Reviews

The Victoria Park in Bedminster, Bristol - Food Review

Posted on: 2015-03-24

The Victoria Park is an absolutely cracking community pub restaurant with accommodating, genial staff and first-rate food and drink. Long may its well-deserved success continue.

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With around 30 pubs closing every week in the UK, it's never been more important to savour and support our neighbourhood pubs. The Victoria Park in Bristol is a case in point, for this is one local neighbourhood pub that, since it was taken over, refurbished and reopened by Ed Brown-Jackson five years ago, has more than been a big hit with local winers and diners. Previously The Raymend, it has changed its identity and certainly changed with the times to offer what people want. It's also family friendly, and when we tipped up on just after midday on a Saturday afternoon, the pub was already packed with families as well as a few other propped up against the bar for a quick weekend livener.

It also hosts regular quiz nights, a monthly book club and rather fantastic buy-one-get-one-free pizza deal on Monday nights. And with a large beer garden at the back to draw in the punters during the summer months, it's very easy to see why it's become a popular destination for locals in the Totterdown and Bedminster areas.

The decor is light and appealing, with stripped wooden floors, grey tongue-and-groove panelling and high ceilings, and there are several comfy sofas, chapel chairs and scrubbed pine farmhouse tables. There's even a bookshelf with a selection of tomes to flick through while quaffing an ale and a piano which has the potential to be the subject of many a late night, inebriated, sing-along ivory-tinkling.

There is a good selection of real ales, ciders and wines, while the menu is chalked up and hung in the bar with a good selection for the adults and special kids menu.

There was a great selection of dishes on offer including steak and chips (so popular it had sold out), chargrilled steak burger and roasted beetroot and goats cheese tart tatin.

I went for the haddock in beer batter, chips, mushy peas and home-made tartare sauce (£10). The batter was awesomely crispy and cracked open to reveal sensuously white chunks of creamy, flaky haddock, while the chips were impeccably crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and the tartare sauce truly delicious.

My friend plumped for the homemade chicken and mushroom pie (£10), which was a titanic-sized puff pastry pie filled with massive chunks of chicken and sliced mushrooms and was nestled on a sizeable pillow of almost erotically creamy mash.

For desserts I went for the warm chocolate brownie with a scoop of a honeycomb ice cream (£5) - soft, gooey brownie whose richness was counterbalanced by the heavenly honeycomb-flecked ice cream), and my friend snapped up the marvellously spongy and sweet sticky toffee pudding and vanilla ice cream (£5).

This is proper, down-to-earth, real pub food in a proper, down-to-earth, real pub. They're not attempting to be something they're not, there aren't any frills, they're simply serving generous portions of superb, quality food with the finest ingredients at a price that won't break the bank. (Most of the dishes actually clock in at about £10.)

The Victoria Park is an absolutely cracking community pub restaurant with accommodating, genial staff and first-rate food and drink. Long may its well-deserved success continue.

Overall 5/5 : Food: 5, Price: 5, Atmosphere: 5

Reviewed by Jamie Caddick for 365Bristol - the leading events and entertainment website for Bristol

For more information please visit www.thevictoriapark.co.uk.

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