The UK’s First All-Vegan Carvery Is A Hit

The Barn is a vegan carvery serving home-cooked meals and delicious ales that are brewed on-site.

Author: Jasmine Lowe

A carvery is usually a pub or a restaurant where cooked meat is freshly sliced to order for customers. The local carvery is a quintessential piece in the history of the UK’s recent carnivorous past. It’s difficult to imagine a meat-free version of the buffet-style meal with cuts of meat and roasties drizzled in rivers of gravy. However, one carvery carries no meat or any dairy products at all.

Sarah Goodchild and Ben Stead-Davis, both 34, are the minds behind Britain’s first vegan carvery. The Barn is a country pub that serves home-cooked meals and delicious ales that are brewed on-site. The family-friendly (and dog-friendly) country pub has rid itself of meat for some friendly plant-based fair in the village of Willey, Warwickshire.

Ben and Sarah took over the pub in September last year after they began working at the establishment in 2017. They made the decision to match their restaurant to their own lifestyle by first changing up the Sunday roast dinner menu to a plant-based one and then making the change to the entire restaurant.

The 13-item roast dinner at their restaurant that was served throughout January for Veganuary has now become a permanent fixture. The meal costs £14.95 and features a choice of ‘tofurkey’ (tofu turkey), seitan, nut roast, and plant-based Lincolnshire sausages, with all the usual trimmings. The dinner’s sides include vegan Yorkshire puddings, maple-glazed parsnips, roast potatoes, carrots, mash, creamy leeks, stuffing, roast cabbage, and red wine gravy.

“We are proud to say we are the only restaurant in the UK and even maybe the world doing what we are,” said co-owner and also head chef. “There are places which will offer vegan alternatives on their Sunday lunch menu – but we don’t believe anywhere else is serving a vegan carvery like ours – including vegan restaurants.”

The carvery is served in buffet form every Sunday from 10 am to 4 pm, and everything is freshly made in-house by Ben. The couple, who are vegan themselves, has received a lot of support for their decision to have the restaurant go fully vegan. The Barn is booked for many Sunday lunches to come.