Toby Carvery – Braehead

You would think that a carvery would be the last place you would expect to find 2 vegetarians/​picky pescatarians, especially when one of them now has a gluten free diet… but on the recommendation of a fellow Unilocaler (cheers Nicola H) we trotted over to Braehead into the unknown world of carvery, because, profiteroles! Gluten free profiteroles, three words to strike joy in the heart of a newly diagnose coeliac!
We had never been to Toby Carvery before, as why would we, we’re veggie (or eat wild fish, not to be expected at a carvery)? We were pleasantly surprised that the main menu included not only vegetarian options, but vegan options and lots of gluten free goodies. our waitress brought us over the allergen menu which we perused whilst having a gluten free beer. It took ages for our food to arrive, but the manager came over and apologised for our wait and said he had just sent back the two dishes because he wasn’t happy with the presentation.
I ordered from the seasonal menu, choosing a vegetarian allotment pie; this is vegan and is butternut squash, parsnips, spinach, chestnuts in chive pastry, with a side salad. I took the salad from my plate as it was mostly iceberg lettuce (not my thing, and it took up tonnes of space on the plate which means less room for the hot carvery selection of vegetables). The gluten free vegetarian option was Lentil Cottage Pie which is «Green lentils, carrots and peas slowly cooked in a rich sauce topped with sweet parsnip mash’. Off to the carvery queue we went, having consulted the allergen menu beforehand we knew what was gluten free.
The Yorkshire puds are veggie, so I had one of these. Virtually all the veggies and potatoes are gluten free, except the cauliflower cheese, so roasties made their way onto both plates, with many veg and a little vegetarian gravy.
The vegetables were beautiful, steamed to perfection and not at all overcooked. The roast potatoes were lovely and I wish I had picked up more than one Yorkshire pud as they were so good, but of course this would have been very greedy, ahem. The main dishes were good, although I preferred the cottage pie as it had a bit more spice and a bit less salt than the allotment pie, but both were good and we happily munched our way through everything on our plates.
We were asked if we would like to see the dessert menu, and already having eaten probably my whole day’s calorie intake in one dinner I did think it was a bit greedy… but we were here for the gluten free porfiteroles and then Terry’s chocolate orange sundaes were there… bad Toby Carvery, bad. we ordered both and sank into desert stupor. Mmmmmmmm.

Good food, nice, laid-​back, atmosphere, clean and well decorated (aside from the disabled/​baby change loos, which were iffy). BUT, somehow the staff has managed to spoil our enjoyment of this place, twice. Today, it was because they took about 20 minutes to notice us gesturing that we wanted to order puddings for the kids, then another 20 minutes, between asking a member of staff for the bill and being forgotten about, then asking again and it taking AGES for the guy to bring it. Last time, the member of staff worked at a snail’s pace and was rather rude.