The Woodman Pub and Carvery — Restaurant in Broadland

Two carveries for £15? Solid, but don't be expecting the best.

The Woodman is one of those pubs I seem to drive past with it barely registering. Recently it's been decorated with all sorts of signs and a luscious new paint job to try and catch the eyes of the thousands that must drive past just like I did.

So I stopped in to take on their advertised carvery and watch a bit of football.

Let's be clear from the off, this is a pub in transition. It's clearly been a neighbourhood pub for generations, you can almost sense the ciggy smoke and see where the big D board would have hung beside the optics all those years ago.

It's a very big space, broken up into a series of rooms, which makes it feel smaller than it should, but if it had a peak rush you can imagine it would handle things just fine.

So it feels smaller but also echoey, a little tired perhaps and that's not so bad for a lazy afternoon.

The staff are all bright, helpful, exuberant and smart. They were welcoming and patient with my obvious hangover.

The carvery!

Let's manage expectations here.

Two carveries for £15 is almost unheard of 'in this economy' so whilst this isn't exactly a carvery from Temu, you have to remember it's not going to be the Ivy grill.

The meats were fantastic. At first I was critical of a piece of beef, because it looked completely dry, but this chef knows his stuff and delivered with the beef, the turkey, the pork and the gammon.

Late in the service, it's hard to have a beef as tender as that and when you add the roasties into the mix here you have the foundations of a surprisingly good budget roast.

Then things start to fall away a bit. The carrots were okay, the gravy was passable, the stuffing was unusual in its texture, but very tasty.

Everything else, including the yorkie, just felt a bit like compulsory plate filler.

There was a genuine discussion whether it was cauliflower cheese or bread sauce, and there was no distinctive answer. We couldn't tell.

So for an absolutely slamming budget carvery, get all the meats, the roasties, carrots, maybe a spoon of peas and top it off with some gravy and you're golden.

There are plenty of places to watch the game, they play good music in the main room while you eat and there's a decent space for the kids to play. The car park is massive and the food is OK, but let's not forget this is a pub in transition. It's like a big Saint Bernard hound asleep in its basket, you'll have to be quite active to get it up and about and out for a walk, you know?

Otherwise, this is just another bar that's content to slumber and never achieve the dream of what it could...

Thought I would try a carvery lunch today, to say disappointing is a total understatement. Bought my ticket at the bar, 55 minutes later of constantly every time I went to get my meal, Just another 5 minutes, Just another 5 minutes and so on. When I spoke to the gentleman who was polite serving on the carvery, he acknowledged that all meats were extremely dry, overcooked, he told me the head chef is of the opinion that everyone likes their meat to also be used as boot leather it was that dry and tough! The roast potatoes were deep fried and hard at that. All vegetables were tepid in temperature and the gravy was wet and completely tasteless at best. Several people were not happy and expressed their dissatisfaction of the experience and quality provided, a gentleman sitting next to me was very vocal. Certainly did not correlate with the price being charged, a real shame and missed opportunity...

Came here early evening on a Saturday with a group of lads (8 of us) The staff were friendly and polite when taking our order of food and drinks. Unfortunately drinks took 15-odd minutes to come out and that was only because we had to go and get them. Food arrived around 15-20 minutes after the drink.

I had the pork belly which was lovely, it came with rustic wholegrain mustard mash, carrots and gravy. I also had a side of onion rings which were great too. Zero complaints about my food.

Many of the others had the carvery which they weren't overly happy about.

There only seemed to be 2 members of staff working the bar and waiting which I think was the issue.

Either way, I had some great food, enjoyed the good company within the pub, but unfortunately the service lacked quite...