A superb traditional alternative (Toby Carvery)

Member Name: caz-3124

Product:	Toby Carvery
Date:	23/03/09 (121 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fantastic value

Disadvantages: Not good for vegetarians

Now when most people go out for a meal you generally hear something along the lines of 'oh I'm going out for an Indian' or 'yeah we're going to some Italian restaurant tonight'. Or Chinese, take your pick. Certainly all the fancy restaurants stick to foreign cuisine or, if not foreign, then more unusual cuisine like snail porridge. So you don't often see a lot of restaurants, excepting perhaps the local caff who do a great fry-up, serving up quintessentially British cuisine. The only restaurants that I know of that have more of a British slant are the Harvester and Beefeater, though there may well be others I have yet to discover I admit. But what the Toby Carvery does is the roast. And what could be more traditionally British than a Sunday roast. Well there is a reason we are nicknamed 'les ros-bifs' by the French...

Now Toby Carverys aren't as common as other chain restaurants like the Harvester or Ask. Our nearest in Dagenham is about half an hour in the car and has free parking. So how does a carvery work? Basically it is a restaurant that centres around providing the Sunday roast with trimmings all week long.

I have been to the Toby probably about five times now. Once on a weekday and the other times on Sunday. Though always busy I don't remember ever waiting for a table. There is a bar as part of the restaurant so you could just pop there for a drink if you wanted but I have never done that. When seated you are given a menu to persue and normally asked if you want any drinks. These are pretty typical choices of juices, fizzy drinks, teas or something alcoholic.

Starters of course are available but me, knowing how much I am going to eat with the main course, normally give them a miss. However to give you an idea here are some of the options - soup, melon, king prawns, garlic bread and so on. These start at £1.60 and increase to up to £5.90 for sharing starters. I did once have the tomato soup before and thought it was ok but tasted much the same as one out of a can, maybe it was who knows...

Now for the main course most people choose the carvery. However there are other choices such as the seafood club salad, mushroom lasagne or beef and ale pie. These cost around the £7-£8 mark. However there tends to be very few choices for vegetarians so if one of you in your party is vegetarian this might not be the best place. Now obviously the name should be a good clue that is really a carnivore's sort of restaurant but even comparing it to the equally pro-meat named Beefeater the scope for vegetarians is slim.

As is said before though I'd guess about 90% of people will go for the carvery option. In this case you simply head up to the carvery section and take your place in the queue. Sometimes on a busy Sunday you can wait for up to ten minutes to be served but it's just pot luck. Sometimes you head up there only to find the serving staff have disappeared into the kitchen either to get new dishes or for some other reason. Once you reach the front you will see there is a selection of meat available, normally this is beef, gammon and turkey. You can pick just the one meat or a comination. You just tell the staff member behind the counter which you would like and then you watch him carve it off the roast. I have only ever had the turkey which is always soft, flavoursome and juicy and really white meat but I am told, by meat eating experts, that the beef and gammon are equally good. Once this is done the man will pass you the plate back and then it's all down to you. Simply move along as you would with a buffet and put anything and as much as you want on your plate. Choices available are stuffing, yorkshire puddings, chipolatas, roast potatoes, boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes, new potatoes, carrots, peas, cauliflower, runner beans, cabbage, sprouts, various gravies and so on. I've probably missed a few out but I'm sure you get the picture. Luckily the plates here are big as there's just so much choice. You then go back to your table which can mean you walk very slowly at risk of spilling hot gravy which is getting dangerously close to the edge of your plate over the other customers. Should you manage to empty your plate, and I can tell you that's not an easy task, you can go back and re-fill your plate with everything but the meat. They replace the dishes continually throughout the day and if say the carrots were empty the man will go and check when the next batch is coming out. When my family first went there this cost £6 which we thought was just fantastic, barely more than a Big Mac, but the price has gone up a little since then though it's still great value especially considering you can have as much as you want. Currently, if you go before 7pm Monday to Saturday it will cost you £5 and they will give you some additional discounts on selected starters and desserts too. Go after 7pm and it will cost you £7.50. The price for Sunday is £8.50 and that is applicable throughout the day.

Then of course we have the dessert menu. Now you might think that after that huge main course no-one could ever have a dessert but you'd be wrong. I do. (If anyone says to me just choose two of the three courses, it's always the starter that has to go...) For desserts, options include, crumbles, sundaes, fudge cake, jam suet sponge and so on, all sticking with the traditional British theme. These cost from £2.50-£3.50. The chocolate fudge cake I had a while ago was just fantastic. They warmed it up and served it with cream and it was the best I have ever had in a restaurant and a lot of restaurants do chocolate fudge cake on their menu and I've probably tried a fair few of them.

They do offer a children's menu. This appears to mainly be a 'reduced size- reduced price' kind of approach as I couldn't see a lot of very childreny type dishes that you normally get like fish fingers so perhaps bear this in mind if you have kids who are picky eaters. They do also give them an activity sheet - join the dots that kind of thing so that's a bonus. If you wanted to check the menus you can do so online on their website. Toby also offer special event menus such as Easter Day and Christmas. We often go there for Christmas Day but it is expensive at £50 per head and you do need to book early, say, October. Alternatively, you can do the Christmas Eve or Boxing Day instead which is about £10 per head. On Christmas Day it really is nice. The staff dress up in costumes, they have Christmas music, they give you crackers and the restaurant always has a happy buzz.

The stafff are generally okay though occassionally they do forget that you are there especially when it's late and it seems everybody has gone in the kitchen to tidy up and you think I can't see a single member of staff who I can ask for the bill. Once we waited for fifteen minutes before someone came back out and we wondered if they wanted us to have a freebie that night. We also have found that tabes are sometimes not washed down properly and you can tell someone spilled a fizzy drink which isn't nice when your new top keeps getting stuck to the table. We have found that sometimes the loos need a bit of attention, no soap or broken dryer etc. We have only ever had two quibbles with the food. Once my mum's cauliflower was cold and once there were no peas and I asked a staff member and was told that they weren't doing them at the moment which struck me as odd as peas are pretty much a winner with most people.

As you can probably tell from this review I am quite a fan. I enjoy the food, it makes a change from most restaurant fayre, and most importantly I think it is exceptional value. No wonder more and more Beefeaters are being taken over by the magnificent Toby!

Summary: Oh just go there