The Eyre Arms, Hassop

We went last evening to the Eyre Arms with Richard.  It's a lovely pub out in the tiny village of Hassop out in the Peak District.

It serves fresh cooked pub food, using mainly locally sourced ingredients. It's not a fancy menu, but there is plenty of choice and even the seafood ingredients (which are obviously not locally sourced!) are fresh and tasty. My only "complaint" would be that the cream sauce with my chicken hartington was pretty much just a plain  white sauce with nothing remarkable about it at all. If it had cream, or even hartington cheese, they were undetectable. But the chicken was beautifully cooked and the vegetables were lovely, I got a finger bowl with my starter crevettes (something that is so often forgotten!) and the chocolate pancakes that The Builder and I shared were lovely.  And you absolutely can't fault the portion sizes.  I'm not at all sure I could have finished the rabbit pie, which Richard had!

Richard thoroughly enjoyed his rabbit pie. The Builder was impressed with his scampi. There is a range of local ales and the wine list isn't bad.  And it was fairly quiet when we were there, which might be a bit of a worry on a Friday evening in June, were it not for the fact that the World Cup had just started and people were mainly at home watching the opening matches.  They were expecting a very quiet evening on Saturday when England was playing its first match.

You wouldn't go if you were looking for fine dining, but it is an excellent example of the good country pub. We will certainly go again.  I am a bit tempted to try their Sunday lunch.  So often pubs which do perfectly good food at other times fail completely at Sunday lunch!!  If you can find one that does a good roast, it's worth remembering it!!