Toby Carvery Chelmsford — Restaurant in Chelmsford

I am not normally someone to moan or complain let alone leave a bad review but unfortunately my experience was so bad I have to. (Please note I am grateful to the kind waitress that served us as she couldn’t have been more helpful) I am normally a Toby carvery lover so last night me and my partner thought we would come here as the ‘Camembert fondue’ starter on the festive menu sounded delicious: baked Camembert, honey roasted parsnips, pigs in blankets, 2 Yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes with a cranberry& spiced orange chutney. So we got there, staff were lovely. Restaurant was almost empty which I thought was odd as when I booked I had to wait for a 7.40 time slot as apparently it was fully booked? Wasn’t a problem anyway we were just hungry and looking forwards to our starter. Ordered drinks, wanted refillable but the machine was broken but we could order what we liked from the bar, ok fine. Order our starter and it came after about 5-10 mins. I don’t really know where to start with how bad this food was, the cheese was definitely not Camembert it was just some goo in a bowl, like a cheese sauce for mac n cheese. The honey roasted parsnips weren’t there. the bread we got was horribly dry and untoasted roast potatoes could’ve broken the china plate they were served on as they were so hard (and cold) there were 2 pigs in blankets that you’d need a microscope to see and they were so unbelievably overcooked that they were hard and crunchy 😳 the Yorkshire puddings were what was the worst. Had one mouthful and both me and my partner had to spit it out as we basically just got a mouthful of cooking oil which made us both feel very sick.

After this we didn’t want anymore food as what tiny bits we did eat were horrendous, as noticed by our waitress who realised we had barely touched the food. I asked if we could pay for drinks and leave and explained all of the above. Thank you to her as she was very kind and understanding and we paid for our drinks (we both had 1 Pepsi max and paid £7.90) which we never made the most of as what is the point in refilling my drink when I am leaving.

Unfortunately this left us both feeling really unwell and I will not be returning to this particular Toby carvery. I have been to other carvery’s and they have always been 10x better than the Chelmsford site so I think they are doing something wrong at this...

Awful experience! 7 of us booked in for dinner at 5pm. We were shown to our table, ordered drinks and went up to get our dinner. The lady serving the meat was lovely but that’s the only good thing I can say about the whole meal. At this point the restaurant was not busy. The vegetables were awful! The carrots were brown and dried up, so were the green beans. There was no stuffing. I decided along with 4 other customers to wait for stuffing as we were told it was just being warmed up. In the 15 minutes we was waiting there was numerous arguments we could hear from the shouting going on in the kitchen. Finally it came out but was burnt. I sat down with my dinner and started to eat when I could see something in my dinner. It looked like a baby slug. There was no sign of the waitress at no point did she come to check if our meals were ok or if we wanted anymore drinks. After almost 30 minutes I finally see the waitress and called her over. She straight away looked at my plate and whisked it off to the kitchen. 15 minutes later she came back and said the kitchen had said this was a price of sage from the stuffing but would take my dinner off the bill and walked away. Almost 20 minutes later we had to go and find her again to order puddings. At this point with no dinner I was starving and opted for a cookie sundae. The children wanted the build your own sundae but told there was no strawberries or meringue so there would only be banana an and honeycomb, I had to suggest that they added cookie prices. By now the restraint had started to fill up. Our puddings were ok but at no point could we order more drinks because there was no waitress to be seen and I was fed up with wandering round trying to find a waitress. By this point we had all had enough so went to find a member of staff so that I could pay and get out of there. It took over 2 hours for what should have been a quick dinner after a day out with the children and friends. A number of customers were complaining about the vegetables, sauces had gone watery where they had been left sitting there and the service. Would...

Where do I start… From the outside driving past it didn’t look too bad… The car park is very unkempt and scruffy… the inside didn’t look too bad on arrival but it did stay that way. Where we was seated there was lots of food allover the floors and under lots of the tables… the vanetian blinds on every window made it look like an abandoned building… alll broken and scruffy bits missing. It just looked horrendous… the toilets were appalling they stink and are way past just being run down. With a huge mouldy patch of carpet.. then I get to the food… the worst Toby carvery food I’ve ever had… The meat to be fair was fine (I had gammon and lamb) but everything else was very poor. The potatoes were almost inedible some of them the skin was so thick that I couldn’t get into it… the mashed potatoes were dry and crumbly. Much like the stuffing which looked and also tasted like a 3 year old had been let loose with a packet of stuffing to mix up and hadn’t done a very good job it was again dry and crumbly… all the veg looked and tasted like it was made yesterday and sat under lamps since then… carrots cabbage and peas… the whole counter looked a mess and untidy.. there was one poor young girl doing all 4 carvery meats by herself with no plates, she had to run out to the kitchen 4 times to get plates and Yorkshires and potatoes. Other than this young lady literally every other member of staff we came across was just completely unbothered by anything.. look appearances, loudly having private conversations, standing around lazily. I have worked in this type of industry since I was very young and I find it’s easier to get it to than it is to get it wrong… I was completely and utterly appalled by the...