The George & Dragon

Oh my. I don’t know what they do for a living these Aldbrough folk but I know one thing for certain… they grow them big and hearty. Well they do if the portion sizes at The George and Dragon are anything to go by, Geoff Capes would struggle to clear a plate here.
We stumbled upon this big old pub on the drive home from a day sniffing other dog’s bottoms on the beach at Hornsea. Lola the staffie had decided to add weight to the occasion by vomiting bone fragments and cat food all over the back of Ade’s car, she then compounded her status as the day’s MOST unpleasant travelling companion by suffering liquid diarrhoea. We needed a car break and we needed it soon.
There’s no real reason why you would be in Aldbrough. We decided rather than go back the way we came from Leeds we would do a loop and head back via Hull (when you feel like heaven but you look like Hull…) and we had a beady eye open for a nice local hostelry to spend a little while in, primarily to enjoy a bit of dinner but also to have a short break from the smell of hot dog yack. So it was Aldbrough where we spotted the gleaming white exterior of The George and Dragon and decided to give it a go. A nearby bungalow sported a neon sign reading ‘Happy Birthday JESUS’ so we were hoping for some good local ‘colour’ as it were.
Unfortunately, it being the Wild West, there’s no chance of using debit cards but we were cheerfully directed to ‘Pete’s’ shop aka the local off licence. The shop isn’t called Pete’s Shop, it’s just run by Pete and the cash machine inside utilises (ready for it?) a DIAL UP MODEM!!! YES!!! What could be better than a trip down memory lane as the cash machine whirrrs and bleeps its internet request down the PHONELINE!!! I’ll tell you what’s better. Waiting the interminably long time for said machine to whirrr and bleep its internet request down the phoneline whilst enjoying the extremely hardcore pornography magazines that adorn the shelving unit on the side wall. He’s a saucy one, that Pete.
Cash in hand and eyes a little wider open than before we trooped back into the pub and ordered a fish platter and mixed grill– a mere £6.95 and £8.95 respectively. There’s about a 30 minute wait as the food is cooked fresh but we happily passed the time by the roaring real wood fire whilst the friendly locals chatted about Christmas and New Year– my particular favourite was one middle aged man who was trying to remember the name of the shots his son had bought him the night before… at one point he said he thought the drink was called Jingle Monsters. It was Jagermeister. At that point I rather wished he was MY dad.
We had a bit of a surprise when the food was ready, expecting it to come to the table in the bar but were instead led, in a charming 1970’s kind of fashion, into a separate little dining room with another lovely open fire and copies of The Countryside Alliance magazine. Yes, it was most definitely a country pub for shooty, blasty, badger bothering types.
The platters were unbelievably large. Served on what can only be described as carving dishes. The epic portions were topped off with a foot long basket of hand cut chips. The food was well cooked, clearly hot from the kitchen, fresh and tasty– we had to cave in after only managing half but the cheerful barmaid brought us takeaway boxes (the smell from which made my very fat cat, The Moog, do a little ballet of delight when we brought them home later).
The staff were friendly, welcoming and interested in us as guests, we’ve promised we will go again when we are next in the area and try out some more dishes. I only take one star off for a slight lack of cleanliness… there were a few stains on the tablecloth and the ladies loo needed a bloody good scrub. Having said that it is difficult in assessing rough and ready local country pubs on cleanliness as generally they run on very different terms from a city pub– people wander in with mucky books, they may even slap their latest feathered shotgun victim down on the bar whilst they have a quick one for the road, the accepted level of what is clean in the eyes of the locals is often quite significantly lower than what we city folk look for. Nothing was filthy, just needed a hotter wash and some better soap.
It may be a year before we are round that way again but I’d definitely pop into The George and Dragon once more– it really is exactly what I like in a pub (as you may have noticed)…and, of course, it would be criminal not to see the latest stock at Pete’s. For purely research reasons you understand.