Ad disclosure: We were provided vouchers to cover the cost of our meal for the purpose of this post.
Everybody in our house loves a Toby Carvery meal, and so when we were contacted about their new Family Platters that they have on offer at a handful of their restaurants around the country we were very happy to go along to the Quinton Toby to try it out.
How the family platter works is you pay for however many people there are in your family, so in our case that was two adult & two children carvery meals. When you go up to the food serving area you just tell them how many it is for and they give you the portions of meat to suit. Then, as normal, you fill up the rest of your platter with the huge variety of veg they serve.
Your plates and individual servings of gravy (in mugs – if they do roll this out, they should think about small jugs instead!) are brought to your table for you, and you then serve up the food to everyone at the table yourselves. This makes it all so much simpler, as the kids aren’t having to get up and down from the table to choose their food. The waitress was also really helpful getting a bowl of apple sauce for us to share.
I found the new Family Platter concept brilliant! With young children going along to the carvery can be a bit of a pain as the adults have take it in turns go up and get the food, and you end up juggling two plates each which does not always end well. Then the queue builds up and half the family are halfway through their dinner by the time the other half have sat down with theirs. Sending one person up to get it all means you can all eat at the same time, and it’s just so much easier when you’ve got little ones.
As for the food, it was lovely. The Yorkshire puddings were fluffy & just right, and the roast potatoes were fantastic. All the meat was cooked to perfection and none of the veg had been allowed to go soggy. There was a really nice veg mash too, and even some cheesy pasta which went down well with the kids in particular.
All of us really enjoyed our meals, and we followed them up with delicious desserts – the girls both had an ice cream, while James and I opted for slices of giant cake with cream for their new cake bar. They were seriously delicious! I couldn’t quite finish my mammoth slice so they boxed it up for me to finish off at home.
I am definitely a fan of the new Family Platter at Toby Carvery, and I hope that they roll out the concept to all of their restaurants – it made life so much easier for us to eat together. Little things like the girls spending ages deciding exactly what veg they want was far easier to deal with at the table than in the queue – I think it definitely cuts down on hassle for everyone involved.
The family platter is currently available at just three Toys; Festival Park in Stoke-on-Trent, East Hunsbury in Northampton, and Quinton in Birmingham. If you live close to any of these, why not go try it out?
What a great idea! It would be marvellous when we take my elderly mother too, as she is disabled and can’t manage to walk along the buffet yet would really love to be able to pick and choose exactly what she wants to eat.