All-you-can-eat set to explode
From bloggers to pubco booses, Whitbread's all-you-can-eat Taybarns is the concept everyone is talking about, with estimated food takings of around £40,000 a week. But will the concept fall foul of the anti-obesity brigade? Jo Bruce reports from Taybarns, Swansea.
There is more of me to love today. Sausages, potato salad, noodles, cucumber, rice, roast potatoes, cauliflower cheese, gammon, cheese & tomato pizza, chicken kebabs, cheesecake, profiteroles and gateaux were among the items to bless the Brucie belly during my trip to Taybarns, Whitbread's eat-as-much-as-you-can concept.
The second Taybarns, tagged by the company as the "ultimate eatery" at Derwent Crossing in Gateshead, opened this week, with four more due to open before the start of the school summer holidays. The Swansea site is estimated to be hitting 6,000 covers a week and it isn't hard to see why. It seems the good people of Swansea can't get enough of it.
Local contacts advised me to get to the site, on a retail park in Morriston, on the outskirts of the city, early as the crowds start arriving at 11.30am. They weren't joking. At 11.20am on a Wednesday, 16 Taybarns chefs were prepped up and lined up, ready to face the daily throng of diners ready to worship at the food-laden counters and push their quest for value-for-money to the ultimate test.
Swansea is not short of branded, value-for-money food concepts, with the site based opposite a KFC and a McDonald's just minutes away, over the road from a Spirit Two for One, but by 11.30am the masses start to flock through the doors of this American-style buffet restaurant.
You can't book, so to guarantee getting in and not queuing, those in the know get there early. By 12.30pm every table in the 296-cover restaurant is full and during my two-hour visit, the tables next to me are turned three times.
Taybarns certainly has mass appeal, with everyone from senior citizens, big family groups, couples, teenagers, builders, businessmen and ladies who lunch enjoying some £5.95 lunchtime Taybarns action.
Food court
Before being let loose on the 34-metre food counter, customers pay for their food at the bar and buy drinks.
A no-entry gate prevents people squeezing past without paying and a steel rail is in position to help create an orderly queue.
A receipt must be shown to staff at a welcome desk before customers are released into the eating auditorium.
Diners are instructed to find a table and to help themselves to food as many times as they want, and told they need to use clean plates each time — although many plates provided were far from clean before use.
Additional drinks can be ordered from waiting staff, for which you have to pay as you go. Customers certainly aren't going to rack up a major bill for drinks, which are priced as keenly as the food.
A glass of 175ml Torres white wine is £2.80. Wines are offered in sizes of 175ml, 250ml, bottle and carafe. Fruit Shoot is £1 and bottomless Coke is £1.70, with customers refilling their glass as many times as they want at Pepsi soda stations, located at three crockery and cutlery stations.
Also on offer are 35ml spirits with a free mixer, including Sun Pride orange juice or customers can pay extra for a premium mixer such as Ocean Spray cranberry juice.
Once customers find their table, they collect a plate (which, at 9½ inches, is smaller than standard dinner plates) and cutlery and hit the buffet, free to mix and match as much as they want.
Food quality
The food quality is fine for the price and is of an "at home" standard with products such as Birds custard being used.
The counter is heavily manned, with staff busily topping up supplies, and theatre created by a centrally-positioned pizza oven and chefs cooking up food in woks and carving meat. Sections include carvery, grill, rotisserie, salad, pizza, pasta, wok, soups and dessert.
I started with the carvery section, which during my evening visit offered a choice of gammon or turkey, and by day gammon. The section also features Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, cauliflower cheese, sweetcorn, carrots, cabbage and peas.
Round two
For round two, it's rotisserie time where the range includes chips, wedges, jacket potatoes, corn on the cob, baked beans, plain rotisserie chicken and lemon garlic thyme chicken.
By the time I have made it to the tables, the helpful waiting staff have come to clear away the never-ending mass of plates.
The thrills of the grill section are next up with burgers, baps, skewers of sausages, mini racks of ribs, salmon skewers and vegetable kebabs to choose from.
Next, it's time to hit the wok section as I start to begin to feel the need to be rolled to the counter. The offer includes sweet and sour chicken, and soy and vegetable chicken noodle.
The pasta section offers cheese pasta bake and pasta Bolognese, while the salad bar features beetroot, rice salad, potato salad, coleslaw, tomatoes, carrots and cucumber.
For those with space — and there seem to be many — the dessert offer includes apple crumble, rhubarb crumble, Victoria sponge and cheesecake. A Pizza Hut-style ice-cream machine with chocolate buttons and Smarties is also on offer.
Not since my student days — when I was a frequent visitor to the Pizza Hut "eat as much as you can" pizza and pasta buffet — have I seen eating as such a sport.
Dining at Taybarns feels like being at a medieval banquet with customers feasting on food, piling up their plates and not afraid to create waste.
The bins at Taybarns must be very big indeed.
Customers banter with each other about the quantities they are eating, eye food up for later as they walk past counters, and go back for more as a badge of honour. With an unlimited 34 metres of food to choose from, it is hard to resist multiple return visits.
Anti-obesity
The concept is clearly of concern to the anti-obesity lobby and the numerous blogs which have been written about it (see above) would certainly seem to back this up. No doubt Whitbread will continue to face criticism over this.
You can eat healthily at Taybarns, with items such as salad and fruit among the options, but very few people were salad munching during my visit.
When I ordered a Costa coffee I asked for a skinny latte, to which the waitress wryly replied: "We only do full-fat."
But at £5.95 for lunch and £7.95 from 5.30pm, there is no denying the amazing value for money Taybarns offers. If the lengthy queues five months after opening are anything to go by, Whitbread certainly seems to be on to an ultimate winner.
Bloggers
"We've been out for tea tonight to a place in Swansea called Taybarns — dunno if you've heard of 'em — you can eat as much as ya like for £7!!! My bloke had four main courses and three desserts — greedy git! I only had two mains and two desserts — have to watch me weight now I'm not so active! Wink."
"Yeah, I love Taybarns it rocks. Ate too much there though and felt sick after. It is worth it though."
"Can't wait to go to Taybarns tomorrow. Please look after me, and make sure I don't eat too much and then explode everywhere."
Taybarns prices
Monday to Friday
11.30am to 5.30pm — £5.95
Monday to Friday
5.30pm to late — £7.95
Saturday and Sunday
11.30am to late — £7.95
Children under 10 — £4.50
