Toby Carvery - Southend

As regular guests at this restaurant we are always happy to recommend it to others due to the excellent choice and quality of the food plus the friendly and efficient staff all doing a great job to make the experience so enjoyable. All the staff from the kitchen, the carvery chefs and the 'front line' servers, especially Lyn our server on our most recent visit, work so well together with great camaraderie. A really great team, long may it stay that way!

I had the misfortune to visit your “restaurant” on a Monday 30th September for dinner for my children’s birthday. After being ignored completely for 25 minutes after being brought our drinks, we got up from the table assuming we had to order from the bar. When asking someone if we had to order at the bar, we were told our waiter would be over. We then placed our order, which is when I was told she had to check to make sure they had a Yorkshire pudding wrap. They did not. I changed it to a “brioche” bun. A few minutes later I was told that they had no cheese. So I was forced to choose something on the menu that I didn’t want. Also expected to be served in a “brioche” bun. What arrived on the table looked like something I would feed a dog, served in a bread roll and covered with a chopped up sprinkling of disgusting tasting garnish. I then had the pleasure of sitting by myself with my bread roll while the rest of my party queued for 25 minutes to get their food from the carvery. My children went to the ladies toilets and came out saying there were bugs flying around in there. When I went to investigate, I was horrified to find a blocked toilet - door unlocked, no “out of order” sign - filled with small flies flying around like something had died down that toilet. At this point, I just wanted to hurry up and finish our meals and leave. I did not enjoy my bread roll filled with cold meat and topped with lawn, but I ate it out of sheer hunger. When we received the bill we noticed that we had been charged for an £8.29 meal we hadn’t had. We were a party of 6 and we had 7 meals on the bill. We questioned this before paying and were told it wasn’t an error and that it was one of our children’s meals. We explained there were 6 of us and they’d added 7 meals to the bill and it was agreed they would take off the error of £8.29 added to our bill, however no sincere apologies given. So not only was it the worst dining experience I’ve ever had, but I almost paid more than I should have for it! Our visit here ruined my children’s birthday. Never been here before. Never will again. Terrible.

The staff who serve you at the tables are always great, friendly and attentive. The staff behind the carvery whilst polite and nice, can at times be very very very very slow. They appear sometimes understaffed with only one person carving, prepping buffet food, and also replacing the buffet vegetables. There's also one nice chap (bless him) who just talks too darn much to each customer and the line always gets long and slow with him. It sincerely can add 20mins to the wait in the queue.... He can chat for so long the people getting the buffet vegetables have finished, gotten sauce, returned to their table and begun eating, all before this chap finishes cutting a few slices of meat.