Back for seconds

I HAD an odd sense of déjà-vu as I walked into The Gillygate last Saturday night. The last time I was there it was to watch a World Cup match in the beer garden and have pub grub with some mates.

We had an excellent meal from the steak menu and lapped up the scorching sunshine outside despite the match – Sweden v Trinidad and Tobago I think – being a bit dull.

We left impressed and if you’d said then that I wouldn’t return for four years I’d have scoffed but, what do you know, that’s exactly how it turned out.

Which takes me back to last Saturday night, when I found myself in the same beer garden with some of the same friends, watching yet another World Cup.

Perhaps it will be another four years again before I’m back but I doubt that very much, as The Gillygate is well worthy of more regular attention.

This was, for a long time, the Waggon And Horses, but it was revamped and renamed in 2003 and has now been run by Eric Rowley for nearly five of those past seven years.

It pitches itself as a “traditional village pub in the city centre”, which is a pretty fair description, only the heavy traffic in Gillygate itself belying the fact that this is an urban rather than rural place.

Heading in, there is a dining area to the right and a main bar area to the left, leading through to the paved garden which backs on to the Bar Walls, but doubles as a private car park for half a dozen cars or so.

On tap, beer drinkers have a choice of Black Sheep, Theakston’s, Hobgoblin, John Smith’s, Stella, Carling and Fosters, from which the Hobgoblin from Wychwood Brewery in Oxfordshire is probably the most interesting.

It’s a dark, rusty, bitter-sweet pint with cocoa and caramel flavours and a nice, dry, biscuity aftertaste. It has the feel of a winter beer, but at 4.5 per cent it’s not unduly heavy and it can easily be enjoyed in summer too.

Just as four years earlier, my mates and I supplemented our pints with some food, and headed outside where we watched Spain edge past Paraguay in the World Cup quarter-finals.

We ordered just after kick-off and although we were into the second-half when the meals arrived, the food was worth the wait. There aren’t many places where I’ve had such fulsome and enjoyable homemade pub grub so near the heart of York. Everything except the scampi is home-made and the portions are hearty and wholesome.

* TOMORROW is World Cup final night and if ever there were a time to get down to the pub, this is it.

It promises to be a dramatic night, with the guarantee of a new winner, and the atmosphere in pubs across the city is bound to surpass that in your living room.

Local Pubs Week in York has just finished but landlords still need support, so get on down there, choose between the Dutch and the Spanish, and lap it up.

* I asked last week for your beer-related film titles, following on from Caskablanca. The best came from Martin Hinchliffe, whose suggestions included Lock, Stock And Two Firkin Barrels; The Crate Escape; and From Beer To Eternity. Ian Warner of South Bank also suggested Pint Break and, following last week’s piece about Wold Top Brewery, Round The Wold In 80 Days, while Alan Bedford from Heworth came up with Double Diamonds Are Forever, Twelve Mild Men, and Porgy And Bass.