My husband and I having been trying to save a bit of cash recently so we have been eating out at more "cheap and cheerful" establishments. Last week we tried the Harvester and lets just say it was cheap but most definitely not cheerful (but that is another story). After me having a moan on Twitter, Toby Carvery started following me; I have never been to a Toby before but I do love a roast dinner so I was curious, they also said that they would be interested to know what I thought so I didn't think there would be any harm in giving them a try. Toby Carvery and Harvester are actually both owned by the same company: Mitchells and Butlers.
At the moment there is an offer on for 2 carveries for £10 if you take a voucher with you from Monday to Saturday; you can get this here until the 25th Feb. Even without the voucher this place is very reasonably priced at £5.99 for a Carvery.
We visited the Lower Early Toby Carvery last night (Saturday) with my husband's parents and it was busy but we were seated right away. The decor in this particular carvery is like a traditional old pub which was what I was expecting, a bit old fashioned but it was clean.
There are starters available and I think there were 3 other lighter choices if you don't fancy a roast (although I don't know why you would go to a carvery if that was the case). There are also vegetarian options available. We all decided to go straight for the standard carvery and there were 4 different meats available; gammon, beef, turkey or pork; all are served with a huge, freshly made Yorkshire Pudding and then you can help yourself to all the veg you want.
I went for turkey and the server really started to load up my plate, I had to stop him as there would have been no space for vegetables! There was loads of veg available; peas, carrots, mashed swede, cabbage, roasted parsnips, roast potatoes, mashed potato and cauliflower cheese. There was also stuffing and I did also see people with sausages but sadly there were none left when we went up to the counter. You also have your choice of gravies and other sauces.
All of the food was excellently cooked and although it doesn't look all the attractive in my rather poor photo, it all tasted delicious.
We decided to have dessert and there was a large menu with plenty of options. I went for the Chocolate Brownie Ice Cream Sensation which was a fairly basic ice cream and brownie sundae. It was £3.69 and was huge, I couldn't finish it but it tasted nice.
The service was sadly a bit of a let down. The lady who was serving us was decent enough but the poor woman had a large section of the restaurant to herself and she was clearly rushed off her feet and struggling to get round to everyone. We had to wait quite a while for our drinks (they turned up after we had been to get our food), and there was one missing which we had to chase up. We also had to wait quite a while between courses and for our bill at the end and this was a similar experience to when we went to the Harvester.
Verdict I can't fault the food at the Toby Carvery, an excellent roast dinner and the desserts were pretty good too. This is basic dining at a good price and our entire bill for 4 people came to £35 so it really was good value for money. If I was marking the Toby on the food alone then I would award it 4 stars, however I have to take into account the service which really was quite poor. The issue here is a lack of staff and I suppose that this plays a part in keeping their prices down but I would honestly rather pay a bit more for better service.
