Toby Carvery Badgers Mount — Restaurant in Sevenoaks

This review is a bit late due to me being away. My husband, son , granddaughter and myself had a Sunday carvery here - it was around February time. The food was OK a bit on the cold side but the real issue came about when we left some meat on all of our plates. I asked the woman that had served us if we could have a doggy bag to bring the meat home for our dog - she refused saying we couldn't take the meat (we were about to pay for!) as it wasn't allowed - when I pointed out that it was being paid for she stated that the food was "unlimited" and began removing our plates from the table - I'm assuming the meat was then thrown in the bin!!! So this was preferable to us taking OUR leftovers for our dog?? We all found this woman's manner to be quite rude and certainly not someone fit to be dealing with the public - unfortunately we didnt get her name! We then made the mistake of ordering dessert - mine was some sort of crumble with custard which to my utter disgust after a couple of spoonfuls I found a very long black hair caught up in the crumble mixture - I felt sick! I called the rude waitress over and showed her and told her how disgusted I was and that I wouldn't be paying for it! I find it hard to believe that it's not compulsory for staff working with or near food to wear hair nets or some kind of hair covering! Needless to say we will not be returning to your restaurant again and certainly won't be recommending it to anyone. Deal with your rude staff and your unhygienic food issues!!

In reply to your response I would like to add that most restaurants are "eat in" restaurants as you stated! . I found your comment about us having the option to have had a "take away" quite sarcastic to say the least! We are talking here about left over food by ourselves to be given a doggy bag to take home for our dog and not a take away meal!! Most Restaurants that I have frequented offer this to their customers without question including much more up market restaurant's than the toby carvery but it would seem that your policy is to bin left over food that your customers pay for!! I also found your comment about me finding a very long black hair in the dessert very blaise by stating that the cost had been deducted - it should never have happened in the first place - as a manager these are the things that you should make sure are in place first and foremost - making sure your staff were properly attired for working in a food environment but it seems more important to you that your customer's leftovers go in the bin!! ...

Such an awful experience from start to finish! Thank goodness the food is generically good quality and tasty, because from the moment we entered the run down building, we couldn’t have been made to feel less welcome.

Greeted with “NO DOGS” practically barked at us (having reviewed the website and found that dogs are welcome in outdoor areas, we were merely making our presence known for the booking that we had made) and enquired about the protocol for ordering.

Had we not been ravenously hungry, we would have left at this point. We proceeded to the “patio” area where chainsmoking customers awaited tables and the patio was littered with a ridiculous amount of cigarette butts, uncleared tables and general filth.

Ordering at the bar, the staff were visibly overwhelmed. The poor woman who took my order was close to tears and could only offer me a single fork and two knives, because they had run out of clean ones! She explained that she had not had a break all day (we arrived at 6pm) and was expected to close up alone!!! (The only reason I am offering two stars for service is because of this lovely woman!)

The atmosphere was very tense, many tables had not been cleared and the poor waiting staff were running around like headless chickens, doing their very best in difficult circumstances.

The queue for the carvery was massive and took 40 minutes to get to the front, where Mr. Happy who had greeted us so warmly was now serving!!! No chef’s whites, and barking “normal or king size?!” No eye contact, just the last of the soggy Yorkshire’s slammed onto a plate. The chef’s diligently shaved the meat and others topped up the veg regularly.

We wolfed down the food and left as quickly as possible, filled just one of the two glasses we had paid for, through fear of returning into the chaos, and shall not be returning!

Customer service training wouldn’t go amiss and whoever is managing this business clearly needs a rethink on the staffing model!

We eat out almost every day and this is genuinely the WORST...

We were met by a happy smiling manager. We were shown to our table. We did ask if we could sit by one of the open doors or windows as it was extremely hot in the restaurant especially with no air conditioning. Restaurant was pretty empty. We were told we could not sit at one of these tables as your policy is too sit customers in places where the waiting staff had the less customers. Apparently our waiter only had two tables to manage. I beg to differ as it took a long time for him to come and see if we needed anything or if our carvery was ok. So we sat in an area pretty hot and uncomfortably ate our dinner. When asked by your chef what meat/s we would like, my wife and I both chose Beef and Lamb. To our surprise we were served with a very small amount of both meats. We were not after a massive portion but if we had asked for a slice of all meats, then we would have received a larger portion. The Beef and Lamb were very nice albeit very small. All the vegetables were Luke warm and the mint sauce needed restocking. I did ask one of the staff if it was possible to refill the mint sauce but after approximately five minutes I could not be bothered to wait any longer as I wanted to eat my, by now nearly cold dinner. I chose a refillable drink and some options were out of stock. My wife had a lager shandy which she had to ask for another as it was virtually flat. A new replacement was much better but took ten minutes before it arrived. We both chose a Sunday for dessert and that was probably ten minutes before it arrived. The ice cream had already started melting and running down the outside of the glass. We do realise that some days not everything goes according to plan but as there were few customers you would think the service and meal would have been...