Zoe's aiming high for her home town

12:01pm Thursday 13th March 2008

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She's a woman in charge of a construction firm. She's a vegetarian with a restaurant in the farming town of Malton.

Even in 2008 Zoe Plummer is something of a North Yorkshire mould-breaker, and she has the intelligence, experience, and sensitivity to pull it all off with, well, aplomb.

For the past 10 years she has headed up Quicksilver Homes in York, formally Fulford Builders, her family's firm which has a £4 million turnover and a staff of 30.

With great successes already under her belt, she still has big ambitions for the building firm, but Zoe, together with her partner Tim Sinclair, has also followed a completely different direction in opening Ambiente, a tapas restaurant.

As a strict vegetarian, Zoe had always wanted a restaurant, but struggled with the idea of selling meat. "I had this great realisation that if people were going to go out and eat meat then I would rather they came to my restaurant where the food was ethically sourced and grown, " she said.

So, you can get locally-reared free range chicken, organic fairtrade coffee and food to cater to the most unusual of allergic specifications.

"A vegan pancake was a challenge on Shrove Tuesday, " she said. But, they did it.

Without eggs, without milk, and it was delicious.

Ambiente is in the heart of Malton Market Place, next to the Milton Rooms and opposite St Michael's Church. In fact, it is when you get her on to the subject of Malton that Zoe's eyes really light up.

She went to St Andrew's School there, and as a weekly boarder it came as a real blow when it announced it was closing and she had to change schools. "You all get really close and it just seemed so sad, we only had a term's notice, " she recalls.

Most of her Fridays as a child were spent in Malton. Her family is from a farming background and they would come to the cattle market and sell livestock in the morning, then go to the King's Head for lunch and buy their vegetables from Paley's before Zoe went to one of the two traditional sweet shops the town had to offer then.

With such a history, she has the credentials, then, to speak out about its future.

"My vision for Malton is for its development as the true capital of Ryedale, as a culturally rich, vibrant, shopping and food attraction, without losing touch with its roots as a rural market town, " she said. "I believe that it has the potential to become a destination in its own right, while serving the needs of all members of its own community."

And she doesn't just talk about it. A key member of the steering group Thrive, set up to help Malton do exactly that, and a regular attendee at the town's Business In Action meetings, she is a campaigner for better signage on the A64 to get the huge flow of traffic to turn off and visit the town. She is currently working on an idea to make the Ryedale Festival of Food and Drink a two-site event based both at Castle Howard and Malton, and she is very public about her support for change in the cattle market.

"It is a ramshackle two acres of Malton, " she said. "It is a contentious issue but if Malton needs bigger units to attract bigger names and they will have a positive effect by using their branding to draw people in."

Zoe's genuine love of Ryedale is just as obvious when it comes to her building work. "We've done work predominantly in Ryedale because that's where my heart is and you are always more comfortable in your own environment, " she said. There have been developments in Slingsby, Amotherby, Swinton, Middlecave Road in Malton, Barton-le-Willows and her home village of Westow. "Everyone said don't do Westow, it's your own doorstep, " she said. It is an indication of her belief in her work then that she ignored that advice.

"It's always nice driving past something you know you built."

In fact, one of her most prestigious projects was on Middlecave Road in Malton; five imaginative contemporary detached houses, stunningly light and airy, which garnered praise from many quarters, including the a nomination for a Royal Institute of British Architects Award and a Ryedale District Council Good Design and Construction Award.

"Being up for the awards really was a proud moment, to be part of that and nominated alongside the new stand at York (racecourse), for a local project in Malton, that was a feather in the cap for Ryedale District Council. They were so supportive. When it came to planning it was nail-biting but it was a unanimous decision to support it, " said Zoe.

So what plans does she have for the future? "With the building side, to grow in a sustainable way and to get up to £10 million turnover, " she said. "And with Ambiente, to replicate the business in other market towns. There are so many other market towns where people just don't invest. With people trying to reduce their carbon footprint they don't want to travel to big cities, they want something to happen on their doorstep, and that's what we're trying to do."

• On March 19 Ambiente is having a salsa night, with a meal and then salsa dancing in the Milton Rooms.