The Stag

The food is fine the atmosphere nice. We were greeted cheerily when we walked through the door. This is what I can say for the experience without being negative. The service from there on was typically British. rude and entitled.
A party of thirty people we spent more than enough money to expect basic courteous service, but alas no. Half the group ordered food, the other half chose to wait and have drinks. An hour later when we asked to put the second order through the first order hadn’t come so we asked very politely how long would it be. The response astounded us ‘you weren’t all ordering and I didn’t want to have to put in two orders so I scrapped it.’ It apparently it inconvenienced them to have to put in two orders so they unilaterally decided to ignore our fist order without telling us. Thoroughly confused when told this but remaining imminently polite we asked how long it would take. ‘The same time as the rest of the order’ was the horrifying response we were met with!
Once again, an expectedly awful service experience in London. Sorry we inconvenienced you with our business. My only hope for this country are the immigrants, hopefully they take every job from every entitled Brit because frankly that’s the only decent service I ever receive here. Off to benefit street with the rest of you! At least you’ll be out of the way.

A evening at The Stag is time to relax. The service is nice and friendly. The dish was delicious. The atmosphere was brilliant. Every time again.

Love this pub! Food is delicious and they do a 2 for 1 on lunch mains on a Tuesday!
Really lovely walled garden with greenery at the back!
Highly recommend it.

This place has one of the best beer gardens I have ever been to. No, it is not massive and open and full of wonderful plants and parasols and all that jazz. Yes, it does have covered booths on all 4 sides, it has an area where live music is played, it is quite spacious yet feels quite intimate and enclosed, a really nice feel.
The bar area is nicely decorated, quite an upmarket feel to it and I have to say that there were loads of bar staff working which meant the queues at the bar were always present, but went down quickly as the bar staff worked like maniacs (in a good way). Have to applaud that, nothing infuriates people more than to stand in a massive, slow moving queue and seeing little hustle from the bar staff — I tip my hat to you guys.
I know this is Hampstead, I know a bar has to make a profit and all, but £8.50 for a small bottle of Belgian beer? Come on guys, how much of a mark-​up do you need? Those high prices really take the shine off it, and turn this place to an ‘occasional visit’ rather than a ‘regular local’.

£15 steak and chips might very well be the best ‘I’m treating myself’ lunch deal in Hampstead at the moment. It isn’t one of those tiny minute steaks you get elsewhere either… get it! get it now!

Visited here in early June 2012 over the weekend of the Queen’s 60^th Jubilee. Was here for my cousin’s friend’s birthday party. This beer garden has an excellent friendly atmosphere with a spacious bar inside and plenty of space in the back with lots of booths if the weather is doing well. Not too far from the tube stop, good drinks but somewhat pricey. Would visit again.

The beer garden is beautiful and this pub has recently created an upstairs area which can be rented out for private functions. With heaters and private booths in the garden this place hits the spot whether its mid winter or high summer. Summer sun spells BBQ time as well! Hip hip hooray!
I can highly recommend the Stag burger which comes on a wooden chopping board (rustic) as well as their Sunday roast. I’ve always envied those who order the whole chicken and share it out– looks mouthwatering. I have tried the beef and pork belly– both tasted incredible and sorted out the Sunday brunch hangover!

Meh.
A nice pub but a little disappointing. I feel that the fairest way to evaluate this pub is in the pro/​con format.
Pro’s:
The décor is stylish, trendy but not outlandish.
A wide range of bottled beers from around the world.
A big beer garden.
Food from the menu and a barbecue is often available.
Con’s:
It’s rather expensive.
The service is a little slow.
It’s really rather expensive.
It rained when I was in the beer garden.
It really is rather expensive.
Alright, it’s not the most expensive place in the land but when you’re paying around £5 — and in some cases a couple of pounds more — for bottles (less than a pint!) it just seems wrong. The same with the food, it’s standard pub grub but you’ll pay the same as you would in a decent restaurant. That’s not altogether uncommon but that still doesn’t make it right. The food is OK and the beer is good but… well, I’m sure you can guess.
An OK pub, nice but no real reason to make the effort to go back.
Meh,
Ian

The beer garden here is amazing! Its massive and smells of BBQ which I’d happily indulge in if I hadn’t recently become vegetarian. :-(.
The staff are quite nice. However i found the booze to be a bit pricey. £5 for a pint of Guinness is a bit much. Especially when it costs around £3.50 — £4 everywhere else. But then again, this *is* Hampstead darling.

