There’s an appealing Modern British menu at the Victoria. Since we were last here, they’ve dropped their more pubby dishes and it’s the better for it.
A vegetable terrine was a light summerydish – cooked peppers, courgette, onion and aubergine, layered up, pressed together and served cold. There’s a handful of mixed salad and a dollop of a sriracha mayo. It works. Over the other side of the table, another salad, perhaps more geared to the coming autumn – beetroot, mozzarella and hazelnuts – it also works if a tad boring.
Sirloin steak was requested at medium but came definitely in the rare category, which could rpesent a dilemma. It could have gone back, but then we’d be watching each other eat their dinner, rather than us having dinner together. , so it was e aten “as was”. There’s traditional accompaniments in the form of very good chips (crisp on the outside, fluffy inside), mushrooms and battered onion rings. You will be hard pushed to find a Modern British menu in a place like this, that doesn’t have belly pork on the menu. There’s a good reason for this. It’s invariably flipping lovely particularly, as here, when there’s good crackling. Accompaniments were also spot on. Mashed potato, mixed with spring onions, creamed leeks and an apple and sage sauce.
We were too full to consider dessert. Service was OK but it seemed to involve a fair bit of standing around, chatting amongst themselves, rather than getting on with doing stiff. It’s the sort of thing that happens when there’s no management overseeing front of house
