Toby Carvery Shiremoor — Restaurant in North Tyneside

What a truly awful experience. On arrival, we were 'greeted' by Natalie who was apparently the manager. She was clearly in a bad mood from the look on her face and after asking how many the table was for she said quite bluntly 'have you booked?' - looking around the restaurant where it was about 3/4 empty this question wasn't welcoming nor made much sense.

We sat down in a booth and waited for about 10-15 minutes before someone asked us if we wanted to order (staff had walked past/ignored us several times prior to this), one even had time to spare texting on her mobile so their priorities seemed far from ok.

Moving onto the food, we had one child in the party who wanted sausages but the only choice was completely burnt/black sausages. We asked if there were anymore been cooked and the server (also clearly in a bad mood) said 'What?' - repeating the same question again he replied 'No' - When we said that our nephew won't eat burnt sausages he replied with 'If we put more on it will take about 10 minutes'.. so we went with the burnt sausages (which didn't get eaten).

Other issues included:

1. The Gravy (Water thin and lukewarm).
2. Yorkshire puddings had a greasy taste and tasted as they came from a dirty oven.
3. Cold food.
4. Dry meat.

During the time we got our food and ate what we could at no point did anyone ask us how it was, should they have we would have outlined all the issues although I'm not sure much could have been done as the whole carvery was rubbish.

As we were discussing complaining another party complained and we saw the manager Natalie dealing with it as she turned around and went to the kitchen she rolled her eyes as if the customers had inconvenienced her, we also overheard her beforehand saying she was going to punch someone (very professional). So it's without saying when we did complain we asked not to speak to Natalie.

It took about 15 minutes again after we finished for someone to come clear the tables, where we mentioned the issues and weren't happy. The waitress Sacha spoke to Natalie and came back with a 50% off offer which we accepted. When the bill came (after another 10 minutes of waiting for it) it had £10 off - we waited around another 10 minutes for someone to come and take the payment and eventually had to ask Natalie who was walking around the restaurant in a quite aggressive manner the whole time we were there who advised that £10 is the max discount.

This wasn't what we agreed and she went back to the till and came back with another bill where she took off 2 of the meals, this still came to less than 50% off which was agreed by about £7-8 however at this point we lost the will to stay any longer and just paid so we could leave.

You could argue that some of the wait times could be down to be a busy time, but the restaurant was less than 25% full (I've never seen a Toby so dead before).

Do yourself a favour here...

This place is awful, we used to enjoy here but it's really gone down hill. We have given it a few chances but I'm finally done. We have visited for the breakfast and it was inedible, food cooked an hour or more earlier and just sat under a heat lamp. Our most recent visit was on a Saturday evening. There were 7 of us so booked a table. It was 4:50pm and we tried to book the willow farm which didn't have a table until 8pm. But Toby shiremoor had one at 5pm. This should have been a sign. We booked for 5:15 and headed there arriving on time, to a quiet restaurant that was 1/3 to 1/2 full if that. We still had to stand for a few mins before being seated. As we were seated the waitress took an order of drinks half of which never arrived and we had to go look for someone to ask for them. We also had to go find a member of staff to order the kids meals, order the desert and ask for the bill. One member of staff did come to ask if everything was ok but was off and away before I could say no, there's no food. And just walked off. Which brings me to the main point. Even though most of the tables were empty and there were tones of staff on we queued at the carvery for 15 mins while the guy carving wandered about fetching plates and genuinely working at the pace of a man who hates his job and has given up. When we got to the front and got my meat we moved to the veg section. There was no stuffing, and no roast potatoes. I asked if either were going to be refilled he said 10 mins wait on both. The stuffing was 10 mins, roast potatoes were 25 mins and even though by that point i had long finished my meal the potatoes that were brought out were all scooped up by a member of staff completing just eat orders. There was a sea of mash that was so bland and watered down it tasted like wall paper paste, some Mac and cheese, a sliced potato and carrot concoction which was actually quite nice but due to the lack of roast potatoes I went back for a second helping and it had been switched of a fresh version with was bland and undercooked. The rest of the offering were a handful of veg like peas and carrots that had sat under a heat lamp for an hour again. We won't be back, meals out are so expensive these days and budgets stretched so far that I can't keep giving somewhere the benefit of the doubt we have had poor meal after poor meal here and I'd avoid it unless someone...

If I could rate it zero I would. Ok it's voucher day so it's going to be busy, so you'd think they'd staff according....NO, so booked table, 10 mins to be sat, little kids so have to go up in two halves for the carvery. Over ten minutes to get through the queue, the service was just so slow, no top ups of veg and sides and no gravy! So the queue was just not moving and everything getting cold. Rest of family come back and take over the child watching duties so I can finally go up to get my food. Ten minutes and choose turkey and the fattiest bit of beef in history. As I am handed the plate it's all rough, look on the bottom to find most of the last diner's meal still stick to the plate. So that's completely unhygienic, allergy awareness be dammed. Called the manager (eventually came after sitting two tables, getting someone else's drinks) showed them the plate and just asked for another clean plate. I'm starving I've already waited almost 40 minutes and I don't want to waste the food as the stuff that's out is just getting dryer by the moment. No she won't hear of it, I'll get you a plate with your meats and Yorkshire just re do your veg. I stepped to the back of the queue and waited, actually got back to the front of the queue and the carver wouldn't give me my plate, put it under the hotplate and said to me with for the manager. I went and sat down as I'd given up, family had all but finished their meals, manager refused to come see me as she was to busy sitting people in the queue to be sat. At this point daughter who has massive allergy issues is terrified beyond the cross contamination on the plates. So I actually joined that queue to speak to her, when I got to the front she asked me to sit down and she's see me in a minute. "No you'll see me now, I've waited enough, all I wanted was my dinner, I even said I was happy with what I had, just a clean plate" I just wanted to pay for the meals that had been eaten. Manager was just lost, completely got her staffing wrong and couldn't cope. She just told us to go, she wouldn't expect us to pay for anything after it all. So that's me off to drive through to get some food after that farce. Beth you seem nice enough, just incapable of running a restaurant. Toby's struggle often, but I've never seen anything as...