The Butchers Block — Restaurant in Stafford

First time visitors for the Sunday Carvery

The environment inside this restaurant is fabulous, ie the décor, furniture and fittings.

The Service was good for our visit too. Only niggle was that the Manageress said we could go up more than once for extra veggies and her colleague said you can only load your plate once with veggies so a bit of confusion there.

The draught lager is great as they serve Cruzcampo.

The food was a bit of a disappointment really.

My meat portion was quite good but not madly generous. I opted for all three meats. The beef was borderline tough, I just about managed to eat it. The gammon was okay and the turkey was very nice.

The cauliflower cheese was too rich and tasted slightly strange, arguably too much cheese flavour. More importantly the cauliflower was mostly under-cooked and hard. The leeks and roast potatoes were good as was the Yorkie Pud and gravy.

My partner had a veggie tartlet as she is vegetarian plus the carvery vegetables. She did not like the tartlet and said the veggies in it were under-cooked and quite hard, eg the butternut squash.

We were asked several times if everything was okay. However, when you have niggles with the food, the waiting staff cannot do anything about it really and it's a waste of time raising issues and making a scene. So we kept our niggles to ourselves.

Not sure if we will return.

The rating is just about Good and gets a boost as the inside environment is so nice and the staff are friendly.

Lastly I did notice a lot of spare tables on our visit, yet you have to book weeks in advance. I get the impression the booking system is not allowing the right number of customers into the venue at any one time. This means the venue are losing money as they are not at anything like full capacity at any given time! Or maybe they don't want it too crowded, but I would say there are too many...

Been looking at trying this place for a good while now, every time I check it's been fully booked. By chance, checked on the Saturday to see if the was any availability for the Sunday carvery. Atmosphere - lovely inside, music could be heard but not overbearing at all, just pleasant background noise. Comfortable seats, warm and very clean! Lovely!

Food - had the carvery and have to say, it was beautiful! Similar in price to any other local chain places, but everything felt much fresher, the veg was beautifully cooked, nothing sloppy and nothing undercooked, all just perfect! I had turkey, ham, pigs in blankets, Yorkshire, mash, roast potatoes, carrot mash, spring greens and gravy. Every ounce of it was delicious! As a family, we're eat and runners! Once we've eaten, generally unless it's a special / different occasion, we don't stick around. But this place, we ate, enjoyed every mouthful (even my 15 year old that isn't a Sunday fan loved it and was wowed by it all) - we stayed for a drink after the food. The kids had dessert which is a rare treat, but the place was so lovely and comfortable thay we felt happy to stay.

I'd 100% recommend this place! If you love a carvery and have a usual place you usually go, I'd honestly give this place a go! I never fail to eat my carvery at the usual chain place, but today, I was beat with a slice of turkey, yorkshire pudding and a pig in blanket, and I believe it's down to the quality of the food and ingredients. The plates are also bigger which could also be the reason, but I certainly didn't stack it high like usual.

Cocktails - amazing according to the wife who had 2

Very nice food, we will be back! A Steak is definitely on the radar for the next visit 🙂

If youve read this far, just get booked up...

I tried to email this feedback privately to save their blushes as a new business, but hilariously the email address and social links on their website don't work... one of many problems.

Even though the radiators were on full, the restaurant area was pretty cold with draughty windows, and we were told that the gas fire in the restaurant area 'doesn't work'. One of our drinks orders was initially made wrongly and had to be sent back - which wasn't a big deal, but one of many issues we experienced. At least 4 mains on the menu were unavailable, including a couple of steaks. As a meat themed restaurant, that's really disappointing for Sunday lunchtime. The food took a long time to come after being ordered... we waited more than half an hour between ordering and any food being brought... we were the only customers in the restaurant at the time. The Sunday roast was inconsistently prepared, some of the vegetables were stone cold and others were hot. We raised this at the time. The Lamb Henry tasted fine but was so tough near the bone that I had to leave most of it. Slow cooked lamb should be tender and slide off the bone. Something has gone badly wrong there. Several deserts were unavailable and then when we tried to order the pecan tart we were told that the kitchen 'was not prepared to serve' what it had, with no further information given.

Overall... a bit of a shocker, and not what you expect when you don't get much change from £35-40 per head outside the...