Toby Carvery

We’ve been to this Toby a few times over the past year and find it very good indeed. What sets it apart from other carveries is the quality of the vegetables which are prepared on site fresh each day. As I love my veg, this is very important for me. The portions of meat are just right. The staff are also very proud of their food and service, which is good to see. We are very picky about the quality of our food and have never been disappointed here. It has become one of our regular haunts.

The Management needs to take ControlAdmittedly we were there on the second week of opening but there are clearly problems that need sorting out. This is especially true since 99% of people were coming for the first time and most will have been to Toby Carveries elsewhere. This Carvery will soon get a bad name in an area where there is plenty of competition. Firstly the good points the food was to the normal Toby standard. Being new the restaurant was light and airy with good views. Now the bad ones We had to wait 40 minutes, though looking at the tables there was a lot unoccupied. There was not space to sit inside, so we went to our car for a time. Around the reception there seemed a lot of confusion as to what to do next. When we were called there was a queue at the carver not too long but it took 20 minutes to serve us. The server, Tom was a pleasant enough chap, but painfully slow. The meat was a mess too, so clearly he was not experienced in carving. The turkey was a total mess! I took a bit of each after all I was trying things out. Servings were of good size provided you asked. He did not try to upgrade you to King Size which they were supposed to. A new supply of yorkshire puddings came (even though there were two trays not even started and these were piled on top of the older ones so no first-​in-​first-​out. More people were waiting though there were penny of empty tables and groups of 4 could have been split to 22. I asked to speak to the manager. The general manager was ‘unavailable’ but the ‘duty manager (receptionist) said they had been having problems with a machine in the kitchen just that day. (But clearly at least one other TA contributor reported more or less the same).Finally there was a fantastic atmosphere that sort of place where everybody makes friends with one another due to their complaining, joking and generally expressing dissatisfaction with what seemed to be, using that new in-​word an omnishambles.