After a morning tramping around the Heath, capped by some craziness at the adventure playground, our whole family was hungry, and the adults were in need of a pint. We followed the Unilocal recommendations to this place, and I am glad that we did.
The weather was perfect for sitting in the back garden, and the service out there was prompt and friendly. Two of us ordered off of the main menu (tomato and mozzarella salad and fish/​chips/​peas), and two of us from the menu of the day (roast beef sandwich and a Toulouse hot dog). The salad was a little odd — it had a lot more greens and fewer tomatoes than we expected — but it still tasted fresh and good. The fish and chips were typical, but well executed.
The two specials were fantastic! The Toulouse hotdog was more like a bratwurst, and covered with caramelized onions, in a crusty split roll. The RB sandwich (my meal) was the essence of summer in a park. The meat was sliced so thin and was fork-​tender, the bread was a rustic baguette, and there was a nice balance of horseradish and watercress on the sandwich. It also came with a small side of roasted rosemary potatoes, that were golden outside and fluffy inside. I had a pint of scrumpy with it, which finished off the picnic feel. (They also have a nice selection of real ales.)
There are no kids allowed after 6, but it is great for a family before that time, so I can see this being a regular stop for us during a day on the Heath.

Wide selection of beers and an excellent beer garden.

Heralded by a dear friend as the best place to go following a sun-​picnic day on the Heath. We strolled into this lovely spot at 6 on a Sunday.
Its got one of the most fantastic smoking areas I’ve seen in a long time, and with the weather of the day, it was packed! Picnic tables and little booths on a veranda that encircles the main outdoor area. They put out lanterns on the tables when it gets dark and there are some cool lamps above the tables on the veranda.
Rumoured by my companions to have one of the best Sunday Roast’s this side of London — a fact I’m sorry to say I can’t guarantee yet. However I did delve for the first time into a scotch egg. Amazing! Reasonably priced too.
There is table service and you can easily set up a tab at the bar, so you literally don’t have to move an inch from your table. As I plan to make a habit of Sun Sunday’s on the Heath, I think The Stag is definitely going to become a new haunt.

I do wish this was my local. The food is lovely; big portions and and interesting selection including platters to share. Go early on a Sunday for the roast as the chicken can sell out.
The music is nice but not intrusive and the crowd are a mixed bunch and friendly enough. I went with a large group and they let us stay at our table longer than planned, moving the next party to an alternative table. They were also very happy for us to pay contributions to the bill separately which saved a lot of hassles splitting the bill.
Would definitely venture back when I’m nearby to try out the steak night.

Took Thomas A’s advice (below) and got the Greek board and then added a cheese board from the selections of the week. Good for starters — great steaks, lamb shanks were fabulous, too.
And of course, great beer and good wine.

I wavered between 3 and 4 stars for this place. It can be a great pub.
Minuses (only starting with these as there are more pluses): pretentious doorman (although depending on the fellow, can be nice guys— more the fact that The Stag has one than the doormen themselves), inconsistent food (sometimes great, sometimes… not), inconsistent bar staff (some are great, some are… not).
Pluses: mixed crowds (great variation and often across demographics, particularly on quieter evenings), themed nights, solid beer selection (plus they offer champagne-​tequila!), nice & large outdoor space (with little nooks and crannies), perfect volume of music, dogs welcome.

