The Blue Stoops - Dronfield — Restaurant in North East Derbyshire

Visited here for our anniversary and were very disappointed. Started off good enough. Quickly seated as we were the only ones in the restaurant and the first course was served quickly. The portions were large enough, even the children’s which my son had to choose from due to there being no steak available on the adult menu. My pit burger was missing the pulled pork and fried onions. It wasn’t unavailable as my daughters meal had it on. No big deal at all.

My children also noticed that their glasses were dirty putting them off drinking from them. It was sort of stuck on bits you get in orange juice.

Later in the meal we ordered a further 2 cokes (bottles this time) which took 20 minutes to get to the table and I am pretty sure they only remembered as another group had recently been seated and they were dealing with their drinks order.

We also ordered dessert that took around 40 minutes to get to the table. For ice cream. When the server remembered about us after around 30 minutes they made an excuse that the waffle machine was playing up. However, I’m not sure how accurate his was and I am convince they had once again forgotten us. It was something they said about 15 minutes after they had cleared the table that leads me to believe they had forgotten about us. A sort of ‘oh, you’re still here, is everything ok’ sort of questioning you do when you expected someone to have left. I mentioned to my wife they had forgotten us but we gave them the benefit of the doubt l. Even when they eventually returned with our dessert order they managed to forget one and I had to show them the receipt. The waffle was undercooked too as though it had been rushed out. Surely if the waffle machine was playing up you wouldn’t have waited 30 minutes to let the customer know. Surely at some point you would have thought that perhaps the waffle machine had actually packed in and asked the customer if they wanted to change their order.

One of the glasses that the desserts were served in also had what looked like dried on chocolate/chocolate ice cream on the stem that you get when it over-flows and not been thoroughly washed.

Individually the above issues were not all that bad but when you take them all in on a single sitting then it does ruin the experience - especially a total of 1 hour to have 2 bottles of coke and 3 I’ve creams brought out to you.

EDIT - just told my sister in law about our visit and her reply? ‘I could have told you how bad it was if I knew you...

Had a family meal here on late May bank holiday. I was really surprised how quiet the pub was considering it was a bank holiday.

The food was really disappointing. Here's a breakdown of what we had:

Calamari - for some reason it was tiny baby squid rings coated in an overly sugary asian style coating. Bit weird and not what I was expecting although not inedible. I thought it would be large rings of zingy, spicy and fresh kind of Spanish style but maybe I misread the menu.

Sweet potato bhaji - quite nice but wish they had been more crispy. Needed a bit more coriander yogurt sauce.

Ham, potato and duck egg salad - I didn't taste it but it looked boring and didn't appear to be dressed.

Pork tasting plate - Dry due to lack of sauce. Needs twice as much given the dish. Anything with mash needs a lot of sauce. The pork belly and the ham hock mash quite nice but black pudding wrapped in bacon quite dry. It needed frying more too I think. Green beans were perfect though.

Goats cheese and quinoa salad - salad not dressed so dry and bland and the goats cheese wasn't heated through properly - it wasn't melted and browned as it should really be. The person who ordered this dish asked for dressing but the waitress bought out some that was far too vinegary so we then had to ask for some olive oil as well. It didn't really help.

Fish and home cut chips - The batter on the fish appeared to be dark possibly because it was cooked twice which meant it was overdone and saturated in oil. The chips were more like potato wedges - not crispy.

Bean burger with sweet potato fries - I tasted this and the bean burger was dry and floury to the extent it was inedible. Needed relish too but really the bean burger patty recipe needs changing - it's terrible. Sweet potato fries almost black due to being overcooked although didn't taste as bad as they looked. I think this was the worst dish we were served.

It's a shame the food was substandard. It's such a lovely pub in terms of the building and interior. I had chosen it especially for my birthday. The waitresses were helpful and apologetic about the food. This was the 4th time I had eaten here and previous times I had been pretty happy with the food. I might try again in the future but the poor food has put me off a bit. Blue Stoops chefs - The portion sizes are good but please taste the food you serve and please think about things like dressings and the moisture content of...

This was my 1st visit here on a Saturday night for a family birthday meal .First impressions of this Country style stone brick pub looked good from the outside,Through the entrance door its a bar area to the left,restaurant seating to the right,the decor was dark with its traditional style wooden beams & panels . I found the atmosphere to be very noisy as it was very very busy as every inch of floor space in different areas had been taken up by mostly large tables.Our allocated table for 10 was actually 5 small tables with large bases pushed together & these moved when you had to shuffle your feet & bum along the seating bench as only had access from 1 end .The light levels were so poor.i used my mobile phone tourch to view the menu,another table did the same . Once the drinks order had been placed the table drink service was slow in dribs n drabs with 5 drinks coming 1st then having to request the where abouts of the other drinks ,When placing the food orders I was told my choice of the Big Yakitori sweet chilli chicken was sold out & opted for jerk chicken instead. Later on after some of the group had finished their starters ,the waitress returned & informed me my jerk chicken was now also sold out ,i could have something else on her( i thought she was joking) ,,so opted for fish n chips this time maybe ,third time lucky ! .The waitress staff on duty were very pleasant but what ever ordering system they are using on their fancy ipads,just isn't working as the place was far too busy for them to cope(management needs to review this situation).Once the main meals came out there was further mix ups with the orders,infact someone else actually got my jerk chicken meal order & someone else had got his ,oh dear this wasn't the great celebration night out it was supposed to be .The fish & chips I had was ok but nothing special for the price as I was starving as it was nearly 2hours since we arrived. My meal along with my Classic Mojito drink i had was actually taken off the bill as goodwill gesture. Payments here are card only I was informed by the females in the group theres not enough ladies loos either .I can't say myself if the pub is always this busy at the weekends but it wasn't a very enjoyable experience & for the distance I travelled ,I won't be returning back ,Price wise Its an...