The Stepping Stones — Restaurant in Mole Valley

It was an 'interesting' experience to say the least - allow me to break it down to you:

Food - 8/10. Not sure what other reviewers had but both me and my partner really enjoyed all 3 courses! I had the minestrone soup to start - it came out HOT! Which to be honest for a pub i was very surprised. For main I had the Steak and Ale Pie which was DELICIOUS! I asked if I could swap the mash for some more greens and you can see via the photo that they weren't stingy at all! And for dessert I had the warm waffle with fresh banana and vanilla ice cream with toffee sauce which was also BRILL! So can't really fault it.

Service - 6/10. So this is where it gets a bit interesting. We booked the table for 7p.m and for a Saturday night we were surprised that we were the only table in the restaurant.. however, although the ladies who served us were very nice and polite, the service was veeeeeery slow.

I understand that there's a few table in the back garden but it really wasn't that busy. After each course we had to ask for attention as we've waited a good 10-15mins per course and in the end my partner just went up to the bar to 1. Place the starters order and 2. Went to pay for the bill at the bar.

Atmosphere - 8/10. Its a nice surrounding and its quite atmospheric inside so will recommend it for a night out but perhaps not a ROMANTIC night out as they have pop music playing in the bar area right neelxt to the restaurant which felt a bit weird considering the restaurant seems a bit more upper class than the bar area itself.

Overall - we will visit again BUT we will just treat it like a Wetherspoons and just order the food and drinks at the bar and also to pay at the bar as well.

Finally, the lady at the bar DID ask if we mind paying a discretionary 10% service charge for tonight's meal and of course we did pay it but it was nice for them to offer so I think they deserve a credit for this.

Good luck and give the...

The service was a disaster. Way beyond what is acceptable for an understaffed place. And they added extra items on our bill!

In chronological order: They added the wrong mixer to one of the drinks and, instead of preparing it again, came all the way to the patio to ask us if we would drink it with the wrong mixer. Weird but ok, no harm. Mislabeled the Sunday roast meats when serving us. So two members of our party almost eat each others dish. Ok mistakes happen, not a big issue. They brought us two desserts out of the four we ordered. Ten minutes later the missing two desserts are nowhere to be seen. We politely asked one of the waitresses who came back to apologise and indicate that they forgot to prepare the other two, and that they would serve them to us ASAP. We finally get them. When we were finishing them, a second waitress shows up with another dessert, that happened to be one of the ones we ordered, and we got server the wrong food. When the girls who got the wrong food asked what they have eaten and for clarifications about what they order vs what they have been served (again, politely, nobody was raising their voice, calling names, etc) the waitress was indifferent, unapologetic, and acting like if we were the problem for being unhappy about the mess. We understand you're understaffed, but what is not tolerable is that you mess up multiple times, we are nice and patient about it, and when you mess up again you have an attitude with your clients who are just asking you what they have been served and why is not the thing they ordered. Not even an apology.

The best thing for the last; they added 2 items in our bill that we haven't ordered. Again, not apologies just "ok we remove them".

This is the first time in my life that I have asked the service charge to be removed...

We had an interesting experience at the Stepping Stones pub recently and unfortunately found it just didn’t match up to standards of other similar gastro pubs in the area. We were told by a curt young waiter on arrival when asking for menus that he would “see what he could do but they were already very busy” which I suppose is fair but the restaurant wasn’t packed out so I would imagine they should be more prepared on Saturday afternoon. After accepting he was probably never coming back, he did produce a couple of menus within a few minutes. My husband went to the bar to order food & drinks & was told there was a 30 min wait on food - fairly standard & reasonable so we sat down & started our wait. Nearly an hour later we queried the wait with bar staff & were promptly approached by who I imagine to be the manager, who apologized profusely & admitted our ticket had been lost in the kitchen. As a gesture she sent over some chips within a minute or so & our food arrived within 10 minutes - this would usually be more than enough to regain our confidence in an establishment but the food was subpar at best. The onion rings were overcooked & dripping in oil & the steak sandwich was gristly & unenjoyable - a kind waitress came over to ask if our food was okay & we mentioned about the onion rings being far too greasy which she seemed taken aback by & just disappeared. At that point we left & decided we probably wouldn’t...