I can’t rave enough about The Stag. Foodwise it has a pub menu approach which is executed with gourmet flair, and they’ve got a great selection of wines, lagers and ales. This place is worthy of taking friends you want to impress as well as an unashamed boozing session with your beery mates. Grab a seat in their garden, and this will soon become your local. Even if you live in Croydon.

The Stag Pub is a lovely pub, has a great atmophere. They have obviously put some work into it and the effort shows.
There is a very comfy upstairs area (which I believe is new) and on Sunday evenings there is live music up there. The crowd was a good one and the room a good set up for the intimate acoustic sets played.
For the summer there is a large garden that they have BBQ’s in as well.
There seems a good selection of bears, wines and spirits and a food menu but I have yet to have a chance to try it myself.
Bar staff have always been friendly and efficient.
So all in all a great place to spend a couple hours.

I’m not hugely impressed by this pub. Initial impressions were favourable. I like dimly lit places and I also love places with a beer menu, even an expensive looking one.
However the black sheep ale was so vinegary you probably could have had it on your chips. Sent my pint back and got something else, which they accepted, which is nice at least. They even stopped serving it for a while but after a tattooed supervisor decided it tasted fine they put it back on again which is a disgrace as a few other people tried it and agreed that it was dodgy. For that reason I will not be back to this place, beer menu or no.
For putting the dodgy ale back onit has to get just 1 star! Shame.

The stag was not a bar that I would have thought of to go if it weren’t for being dragged there by Unilocal friends that I had met that day, but I am glad they dragged me.
The inside of the pub wasn’t anything impressive. a little cramped and nothing special, but then we discovered the GARDEN! (cue angels singing: ahhhhh) It was AMAZING! it was double the size of the pub, and had all these fun alcoves with couches and wooden tables, and some amazing greenery and palm trees (which all californians like) I have to admit that I didn’t drink that much, but they did seem to have a pretty cool selection of obscure beers. and I saw they had a fun looking BBQ booth set up in the backyard, which I would totally dig on a nice sunny London day… which I hear happen at some point…

Firstly i’d like to say that i want to give this place a good review. I really do. But i can’t.
The Stag is painted a rather scary black from the outside. I walked straight through to the garden where my friend had reserved a booth for his birthday. The outside area is quite large with booths around the outside and benches in the centre on pebbles which are quite hard to walk on. Each booth has it’s own overhead light and electric heater and is covered just in case of rain!
There was a live DJ playing a nice mix of music for a sunny Saturday evening, but it was so LOUD!!! It forced our group to split off into pairs as you could only hear the person next to you talking. This is the main thing that really put a dampener on the evening as we wanted to go to a pub where we could chat. If we wanted an evening that was all about the music we would have gone to a club.
The service was quite hit and miss. It’s table service so we ordered a jug of Pimms and some beers and opened a tab which made things easier for the next rounds. While we were waiting for these to arrive several other waitresses came to take a drinks order. We were initially impressed but then this got annoying. Surely things would run smoother if each waitress looked after their own section? In the end we ended up waiting 20 mins for the drinks. The bar staff were already overwhelmed by 7pm! Later in the evening we waited 30mins for 2 pints which never turned up and received a bottle of rose instead of the white we had ordered. At 10.30pm we were asked to go in to order our own drinks as the bar staff were overrun.
There was a BBQ area and one of our group ordered a lamb burger with yoghurt dressing which looked and smelt fantastic, but he was surprised that for £7ish it didn’t come with chips. I went for a cheese and bacon burger (from the kitchen) which came with a small portion of fries and was average for the price. Both meals were lukewarm by the time they arrived as the wait staff wandered around the garden looking for the numbered wooden spoon in a pint glass and often overlooked it. I think they wouldn’t have struggled so much if each table/​booth had it’s own number.
It’s such a shame that somewhere with a great potential for al fresco drinking/​dining doesn’t come up to scratch.
I really hope they pull their boots up and improve for next summer.