Toby Carvery Eastbourne — Restaurant in Eastbourne

TL;DR Food ok, service was non existent.

Had an absolutely shocking experience here. The dining room was perhaps 80% full so it wasn't super busy. We sat down and our order was taken promptly. We stuck to the carvery but ordered pigs in blankets for the table.

Problem 1 started at the carvery. The person behind the counter kept just walking off without a word so it took 10 minutes to serve the 3 people in front of us 3 slices of meat each. When we got there we were told there was no gammon for another 45 minutes. No good to us but these things happen.

Next the condiment station was an absolute mess but we endured and got drinks refills however the drinks machine was so out of syrup that we got nothing but fizzy water from it. Another small annoyance was the soggy, empty salt shaker on the table. Just another indication of the staffs lack of attention.

The meal itself was nice enough. Meat was well cooked as were most of the sides. If I was being picky the roast potatoes were rather soggy.

Here's where the problems got worse. After finishing our meal we waited for the plates to clear... And waited... For 30 minutes during which we saw our waiter only twice in the dining room and neither time did he check on any of the tables. He spent the rest of the time leaning on the bar looking bored.

Through all this, our pigs in blankets still had not arrived, an hour after ordering them. We had enough by now so got up, walked to the waiter and asked for the bill. He brought it over and we noticed we had still been charged for the non-existent pigs on blankets. When we questioned it he simply said "Oh yeah I didn't think I saw those come out". No apology, nothing.

Any one of these could be put down to bad luck but so many problems in such a short time points to a fundamental problem with customer service at this location. We were going to order dessert but not wanting to wait another hour or more for that we went elsewhere to finish our meal so as not to give them any more money for such a shocking experience.

Judging from other reviews and meaningless apologies from Toby, this is not an isolated incident so I would recommend staying away until they make significant changes to...

I will never ever visit this restaurant again!! We received a £60 parking charge and didn't even get to eat in the restaurant!! Having looked online prior to arriving we saw there were plenty of slots still available so decided to carry on to the restaurant. We parked at 11:30am, had to get the pushchair set up and get our two young babies out the car. Once we entered the restaurant we had to queue and infront of us two servers started to argue about another issue with another table that was booked in an incredibly unprofessional manner. When it finally came to our turn to be served the blonde woman at the counter just said 'Sorry we've got no space..we haven't even got the food out yet and we're really busy'. We had to take our son out of there so upset as he didn't understand why he wasn't being allowed any food and had to pull him away outside sobbing. Once we had put the pushchair back in the car and got both babies back in we had been parked in the car park for 15 minutes in total. At no point did the women on the front desk mention about the parking and whenever we have visited other Toby carverys we have never had any kind of issue. Once we had driven away from the restaurant I then checked again online to see if the lady was right that there was no spaces available as I was still in shock that that many places had been booked up so quickly yet there were still tables available to be booked online. The woman on the front desk just took it upon herself to decide that she wouldn't give herself any extra work and turned us away to make her own life easier. A couple of weeks later to receive a £60 parking fine was absolutely appalling seeing as we never even got to have a meal. I shall never ever step foot in this establishment again! The day out was meant to be a treat as my partner has disabilities and I am a carer with two babies so this was a very rare occasion to try and have a family meal out together. Unfortunately completely ruined and left us all let down and...

We went to the Toby Carvery as a family for Christmas Dinner on Christmas Day 2022. We had been previous years and had absolutely no issues whatsoever with service and quality of the food, however, this time was a totally different story. Once seated, we were eventually offered drinks by the most useless waiter. Starters followed at snail pace and were quite disappointing when they arrived. The “pate” was revolting, resembling puréed dog food, which even my dog wouldn’t have eaten. We were then left for 40 minutes waiting for the waiter to come and collect our plates. In the end, we cleared our own plates and went up to get our Christmas Dinner. Once sat, I had to chase round a waitress just to try and get some new cutlery so I could eat my Christmas Dinner. To be honest, the carvery dinner wasn’t too bad at all, there was plenty of variety and the food was piping hot. Once we finished our dinner however, we waited an eternity for our waiter to clear the plates, even though he was constantly walking by us and could see that we had dirty plates that needed to be collected. We didn’t actually think that we would ever get to the dessert stage as an hour and fifteen minutes later we were still waiting to be served. When the desserts finally arrived, they were absolutely disastrous. My Christmas pudding, if you could call it that, sat drowning in my plate of shockingly revolting custard, as it was the size of a postage stamp. I’m not usually one to complain to this extent, but after all of the money spent and disastrous service, the useless waiter then said that I owed him an extra £40 as they had apparently brought out adult meals for my child and I had only paid for the child’s meals, which is what I wanted as I had already paid for the meals to the fullest extent. Absolute ripoff, and felt seriously dissatisfied as it ruined our Christmas...