Matthew Sankey talks about taking on the tenancy of The George and Dragon pub and restaurant in Speldhurst near Tunbridge Wells
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00:00It's been incredible. The support we've had, particularly from the local village behind
00:03me has been massive. Getting the keys at 10am on Monday and opening at 12 o'clock was probably
00:12quite a bonkers thing to do, but the only way to find out where things need to be fixed
00:18is by breaking them. So a bank holiday weekend is definitely a way to give it a big push.
00:24In the 1960s, this was my grandparents' pub and they ran a really successful business
00:31here with such amazing clients as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, kind of the Beckhams
00:38of the time. And it was only when they passed away that my father decided to sell the property.
00:46So that was in the 90s, so it's been a little while since we've been here. So coming back
00:52really feels like home. I remember running around this building as a tiny little toddler
00:57and I'm really pleased that my daughter's now doing the same, which is great. Our aspirations
01:03for this site are to be two things. So it's got to be a destination eatery, a gastropub
01:08if you like. So we've got a really talented chef, Gary Jarvis. He's super talented. He creates
01:13an amazing menu. But at the same time, this is the hub of our community here in Spealthurst.
01:18So we do have some more affordable and simpler dishes on the menu like Spealthurst, bangers
01:23as a mash.