Restaurant Review: Cedar Tree Farm

Newsflash... I might have found a new favourite restaurant. Cedar Tree Farm is a relatively new pub/restaurant which is located in the Cardiff Bay Retail Park area. Neil and I went there on Sunday evening with a few of Neil's friends, and I'm still raving about it. I know I talk about food a lot, but this place really is worth talking about.

This photo was taken from my car window...

There was only one parking space left in the entire car park when we turned up at 5:30pm on Sunday, so you might need to park elsewhere if you're visiting on a Sunday. Luckily Neil's friend had booked us a table (again, booking is essential on a Sunday) so we went to join the rest of the party and salivated over the menu for a while. As well as offering a very impressive carvery, Cedar Tree Farm also provides pub favourites such as chilli con carne, curry, fish and chips, pies, sandwiches, and so on. 

If you choose to go for the carvery like I did, you have a choice of three plates - small, large or mega. I went for the large option as I wanted to leave some room for dessert... I'm always thinking about my next course/meal. You go up to the counter area to order your food then move on to the carvery section to choose your meat/s and help yourself to a copious selection of vegetables. 

You can choose gammon, turkey or beef for your meat option. If you really like meat, you can choose all three! I just went for turkey as I'm not a big meat fan and wanted to pile my plate high with vegetables instead. All the meat was falling off the bone in lovely thin strips... it all looked amazing. 

Although the meat looked impressive, I was mostly impressed by the veg and all the trimmings. Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, boiled potatoes, carrots, red cabbage, green cabbage, broccoli, swede, stuffing, parsnips, gravy... my eyes must have been like saucers! I LOVE VEGETABLES. I wanted to take more photographs, but the counter was very busy and I don't think people would have appreciated my camera standing between them and this amazing food. 

As you can see, I managed to fit quite a lot on my 'large' plate, including a very healthy portion of parsnips as they looked really delicious. I can confirm that everything on my plate tasted beautiful and I ate every last crumb. I was genuinely gutted that you can't go up for seconds! My highlights were the parsnips, swede, red cabbage, roast potatoes... I'm going to stop there before I name everything on my plate. I'm not even a big fan of turkey usually, but I was even impressed with that. Definitely the most tender turkey I've ever eaten. Everything tasted fresh and of a very high quality, and I wasn't disappointed with a single aspect of the meal. 

In spite of my huge meal, I still wanted to try a dessert as the rather magnificent dessert counter had caught my eye on the way in to the restaurant. After having a closer look, I can confirm that I've never seen anything like it outside of America. The cheesecakes on display were as big as my head! I have quite a big head so that makes them even more impressive. 

I obviously had to post lots of photos of the desserts on offer...

Are you hungry yet? It was an extremely difficult choice due to the vast array of options available, but I decided to go for the Strawberry Shortcake Sundae. Although I was very tempted by a number of the cheesecakes, I was in an ice cream mood. I thought it would probably be quite large due to the sheer size of the cheesecakes, and I definitely wasn't wrong! 

Although the double whipped cream on the top was lovely, it was quite heavy after a while so I was relieved when I hit the ice cream layer underneath. There were huge strawberry slices in the sundae as well as strawberry ice cream, clotted cream ice cream and oodles of crushed shortcake. The ice cream was very creamy and, unsurprisingly, there was lots of it. I was full to bursting by the time I got to the end, but I absolutely had to finish every drop. There was no way I was wasting even a tiny bit of this spectacular dessert!

The atmosphere in the restaurant was very relaxed and homely, and I thought the prices were pretty reasonable. My 'large' carvery plate was £7.95 (it's cheaper during the week) and my dessert was £4.20. The desserts at the Harvester are the same price and they're definitely not as big as the desserts at this restaurant. So if you live in the Cardiff area and fancy a nice Sunday lunch/dinner during the next few weeks, you can pop down to Cedar Tree Farm for a huge and very reasonable meal!

I can't wait to visit Cedar Tree Farm again... the big question is, should I go for a 'mega' plate next time and sacrifice dessert, or should I try a slice of cheesecake? All comments welcomed!