gold hanging amidst the chest hair of the comedian Lenny Henry doing his fabled impersonation of the American lurve-machine Teddy Pendergrass - more like wagon wheels than medallions and there were six of them beautifully cooked to that point where the pork was still tender and not dry. The dish of fresh vegetables which accompanied them would comfortably have served four. I struggled manfully to eat all the pork but gave up one medallion from the finish. The dessert menu was turned away resolutely and the bill came to a pretty reasonable £30, excluding drinks.

Ian McNaughton, who runs the Falcon with his manageress Vivienne Wishart, said the portion choice was an attempt to cater for what he called the "Desperate Dans" among his customers who travelled from as far afield as York and Newcastle to stoke up.

Cow pie may be absent from the menu but a hearty appetite is a good thing to take to The Falcon. And the moral of this story is: don't be greedy, go small.