Toby Carvery Bridgend — Restaurant in Wales

After seeing this establishment on the Facebook group "Dog Friendly Places South Wales' I was excited to drive from Cardiff and give it a try. We arrived approximately 7:45pm on Tuesday 12th March 2024.

I would give zero for customer service if I could. The establishment was not busy, it was quiet. I waited at the area with the notice 'to be seated' for almost 10 minutes while staff stood and chatted. I double checked it was dog friendly and I was told it was in the bar area. Fair enough that member of staff waited while I got my sister and dog from the car and said we could sit anywhere in the bar area then walked away.

We hadn't been there before. We were not advised where the menu's were, whether it was table service or bar ordering. Any other Toby we have been to is table service so we sat there for 20 minutes while staff chatted within feet of us (loudly) and ignored us. I finally went to the bar to ask. The girl bluntly said "have you sat yourself in the bar area". I said "pardon?", she said "have you put yourself in the bar area or been put there?". I replied "we've been put there". She then walked off moaning to another member of staff about us being seated there without replying to my question of how we order drinks and food. This was extremely rude!

I walked around the pub to find another member of staff to ask who then explained that we order at the bar. While up at the bar there were trays of dirty empty glasses and surfaces were sticky and not wiped down. As I mentioned above the establishment was empty and your staff were just chatting - they are there to work not socialise. It looked unhygenic.

Food was ok, the meat was cut very thinly and beef a bit stringy but it was acceptable.

I suggest they improve customer service to a professional standard because to us they all looked lazy and as if they were on a night out socialising. The trays of glasses were still not done...

We didn't give five stars due to dirty plates 🤢 and two rude and dismissive chefs. 👨‍🍳👨‍🍳👎👎

Otherwise, the service from Stacey was super friendly and impeccable 🌟 and the food was delicious. 👌

When going up to start our vegetarian carvery, we were both given plates with dried food on the bottom! 🤮🤮🤮 When asking the chef for clean plates, we received no apology, a shrug and a grunt. We were then provided with two new vegetarian plates which were also dirty underneath. By this point, the chef had gone into the kitchen so we asked another chef for clean plates again (third time lucky? 🤢). Still grubby on the bottom but we were holding up the queue so took the best out of a bad bunch. Still no apology from the chefs.

The one chef was tall with longer curly-ish dark hair and the other one was short with short dark hair. It was 2pm on Easter Sunday 2025.

There was also a young waitress "working" towards the fire exit who kept on sneaking off to the toilets for long bathroom breaks. 🤫🏃‍♀️ We bumped into her in the toilets where she was playing with the sinks for an abnormally long amount of time.....🤔 Her uniform was incredibly grubby and had food all over it. (understandable due to her job but this looked like she'd fallen into the carvery!) 🤸‍♀️🍲 She was evidently trying to get out of cleaning because she kept hiding in the bathroom.

Stacey on the other hand was fantastic. Super friendly and smiley, polite, efficient, on the ball, well-presented and smart and free of gravy stains. 😁🌟

Food was lush. Parsnips were a great addition. 👌👌👌👌👌👌👌👌 Still questioning the purpose of the mac n cheese which serves as a texture without any flavour whatsoever..... 🤔

Next time, hopefully the happy chef with short blonde/ginger hair serves us and the pot wash ups his plate game.

PS. don't forget the delicious parsnips.

Happy Easter, Toby! (and Stacey!) Hope to...

My Granddaughter, Great granddaughter and myself were a 'walk-in' at 15.20. We were seated and served with our drinks quite quickly. Both my granddaughter and great granddaughter had vegetables only, whilst I decided on the lamb, it being my favourite meat. Some of the vegetables were looking very 'tired' in the dishes, some of the dishes needed to be replenished, they appeared very dried and sorry looking. All THREE of the gravy bowls were empty as was the mint sauce.

I was very disappointed with the roast lamb. It was full of gristle and extremely difficult to chew. So my dogs had a lovely treat when I returned home!!!!. I did speak to the server who when given us the bill we hadn't been charged for my Granddaughter's orange juice, which we thought was an omission. However I spoke to the manager on our way out who said she had deducted the orange juice from the bill because of my complaint re the lamb. I was offered to have one of the other meats. But that was too late in the meal for that.

I might add we frequently visit Toby Carvery, Whitchurch, Cardiff, so are aware of the standard of food we should expect.

I might add going to the toilet I noticed a table had been cleaned and re-set for the next customers. However on the floor were cutlery and a large amount of food, which must have been noticed on re-setting the table. In fact whoever re-laid the table would have had to be careful not...