Is George & Dragon Still Open? Bar Rescue Update (Phoenix, AZ)

George & Dragon is an English-style pub in the Uptown area of Phoenix, Arizona, opened in 1995 by a British expatriate who had previously run a pub in London. In the episode "How to Train the Dragon," Jon Taffer's team found the business roughly $700,000 in debt and losing about $5,000 a month, with the owner struggling to manage the pub while grieving the recent death of his mother. The show depicted years of accumulated financial strain compounding the personal loss, leaving daily operations without clear direction.

The rescue team kept the George & Dragon name, judging the pub's decades-long reputation in central Phoenix to be an asset worth preserving rather than replacing. Instead, the consultants focused on operational fixes: reworking the bar and kitchen menus, retraining staff on service standards, and installing financial controls intended to address the debt load documented on the episode. The physical space was refreshed without abandoning the English-pub identity that had defined the bar since the 1990s. According to Bar Rescue Updates, sales at George & Dragon rose more than 50 percent in the six weeks following the rescue, an early sign the operational changes were taking hold.

The pub has continued operating under its original name at 4240 North Central Avenue in the years since. A Yelp listing for the location, updated July 2026, shows 754 accumulated reviews, consistent with continued operation as a neighborhood pub. The business also maintains an active Facebook page under the George & Dragon English Pub and Restaurant name. A related second location, George & Dragon II, previously operated a few miles away on South 48th Street but is listed as closed on Yelp; that satellite location is separate from the original Central Avenue pub featured on the episode. Taffer's on-air conclusion credited the financial and service changes with reversing the pub's trajectory, a read tied to the six-week sales figures reported at the time rather than to any independent, longer-term audit of the business.