Jenny Needham makes a last-minute booking at Ellerby for her New Year's Eve supper

THERE’S nothing like a short break at the seaside to blow away the Christmas cobwebs. So we headed off to a favourite haunt – Runswick Bay – and took a bus ride to Whitby with the aim of shedding some calories on a bracing walk back along the coast.

The first surprise was the bus, one of Arriva North East’s new super-smart Sapphire vehicles, which were launched by royal lookalikes in September. At least I think they were lookalikes – the photograph I saw of “Kate” at the wheel was very convincing, though I doubt she would have worn her blue Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress for bus driving duties. Perhaps the dress was chosen to match the smart blue interior of the Sapphire fleet, 24 brand new buses equipped with free WiFi, power points to charge phones and lap-tops, audio visual bus stop announcements and comfortable e-leather seating.

We were impressed. The bus journey between Runswick and Sandsend had always seemed on the pricey side at £4 each a trip, so it was nice to see an upgrade to the service. Then we discovered we couldn’t connect to the internet and returned to staring out of the window at the lovely North Yorkshire scenery.

The second surprise, on arrival at Whitby, was how packed it was. On a bracing winter’s day, there seemed to be more people about than in the height of the tourist season. All the more idiotic of us, then, to have failed to book anywhere to eat. We had known for weeks that we were spending New Year’s Eve at the coast, but forgot to make a supper reservation.

Back at the cottage we phoned around the usual places. All full said the restaurant proprietors, though many had the good grace not to laugh when we tried to book a table for New Year’s Eve just 30 hours prior to the turning of the year. To get a window seat in the Moon and Sixpence, on Whitby harbourside, we should have phoned around September time apparently. Two local hotels – the Raithwaite, near Sandsend, and the Cliffemount, in Runswick – offered us seats at their gala dinners (three courses and entertainment at £75 a head), but old jeans and warm winter jumpers wouldn’t have been a good look on the dance floor.

Running out of options, we finally rang the pub in Ellerby, just up the road from Runswick Bay, and were offered a table at 6.30pm, which was gratefully received. We last visited the Ellerby Hotel about a dozen years ago on a hugely busy bank holiday and had an endless wait with starving children. When the food finally arrived, mine was inedible as the chicken in the curry was raw in the middle and the rest of the offerings were really nothing to shout about.

We hadn’t been back since, but the car park is always full when we pass by, and the comments on Trip Advisor are very complimentary – the Ellerby was a 2014 winner in the website’s restaurant category – so perhaps we were just unlucky first time around.

The welcome this New Year’s Eve was very warm, fire burning and smiling staff eager to help. The décor – very “beige” – could do with a little warming up, but it’s clean and smart. The Ellerby has a 55-seat restaurant, a smaller 15-seat dining room and additional tables in the cosy bar, which is where we were seated on narrow tables which struggled to hold the main plates and many side dishes.

The menu consists mainly of standard traditional British food, such as home-made soup, prawn cocktail, pate and mushrooms for starters; cod, seared salmon, vegetarian lasagne and steaks for mains, and home-made sticky toffee pudding and raspberry and creme brulee for dessert. The substantial Ellerby Supper (£24.95) consists of gammon, fillet steak, Cumberland sausage, pan-fried chicken, black pudding, fried egg, tomato, pineapple and mushrooms and is presumably not on the menu for anyone whose New Year resolutions include losing some weight.

The regular menu is supplemented with daily specials, and we chose to share the seared scallops with chorizo and pea puree. The scallops were thin as though two had been sliced to make four, and were not nicely browned on the outside. Their flavour was overwhelmed by the chorizo and the puree was a bit watery.

For mains, we fared better, my husband with Gressingham duck on a bed of Savoy cabbage and bacon, which was very tasty though a bit overcooked, and I had a small fillet steak with the usual accompaniments. (Most of the mains can be ordered in two portion sizes, which I think is an excellent idea). The steak was perfectly cooked, chargrilled, tender and succulent, the vine tomatoes tasty, the mushroom a little watery, the onion rings perfectly crispy.

All mains come with a choice of two side dishes – my portion of chunky chips would have fed two. In fact, one of the Ellerby’s main selling points is probably that no one could possibly leave here empty. Two diners on the table next to us had ordered the steak pie, which is particularly recommended on the menu and the portions were large. They must also have been very tasty as our neighbours devoured the lot and kept commenting on how delicious the pie was.

Sweets, too, are anything but skimpy, and we shared a plate of profiteroles after seeing a portion of four enormous profiterole balls oozing cream and covered in a caramel sauce being carried aloft to another customer. The dish proved to be a bit too sweet for my taste – I prefer them with a coat of bitter chocolate to offset the sweetness – but the choux pastry was light and there was plenty for two.

Three courses, with apertifs, shared starter and dessert, and a bottle of wine set us back £71.30, and as we paid and headed out into the night, the pub was filling up with New Year’s Eve revellers dressed to the nines. Many were welcomed by name by the excellent staff and obviously visit the Ellerby Hotel on a regular basis, but it might be wise to make a New Year’s resolution about burning off some calories in advance. A walk along the coast from Whitby to Runswick perhaps…

Food Facts

The Ellerby Country Inn, 12/14 Ryeland Lane, Ellerby, Whitby, North Yorkshire, TS13 5LP. T: 01947 840342; W: ellerbyhotel.co.uk

Food quality: 3/5

Service: 4/5

Ambience: 4/5

Value for money: 4/5