Toby Carvery Darlington — Restaurant in England

**Update from visit on Sunday 12 Oct 2025 All of the food was very nice today. Turkey was fine and all of the veg was good. Skin a bit tough on roasties, but i didn’t mind. What i did mind was the attitude on a male apparently called Matty, who was serving the meat. His customer service skills do need refining a little to stop the customer from feeling as if he’s making them out to be a liar. Basically i am normally the meat servers favourite customer, as i like the crispy/overcooked/burnt end bits of meat that are normally thrown away. Anyway, i asked if i could have such a piece and i was told i couldn’t, as he is only “allowed” to slice the meat a certain way. I said it was fine. I also said i’d never been told that before about the slicing (seeing as i’d just watched him serve at least 3 customers before me and spin the lamb and beef for different cuts and pile it on for at least a couple of those customers), to which he replied “well i’m in most days”…..not once did i say to Matty i was is in that particular Toby before, he just assumed. Whether it was me or he was just having a bad day or was maybe told to take a break, but he went on his break very quickly after serving another member of my family and told the male who replaced him not disturb him under any circumstances. We’ve all had rubbish days at work, but the paying customer shouldn’t be aware of it.

Firstly the pros of our visit…. We booked ahead, arrived a few minutes early, only had to wait about 10 mins for our table. Queue wasn’t too bad, meat and most of the veg was lovely, gravy nice thickness too. Lady who seemed to be in charge (slim redhead hair pinned in a bun i think) seemed to be coping very well with how busy it was and very organised, never stopped while we were there, but it did mean she was sadly way too busy to sing as she worked, which we are used to seeing. Young lady with long dark hair in a ponytail was attentive, checked in on us and was polite. Slim blonde lady with hair pinned back was also moving non-stop and seemed quite knowledgeable of the till at the workstation.

Cons……. Seated at not the best table, lots of passing people, so felt like we were leaning out of their way a lot and a lot of people having to touch the back of our chairs to squeeze past. It was busy though and our table was in the middle area, so just unfortunate I guess. Cauliflower was solid, very hard to cut, hence 1 star dropped. No atmosphere other than very busy. A con for us, but a pro for the business. This would not stop us returning though. Young lady with long red hair in a ponytail, who inappropriately (IMO) called everyone ‘love’, did seem to have an issue with paying customers queuing to refill their drinks. I saw her ask a gentleman to move twice, he smiled and jokingly retorted about it, to which she went on a bit of a rant (while trying to flit about) about him being in the way of her workstation, how busy it was, just trying to do her job etc etc, which he completely ignored as she continued chuntering and he just had his back to her the whole time. A lot of people would’ve reacted to her differently, me included. Yes it was busy, but if she can’t deal with the stress of that, she’s in the wrong industry. I’m guessing that if paying customers get in the way of her workstation while queuing to refill their drinks, then either the workstation or drinks machine needs relocating. This young lady cost the loss of 2 stars in our service rating, thankfully the other 3 ladies mentioned...

Having struggled as a poor musician for 35 years and finally got to the position where I can now afford to eat pretty much wherever I want I was somewhat surprised to find myself at a Toby carvery yesterday. I was further surprised by the delicious smell coming from the roast buffet which make me instantly regret the couple of 100 quid I had just wasted on a particularly average lunch in a restaurant whose name shall remain forever known only to myself. As I was staying in a nearby hotel I walked in for breakfast the following morning. I was greeted at the bar by a drop dead gorgeous hottie by the name of Izzy who has probably the prettiest eyelashes I have ever seen. When I asked her what the deal was with breakfast, she replied, "All you can eat" and I found myself earnestly wishing for more than a second that she hadn't been talking about the food. Another Northeastern beauty by the name of Amy treated me like the naughty little schoolboy I still am and I loved every second of it. Should she ever want to make serious money, she would in this reviewer's humble opinion make a most excellent dominatrix. I can imagine high court judges queuing up to pay her a fortune just to insult them. She is quite simply irresistably hilarious. The breakfast was nothing short of superb. I have eaten luxurious breakfast buffets In Vegas that could not hold a candle to the offering that they produced. The chef's name is Jason and he's very, very good. I know full well that this is not just my opinion because there was a certain goggle box star enjoying breakfast here at the same time and it was a real pleasure to meet her too. Places like these are very carefully set up and operated to deliver exactly the same product wherever you might be in the Uk. The only thing therefore that sets them apart from one another is the staff who run them. It is here that Mitchell and Butler have absolutely hit the jackpot because everyone who works in this place is just fabulous. If you have OCD like I have, you will know that there is always a hole to pick or a flaw to find. The only one I could find in this place is the permanently flushing male toilet, which is currently consuming more water than the full sum of participants at a wellness convention hosted by Gwyneth Paltrow, and that can't be a good thing for either the environment or their overheads.

Whatever M&B are paying these glorious people,it is not and will probably never be enough.

Thank you, you were all...

After several trips to this Toby Carvery, with every single time resulting with some parts of the carvery being either hard or undercooked, we decided to give this Toby Carvery one last try. Well, this was the worst trip of all. The roast potatoes are always huge resulting in them never being fully cooked properly, the mash was lumpy and wet and my partner got the potato bake which resulted in yellow oil all over his plate and food due to how greasy it was. When we arrived, the carvery was basically empty and when we went up for our food, there was no mash or roast potatoes out, and when we told the chef this (who had been stood there not serving anyone) he said he would tell the chef and then came back to say they had been put on. This caused us to have to wait for them to be done, and a queue to come from this. If it had been busy we would have understood however it was empty, no one had been up to the carvery whilst we were seated and waited for our drinks and yet the chef had not paid attention to the food that had been used up and this caused a delay in our service. My meal was more edible than my partners due to me not getting the potato bake, however my partner left the majority of his meal. When asked to speak with a manager, the manager we got was clearly not trained in customer service! He was dressed in a slouchy tshirt, he looked just like another customer, and he was incredibly rude and unhelpful. This manager was Lance. He did not care about our issues with the food, including the yellow grease all over the food that was in plain sight, and he responded angrily to us for complaining. He acted as though he was better than us and did not have the time to be speaking with customers, and so he harshly walked away to get one of the servers instead. Very umproffessional and he clearly needs some top up training on how to provide basic customer service let alone how to run this carvery. Not how we would expect to be treated when there is an issue with food. The servers were lovely however, particularly Izzy, and they are the only positive with this Toby Carvery every time we have visited. This will be the last time we try this carvery as it is clearly a lost cause, especially with managers such as Lance running it , and we will continue to travel to Toby Carvery’s further from our home to Middlesbrough as the food and service is never a problem there. Serious work needs to be done to this...