Review: The Victoria, Birmingham - relaunch

The Victoria in Birmingham is not your average pub. Found just across the road from Birmingham New Street this venue is a theatre pub dating back to the 19th century. True to it's heritage The Victoria still provides entertainment including a music and film pub quiz on Tuesdays.

We were invited along to check out the spruced up venue and taste everything the menu has to offer and it was quite the experience.

While centrally located The Victoria is down a less than attractive road, if you can ignore the graffiti and trash and focus on getting inside you won't be disappointed. The walls in one room are covered in sailor style tattoos while another features cartoons and i'm pretty sure I spotted the stay puff man covering one wall. The artwork does a great job creating an alternative type of vibe that is way less pretentious than the high street chain bars. This pub is somewhere to hang out if you want to avoid the high pitched squeals of Broad Street and enjoy a more chilled evening.

In fact if you want a guided tour check out this link!

We were greeted by cocktails from the Victoria Cocktail Menu, our first indulgence being a Negroni but by the end of the night we had sampled a fair few cocktails from the list.

Photo from The Victoria website

After the drinks were consumed it was on to the food. While we were expecting a standard bar menu what was delivered was far from that. For appetisers we had two types of mac and cheese - and we LOVE mac and cheese. I preferred the creamer crayfish mac and cheese while Laura enjoyed the chorizo as it had a 'good kick'.

We would have quite happily scoffed the mac and cheese and been happy but the arrival of the Korean chicken wings distracted us - they smelt SO good. Not only that they tasted SO good. I'm not normally a wings fan but the flavour of these would have me ordering them again.

Photo from The Victoria website

After the sides / starters it was on to pizza's. The stand out pizza for me was the Los Pollos Hermanos, covered in chicken and ranch dressing it was bursting with flavours. The base wasn't too thick so I managed a couple of slices. Laura preferred the Bunga Bunga with pepperoni and chillies - you may have spotted a theme here - Laura likes her food with a  kick :) The nice thing with the pizza offering was that they took standard pizza flavours and added their own take on it and their was plenty of choice.

The same flare was applied to the burgers - I went straight for the Fiesta Fiasco, any burger that has guacamole gets my vote. I was slightly disappointed that the nacho was soggy by the time I got to it but lesson learnt next time i'll take it out BEFORE the photo's. The burger buns weren't our favourite either, it's minor but I love a soft white bun and these buns fell apart as we ate leading to super messy hands and faces.

The hot dogs put us back on track though, I like the trend of hot dogs. I find the price a little steep everywhere and at £8/ £9 a time The Victoria dogs are no exception. That said they were delicious and the flavour of the rare breed beef really came through.

Our pics were a little dark as the room was dimly lit :)

We were STUFFED by the end of our visit, good food and good cocktails created a great evening and with the attention to detail in the decor Laura had plenty of photo opportunities to keep her entertained.

Unintentionally we also got to burn off a few of the calories we had consumed as we realised we over stayed our parking - I arrived just as the parking attendant was writing us a ticket. I'm not sure if it was the desperation or great tasting burp I accidentally let out as I sprinted over but thankfully he screwed up the ticket and we got in the car with a sigh of relief and food coma that would last all night.