Thinking of dinner at the Toby at Hinton? Think again! (Toby Carvery)

Member Name: moo2moo

Product:	Toby Carvery
Date:	01/11/09 (129 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: £5 per head for a main course

Disadvantages: Mass produced tasteles meals

The Toby Carvery, Hinton

As the idionm goes "Never judge a book by its cover". Well when the paints peeling off the restaurant wecome sign and the front of the building and several of the bulbs lighting the fascia need replacing its pretty easy to think you've made a mistake picking this place for dinner. That is until you try to find a parking space. Its nigh on impossible. Despite there being approximately 70 slots people are queueing in the aisles for spaces. Surely thats a good sign. Getting a space isn't the end of the problems though. The car park was laid out by the owner of a smart car or a mini. They're tiny, you can geti n them but you can't open the door to get out which is why we all ended up climbing out the passenger doors, driver included.

Finally we made it to the restaurant and requested a table. The projected wait was 50 minutes, yet another sign that the food must be great. We duly joined the queue for drinks at the bar and fifteen minutes later stood in a crowd of people waiting to be called to our table. The bar area does offer seating but only for thirty.

We made the mistake of going to the loo to kill some time. Meals with small childreninvariably require several trips to the toilet so its best to get a leastone trip in before food arrives. However even six year olds have standards and my daughter pronounced all of the toilets in the ladies disgusting. I completely agree. Dust on the hinges of the toilet seat was the least of it. Brown stains in the toilet bowls, graffiti on the walls and a carpet that wasn't so much threadbare as stranded, fortunately the worst of this had been stuck together some time ago with ratehr a lot of red and white stripy parcel tape. Turns out from her trip to the gents that that wasn't much better.

Anyway the reason we were at the restaurant in the middle of nowhere was its proximity to our campsite, perhaps the only other thing from miles. Dinner out was a final night of holiday treat. Or at least it should have been. Having queued for everything else it came as no surprise that once seated you get to queue at a self service counter for dinner. We selceted our varoius main courses, heaped on an assortment of vegetables and sauces and sat down to eat.

Its one of the few times being vegetarian pays off. There was a choice of two main courses, not great but as meat eaters had a choice of three it was clearly the norm here. I opted for homemade mushroom lasagne. Moist, juicy and cheesy but on the small side and served in a soup bowl. I added flat tasteless Yorkshire Puddings, shrivelled up dry roast potatoes and carrots which were fortunately edible. The rest of the family had an array of meats which consisted of turkey (dry and tasteless), beef (chewey)and ham which turned out to be the nicest of the lot.

On the plus side it was £5 a head but quite frankly I'd rather have stayed in and cooked instead.

The Toby Carvery,
Lyndhurst Road,
Hinton,
Christchurch,
BH23 4SD

Summary: If you have to eat here opt for the vegetarian dish