Toby Carvery near Watford

Easy to find on the roundabout near the Hilton and Mercure hotels, the Toby Carvery serves all you can eat breakfasts for £3.99 as well as roast dinners.

We had to wait 15 minutes for a table, but they gave us a buzzer for our pocket to tell us when a table was ready. We ordered pre-dinner drinks at the bar. and sat down, we suddenly found our table was already ready.

I had the carvery, including four roast meats, turkey, gammon, pork and beef, plus Yorkshire pudding. The roast potatoes and mash were both good, the cauliflower, peas and yellow corn all OK. Another counter supplied mustards etc.

We were so full that we had no room for desserts on this occasion. I had my eye on the dessert menu. Next time.

The carver is just under £10, £1.50 for upgrading to kingsize, meaning two Yorkshire puddings, two sausages and more meat. The unlimited soft drink was £2.60.

Toby Carvery Aldenham
3 Hartspring Lane, Watford
WD25 8AD
Tel:01923 225 826.

Review your visit at tobycarvery-survey.co.uk and receive a reward of a free item on another visit.

Vegetable and Fruit options at Brasserie Restaurant, Mercure Hotel, near Watford

I give full marks to the Brasserie Restaurant at the  Hotel Mercure near Watford for providing lots of vegetables and fruit. If you are not a health fanatic, you can opt for the fattening food and find lots of batter and and sweet desserts.

However, if you are trying to eat a healthy diet, the vegetables and fruit are there. For example, the starters include goat's cheese and beetroot. This can also be served as a main course. See the menu on the hotel website.

One of the dessert options is fruit and a marshmallow on mini wooden skewers. My group of eaters included those who had done lots of sport and had hearty appetites, and couch potato types who had been sitting and although they liked sugar knew they shouldn't eat it and should be on a sensible diet with lots of fresh fruit and vegetables.

Gone are the days in the 1960s when every restaurant in shopping centres and hotels offered a fruit salad with custard or cream. Now the fashion is for made up sugary desserts. Here at the Brasserie, with a bit of nifty mixing and matching, you can have marshmallows dipped in white and brown chocolate, or entirely fruit. Of stick to what they have given you, a combination in which the acidity and freshness of the fruit counterbalances the overload of sugar.

Does anybody want to join me in a campaign for bring back fruit salads? No? We are all too busy. It's the government's job. In that case, let's just have fruit salad at home and go back to restaurants like the Brasserie which offer a proper portion of cubed fruit with the dessert.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer, photographer, author and speaker.  

Filling Flavoursome Food at Brasserie Restaurant, Mercure Hotel near Watford

If you want filling food, a tasty three course meal, the Mercure Hotel's Brasserie restaurant is a good place to go. No teensy portions of cuisine mini-morsels here.

Take the road from Brent Cross or Edgware north towards Watford on the motorway and you come to the Mercure hotel on your right. (If you overshoot you'll see the drive through McDonalds, the Chinese restaurant on your left, the Hindu temple sign and the Hilton.) Big outside car park.

The Brasserie restaurant is easy to find, just inside the hotel door on your left. The affable food and beverage manager was all smiles and showed us to our table. He was knowledgeable on wines.

We had previously checked out the menu on line so we knew what we wanted to order. For starters we chose: one chicken liver parfait, one goats cheese in beetroot, one mixed hors d'oeuvres. All were well-presented and flavoursome. But the cheese in beetroot was my favourite.

My main course was ribs. Big and succulent. Small chips. The steak which somebody else ordered came with big chips, more potato and less oil, which I much prefer, so we swapped our portions of chips.

Finally, desserts. The sticky toffee pudding won acclaim from the person who ordered it.

Another person had chosen the marshmallows on sticks with fruit accompanied by pots of dark and white chocolate for dipping. I thought the marshmallows were chewy but I was outvoted by the other two (to whom I donated my share). But the fruit was great. 

My chocolate tart was great with a contrasting crunch biscuit base, and any excess of sugar was counterbalanced by the mango and passionfruit sorbet which was tasty refreshing, both physically and mentally

We checked on line and found the Mercure chain is related to several other major hotel groups, the top of the range Sofitel and Novotel, and the middle of the road Ibis.

Angela Lansbury, B A Honours, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.