Alan Cookman visits The Toby Carvery, Trentham

This was our credit crunch lunch.

Stung by a jibe about my seeming blissfully oblivious to the

economic situation, I resolved to queue up for my Sunday

dinner.

Not at a soup kitchen, but at a popular venue where Sunday

roast and as many of the trimmings as you can decently put away

costs precisely eight quid.

Toby Carveries are good value at the best of times, but more

so in times of belt-tightening, which may explain why I don't

think I've ever seen so much hungry humanity under one

roof.

You couldn't but wonder at the work that went into feeding

them all.

The layout of these restaurants can lead to confusion,

however, for the dining areas are divided into small

compartments, possibly to create an illusion of intimacy.

Unfortunately, these cosy units are very similar, one to

another.

The last time we ate here, I got lost on my way back from

the trough and found myself wandering in and out of nooks and

crannies with my lunch in my hand.

At one point I sat down and resumed a conversation with

Herself, only to realise that the person I was talking to was

not Herself and the table I was seated at was not ours.

At the time, my solution was to leave a trail of paper or

lettuce, but that was before satellite navigation came into its

own.

If you order a starter, it is brought to the table, along

with drinks (I felt as if I needed a drink before joining what

looked like a long and slow-moving queue for the meat and

veg).

I had the smoked haddock and spring onion fishcakes (£3.80),

with horseradish mayo. The fishcakes were soft and tasty and

the horseradish mayo was just right, although the perfunctory

salad seemed dry and tired.

Herself had two skewers of five king prawns each, which

seemed a snip at £3.90. She said the prawns were fine, but

agreed with me that the salad was neither use nor ornament.

When we summoned the fortitude to hit the carvery, the queue

turned out to be faster moving than I feared and I was soon

watching the man in the white hat slicing my roast beef on to

the plate.

It may make me sound like an out-and-out glutton, but these

people seem to be chosen for their ability to carve the meat in

slices about one tenth of the thickness you'd carve it

yourself.

Anyway, the beef was lean and tender, if thinly sliced, and

generally hard to fault, although I thought the Yorkshire

pudding would have been banished from my mother's table with

orders never to return. It was flat and rather heavy, and if it

had risen at all, it had changed its mind and sunk again.

My roast potatoes were also strangely hard and dry inside,

although Herself insisted that her own were perfect and that

I'd simply been unlucky.

Otherwise, the new potatoes were OK and the steamed

vegetables - leeks, swede, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli etc -

were reasonably fresh and flavoursome.

Herself had opted for the turkey, which she said was moist

and nicely textured. The third choice on the carvery was honey

and mustard-glazed gammon (which looked so good that I nearly

changed my order at the last minute, although I gather you can

mix and match if you like).

There are various alternatives to the carvery, though,

including wild mushroom lasagne, chicken tikka salad, seafood

club salad and cod fillet in Chinese sauce. Kids pay £4.29 for

the weekend carvery, by the way.

I'd forgotten about the bizarre and mysterious jumble of

amusing images which covers the walls of the dining units, but

I've now decided that the old photos, seaside postcards,

antique advertisements and so on are put there as talking

points, should the conversation flag.

To the right of me was a photograph of a young elephant

trying to force its way into an old red telephone box.

"Obviously wants to make a trunk call," I said.

Herself merely rolled her eyes and sighed in a marked

manner, but I was gratified to notice a smile on the face of a

lady at a nearby table.