Chestnut Tree Farm - Dining & Carvery — Restaurant in Babergh

The saving graces for Chestnut Tree Farm is the price and the fact that one can charge your electric vehicle (EV) there free. At £4.49 for an all you can eat breakfast with a bottomless pot of coffee and fresh toast, I don't think you can beat the price in Ipswich and their buffet lunches, too, are well priced. The breakfast is edible let down a bit by rubbery fried eggs and what appears to be scrambled egg made with powdered eggs. The bacon is usually decent as is the black pudding, hash browns and button mushrooms. The sausages tend to be a bit dry on the ends. As I said £4.49 and edible. I have had the buffet lunch there on a few occasions and it has been the same each time. The roast meats were pork (sadly no crackling!), gammon, beef and turkey. Vegetables consisted of mash, roast and boiled potatoes, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower as well as others. Prices start at £4.99, depending on the size of the plate, up to £9.99. Again good value and edible. The buffet is rather badly designed, as a result the 'chef' doing the carving was trapped in a hot area dripping sweat and continually having to stop and wipe himself down. Would be more hygienic if they sliced the meat on a slicer which would also speed up service. The food is generally edible, based on quantity not quality but breakfast, starting at £4.49 great value. Being roughly 90 miles from London it is the ideal place to stop and charge your EV whilst you have a meal. The charge bays are generally not blocked by fossil fuel vehicles (not ICE'd). Great place to visit on a limited budget and get a free charge for your EV!

21st February 2019 The food offerings at breakfast have improved. The scrambled egg in particular! Also be aware that you should register your vehicle in the carpark or be subject to a carpark charge. People have been using the or car park as sports car parks as well as overflow for Aldi. The electric vehicle chargers were down for a few weeks but are now up and working fine. Had a pleasant lunch & car charge!

7th April 2019 There are now signs up indicating that the bays by the EV chargepoint are charging bays! Well done management!

Had my usual Sunday breakfast and bought a chocolate éclair to take away. It was £4.79 but was huge, a foot long plus! Filled with fresh whipped cream & custard & topped with chocolate, it will be dessert for 3 meals, and is delicious!

21st April 2019 You no longer need to register your vehicle registration number to avoid a fine. It was introduced to prevent people parking there that weren't restaurant customers (they were visiting either Aldi or the nearby...

Firstly I am only giving the star for some of the staff as they were decent and tried to rectify the issues we faced so I want to say that the low rating isn't towards the male manager or Erin that put through my families food orders. This one star is too highlight the following issues....... *High chairs here are disgusting and have every child's crusty food still on them *The tables are equally filthy and I had to re clean before we could sit down *Most of the chairs were covered in stains *The walls have stains *All cutlery in the pot on the table had marks and hairs *Youngest child's dinner had a hair in it *My knife that was brought to me on the plate had someone else's dirty food still stuck on *Both mine and husbands drink glasses were filthy round the rims *The disabled toilet didn't even have a seat so I had to struggle in the women's but at least they were clean

Food wise they did freshly batter my kids fish, the chips were edible, the mushrooms were ok, peas were nasty, onion rings inedible, one child got a cheap cheese slice on her burger, my husband and other daughter went for the carvery and it wasn't great, no flavour and all the veg was the really cheap value frozen diced stuff, and finally my toddlers golden rice was over microwaved and dry

I did tell the manager and he replaced drinks and cutlery for clean but I was feeling really grossed out by this point and was glad to leave. Sadly it put a downer on the nice day out we had been to up the road whilst on holiday. This venue really needs a deep clean, and some better quality food and it could be decent. Need to also look at staff that are being hired as the young man that brought our food over had no customer service and the young girl that cleaned the high chair was better but you could tell she didn't want to be doing it and I don't blame her either

I'll add a few photos of what we faced and you can decide for yourself. I was thankful to them for offering free kids meals, however I'd rather pay more and have a nicer meal

Looking back at other reviews the dirty glass issue has been going on for all least 2 years and the manky carvery issues for about a year..... Doesn't look like they are actually doing...

Me my mother my 7 year old daughter and 10 week old daughter all visited the ipswich branch on Saturday 14th Dec at 430pm...after trying to book a table 4 times online without successes we decided to take the gamble and just turned up...to which we was seated straight away as close as we could be to the child play area as requested due to being busy. On first meeting a gentleman was very kind and helpful, once seated we ordered our meal and drinks at the bar with no problems. When our meal arrived my daughter chicken nugget and chip meal consisted of 4 nuggets and 11 chips which looked lost on the plate for what was paid for it....both me and my mother ordered the yorkie wrap which had a choice of potatoes, of which we chose rustic/roast potatoes...both plates turned up.with chips to which the plate thay was put in front of me the lady who brought them lost most of the side to which she sold sorry and would get more...I kindly said that both were supposed to come.with rustic potatoes not chips.to which she aggressively picked up.my mums plate i then said its fine will have the chips to which she then ignored me then walked away without a word with a attitude. Once she returned with my mums plate with no chips and now potatoes she then again aggressively slammed the plate infront of my mother followed by the words "enjoy your meal " with sarcasm....nowwe get its Christmas and its busy and mistakes happened but there is ways about dealing with them which she clearly didn't handle well...pulled the manager aside and just explained what happened and his response was shocking too!! He basically just said "well.do you want chips instead then?"....we explained no this wasn't the issue to which he just walked off aswell.....now I wasn't asking for a refund or to change our meal we just wanted to let management know what the issue was and to maybe have word with the younge girl who delt with us but clearly seems to.start with management....wont...