Carveries are the work of the devil

[Soontobe60]

DH and I decided to go to a Carvery after looking after the grandchildren,Daren earlier this evening. It’s on the way home and meant we wouldn’t get stuck in commuter traffic. I’ve not been to one for years!
The one we chose, a Toby carvery, is just next to the motorway slip road. There were about 4 cars on the car park and a couple of tables were occupied; mainly it was empty. We stood waiting for 5 minutes until someone came to see to us, asked us if we had a booking and said that as we hadn’t they couldn’t serve us as they only had enough food for the reservations they already had. It was 5.15 on a Tuesday evening!
When we walked out and sat in the car laughing, we realised we reeked of cooking fat and boiled cabbage 😳. Looking at the building we saw it was basically falling down - I think we had a lucky escape.
there was another Carvery a few 100 yards further on so we went there. No problem getting a table, no horrible smells, all looked nice and well kept. Clean toilets (very important!!). DH ordered a bean burger and chips - he’s veggie and wont touch a carvery - and I went to get my food. It wasn’t great, but wasn’t inedible - soggy veg, mushy roasts and gloopy mash, but tasty meat and gravy.
DHs on the other hand was very much inedible. A stale bun that shattered as he cut through it, a bean burger that seemed to have been stored unwrapped in the freezer for weeks so was rock hard, uncut table and certainly inedible. It was the colour of uncooked pastry! (maybe they had used butter beans). Chips were very undercooked and soggy.
I took the plate back and the staff were very apologetic, refunding the meal instantly. He ended up having cheese on toast for tea. I’m gutted - I was so looking forward to a tasty mid week meal!

@BlueberryLatte Next time I will burp SOS in morse code! 🤣

I love the Toby and so do the kids. Husband not so much but we just go without him 😃

You have to like your veg cooked 1970s style to enjoy a carvery.

Mumsnet is such a strange place sometimes. People are on here raving about their £6.00 carvery, yet when I said (on a thread some months back) that I went to one with DH that was £6.49, I had a flurry of people telling me it must have been shit for that price, they would never pay less than £15.00 for a carvery, I must have gone to somewhere in a rough area, the veg must have been rejects from Poundland, the turkey probably had salmonella, and I will very likely have come away with dysentery.

None of the above was true. It was a lovely classy country pub who did a cracking carvery, and DH and I went once or twice a month for several years when they first started it. It was rammed every time. Still go once every 6 weeks or so.

Inexplicably, we never got dysentery or ANY kind of food poisoning!

@Soontobe60 YABVU, many carveries are great, and I find it odd that you stunk of boiled cabbage and cooking fat after a few minutes of standing in the Toby Carvery. I have never stunk of anything, after being in ANY of the eateries I have ever been in - ever, in my life.

There is much snobbery from some people when it comes to carveries. It's almost laughable actually.

What carvery is going to keep the complete hot buffet going at 5.15 on a Tuesday? All stocked up with fresh cooked yorkies etc?

Also the closer to a motorway the worse the food is often true

Probably because this is a special offer and not the usual price?

Generally they are for people who want quantity over quality.

We've been to a few Toby's in our time - usually on the way home, after a big day out.

Easy to park, really decently priced, unlimited drink options so you don't have to pay a damn fortune for two diet pepsis each, no waiting when you're all starving after being out all day, simple but tasty food...we all love a roast.

I don't think we've ever had a bad one. So many people are horrendous snobs though. 'I will never enter a Toby Carvery' and such 😂. People seem to think it makes them look refined rather than an insufferable bore. It's just meat, veg and gravy fgs.

We all love a carvery here. There is one less than 10 minutes walk away.

It's about £8 with blue light discount.

It's one of life's little joys. We go there about 4 times a year.

The closest Toby Carvery to me is amazing. The beef is always tender and easy to eat, the vegetables are always cooked well, I really can't fault it at all. We must be lucky we are near a good one.

Yeah this. Seems a bizarre choice really. I wouldn't want to eat carvery alone while someone has to eat a stale burger.

You absolutely can’t walk into the one nearest our house ever, and having just checked it’s fully booked from 4:30 to 20:20 tonight.

I don’t mind a carvery, and Toby is as OK as any. I do think you want to be there for an early booking though.

I also seem to pick up food smells very quickly on my clothes and hair. After 5 minutes in a restaurant I usually smell of chips.

You’re making a lot of incorrect assumptions there!

I think it’s unjust to blame the devil. At least he’d make sure it was hot.

@BlueberryLatteYou sound like a massive snob!

I’d never been to a Toby until recently. The food was really nice, great choice of meat and generous portions. It was packed, noisy and full of kids but hardly surprising on a Sunday. Amazing value.

Is there a good food exclusion zone around every motorway then?! One of the finest Asian restaurants I’ve ever been to (and I’ve travelled the world so that’s saying something!) was at the side of a motorway slip road. Don’t be so snobbish!

This was the last one I went to (I took the photo for my friend abroad)
was fine, veg was cooked pretty nicely, and I couldn’t cook all that myself for £6

Meh, I'm not going to one, so i suppose we'll never know!

I don't really mind being called a food snob tbh. I am not snobby towards human beings, but terrible food being produced on the mass market to make the owners wealthy while squeezing as much profit as they can out of the business, doesn't make me feel compelled to support the business when I have no interest in doing so.

You'll notice that I never tried to insult any human beings on here - just food so if you think you're somehow a nicer person by yelling "snob" at me in defence of the carvery, I disagree but whatever 🤷‍♀️

I love a Toby Carvery but do find you have to go when it is busy. Never go to a carvery in an empty restaurant. They need to get through the food to keep it fresh.

I do think it is prepped locally though since we had a period when we had to have lactose free and they were able to give us veg that had been cooked specially for us without butter.

@Soontobe60You “sat in the car laughing” because you couldn’t get a table? Huh? Am I missing the punchline? Tbh you and your DH sound like those types who click the ‘Laugh’ reaction on any Facebook posts about weather forecasts or by the council/police/politicians regardless of what’s said, plus any post by someone sharing something you’re jealous of! 🙄

Toby Carvery use oil seed rape oil or beef dripping for the potatos. They can provide most of the non-roasted veg streamed if ask. They certainly make the Yorkshires from a liquid - you can see them doing it through the kitchen window.

But I not you go out for dinner if you want something unprocessed. You might as well have an unpeeled carrot on a plate at home.

Wow OP I bet you’re popular 🤣🙄

I have never had a roast in a pub as good as ours at home, or other home cooked roasts we have had cooked for us. They are always going to be a bit disappointing, but are a cheap way to fill a hole.

The Toby near us is really bad and the last time I ate a beef wrap there I felt ill, but had some good ones years back when they first became a thing. I think the sentiment on MN at the moment is that eating out is crap value for money, as it is hard to cook something both affordable and decent, and in a way of which the business can survive. The economic situation has killed eating out sadly.

That's strange. I never book for Toby carvery as they allways offer a walk in service.