Blue Dolphin Fish Bar — Restaurant in Hastings

This used to be our favorite chip shop in Hastings, as the food was always a generous portion of thick white fish encased in crisp, but very light batter, with a perfectly cooked portion of delicious chips, but what has happened to that standard, not to mention the once friendly and happy staff?

As since last September, we have been in there at least 5 times now, and the quality has been going more and more downhill each time, but last Monday was the worst, and we will never be going in there again, as we have been making excuses for the place, but the fish was being pulled out of the fryer in front of our eyes, it was the thinnest fish i have ever seen from a chip shop, and the darkest orange batter, it used to be golden yellow, it was served to us by the most miserable, but spaced out member of staff, who gave us 2 of the most disgusting pieces of fish i have ever seen, and the chips were a tiny portion of rock hard pellets!

We went back to the car so disappointed, that the reason now for going to Hastings has well and truly gone, we unwrapped the parcels, hoping we could eat something, that it maybe better than it looked, but we were so wrong, as my Husband couldn't even get the knife to cut through his rock hard batter, i managed to peer into mine, and apart from the skin, i could see next to no fish, just a tiny sliver, completely inedible, and a complete waste of our hard earned money, as the chips were disgusting also, so hard and cold, the whole 2 meals had to go in the bin, i don't even think the seagulls could of got through this, or that they would want to, as there was no smell of fish in the air at all.

I think the regular long standing cook has left, and that the new replacement just doesn't care what he's serving up to the customers, please replace this one with a more competent cook, who loves what he's doing, as that always shows in the final product, we're just so disappointed as Hastings won't be Hastings to us without going in...

We have been going to blue dolphin fish bar for years and years, we chose it a long time ago as it had the best tasting fish and chips. Unfortunately today we had an incredibly bad experience and the staff were incredibly rude. We ordered our meal as normal ( 1 x large cod and chips, 2 x battered sausage with chips, and a large cod on its own). When they started wrapping our meal, they put a very small piece of fish to be wrapped (wouldn’t even class it as a regular!). When we asked if it was a large they put another regular next to it to make it bigger. They then said that there would not be a large fish available for the second part of our order for 20 mins so we had to choose something different for one of the meals. Throughout this, the member of staff was slagging off a previous customer to me and was swearing about them. Once they called our number, we left the shop and double checked our order outside. They had given us plain sausages instead of the jumbo battered sausages that we ordered. We went back to challenge this and politely said we had received the wrong sausages. The server took two battered sausages and wrapped them, handed them over and said ‘Are you happy now??’ in an incredibly rude way.

I have worked in a fish and chip shop myself so I know how things work, the service here was incredibly rude, and completely unnecessary. If a mistake is made, that is fine, we are a polite group of people and very understanding and all know what it is like, however we do not expect to be spoken to in the way that we were today, and to not get close to what we ordered and paid for.

Next time, we will be looking elsewhere...

Pretty horrendous service. In fact, I don't see how realistically it could have been any worse. The chap that served us (the young skinny white guy in the dirty looking hoody), seemed to be irritated by us even being there. We ordered... He huffed and puffed as he was going to have to batter the food himself as there was not any of what we wanted precooked. I think he expected us to walk away and not wait the four minutes required to cook the food, but I saw it as a positive to have something freshly cooked. Unfortunately, as it turned out, it didn't taste very fresh and was worse than average. Edible, but not all that enjoyable. He forgot order... Had to ask three times and was not given the correct quantity of item even then. While he was playing around with the net in the fryer flicking chips to the side, he was behaving very manically and couldn't help but wonder if he was high on something. Rude to other customers too. When I asked for the remaining part of the order he slapped it on the counter. Must have irritated him as he didn't wrap it up nor did we get a bag for our food so had to have greasy wrappers in the car. I would have asked but thought best not to annoy him any further.

Overall; incredibly rude staff, dirty looking staff, dirty looking inside in general and overpriced poor quality food. Shame - it's in a prime location. I suppose that's the only reason it's still in business - able to exploit tourists that haven't been there before and will not likely to return. Nor will I. Only given 1* as Google review would not let...