The Victoria — Restaurant in Bromsgrove

I have got back from the Victoria, Barnt Green at 17.45 on 29/05/2024. We left at approximately 17.15. I wish that I could say that it was a happy experience. Unfortunately it was the opposite. I went to this pub at 14.25, as my wife was having her hair cut in the village and was going to join me and we planned to eat there as well. I went in and I was using a walking stick as I have severe pain in one of my feet. I approached the bar. There were two people there. A young lady with longish hair who also had foot pain due to an infection in her left foot and a tall man with black hair. I asked for a drink and the young lady started pouring it. The tall black haired man aggressively asked cash or card, evidently not expecting me to be able to afford the drink. I paid cash, I hobbled with my stick to a table near the gents toilet as due to my slow walking speed, I did not want any accidents. The young lady brought my drink to my table. An hour later, my wife joined me. We had a few more drinks, and then some food. My wife had the chicken, leek and cheddar pie. Due to her losing her taste due to Covid in the last 3 weeks, she could not comment on the taste of food. She did however tell me that it was hot. I ordered two starters come come with her main. That means that they are cooked as her main is cooked and not allowed to go cold while the “cook” (certainly not chef) cooks the main. My starters were cold. The crab on sourdough probably should have been cold. However I find it hard to believe that pan fried wild caught scallops should be completely cold. At no time were we asked if our food was OK, so we could not give our opinion on the food. I felt like I was been given the evil eye by the black haired bar manager. Her totally kept himself out of sight. The young lady had gone off shift earlier due to her needing to see her doctor about her foot pain. We spent over £80 on the meal and drinks. As I left I said goodbye to him. He totally ignored me. Obviously I am not local (think league of Gentleman). I don’t live in Barnt Green, but I do live in Belbroughton which is another high prestige village on the outskirts of Birmingham. I felt like I was not welcome as I was “not worthy of his attention, unlike the locals” I have been successful in life. I have never dressed or lived upto my income, as I can't be bothered to and find it a complete waste of time, effort and money. I find this make people disrespect me so that I can have a true judge of their abilities and character. Due to several local pubs asking me to stints as Santa last Xmas, I have allowed my white beard and curly white hair to continue to grown untamed since September 2023. I am booked for Santa stints in the run up to Xmas 2024. I am not a random homeless person as otherwise how could I have arrived in a Nissan Navara. Did he think I stole it? I don’t drive posh cars or wear posh clothes as I have never felt the need be to live upto my income. I could probably buy that pub out from under him in cash, but with toxic staff like him, why would I bother. Besides he would be the first of my sackings. Both my stepdaughters work as managers in the hospitality industry, so I know how it should be done. So he demonstrated dis-ablism, total lack of respect, total lack of customer service and a bunch of other things. In my opinion, he should be totally demoted, made to start from the bottom again, retrained many times over and monitored repeatedly to make sure that he learns the lessons from his training and dismissed if he...

I have been going to the Victoria for several years without many issues. Barnt Green is a good meeting point for myself and my uncle and we try and meet every few weeks for lunch. My Uncle is disabled, he suffers with his mobility and his speech due to his service in the military. However he tries to be as independent as possible. We visited The Victoria on Monday 27th March 23 for lunch. We always try and sit in the corner of the bar area as it is a lot less crowded. Despite being in the bar the staff have always been more than happy to take our order from the table. On this occasion I approached 2 female members of staff chatting and asked if we could order, I was told to order at the bar. I asked if we could be accommodated at the table due to my uncles disability. He prefers to order his own food due to his maintaining some independence. The female sat at the laptop looked put out and told the other staff member to take our order. She came over and we gave our order, my uncle stated that she made him feel very uncomfortable with the way she was looking at him and believed this was due to his speech. We both ordered soup to start, this was barely warm but because we had already received negative response we said nothing. Our mains then arrived, my uncle had ordered a side of vegetables. After tasting them he said they tasted off. I had a look and the florets on the broccoli were black. The whole dish was swimming in oil and it all looked as though the vegetables had been left over from at least the weekend. Again wanting to be independent he struggled to his feet and took the dish to a male member of staff to complain. He looked quite upset on his return and stated "he wasn't interested and there was no apology" When our table was cleared I spoke with the waitress about the veg and asked why it was not freshly steamed or even boiled. She told us "we fry it here" . My uncle then informed me that he had not enjoyed his burger and that it tasted like it had been microwaved and the salad was limp. He had again said nothing due to the reaction he had already received. The bill was over £60, this is fine if the food is fresh and tasty but it was extremely disappointing and expensive for 2 soups and 2 burgers. Eating out in this current climate is a luxury and surely restaurants are struggling and should wish for their food to be of good quality and customers are leaving content. After 3 days I spoke with my uncle who informed me he had been extremely ill with food poisoning since returning home that day. He was still not over it. As a survivor of stomach cancer he is extremely careful with his food and pays a lot of money for high quality prepared food to eat at home every week. He stated it could not have been anything else that made him ill. The whole experience of what should have been a lovely lunch with my uncle turned into a bit of a nightmare. Had I thought complaining direct would have done any good that's what I would have done however it was clear that the staff were completely uninterested. My uncle is still unwell and this is very concerning. A real disappointment. If I was able to give zero stars I would not...

I came here with a friend who had dined here before and had a great experience. Unfortunately, our visit was incredibly lacking and I will not be visiting again.

We were seated and had our orders taken fairly quickly: my friend ordered the lamb and I ordered the steak sandwich. The waitress asked me what temperature I wanted the steak to be cooked to and I requested medium rare. We also ordered the camembert to share.

The camembert arrived and was quite nice. Unfortunately, when we were finished with it, the waitress came back and told my friend that she would need to choose a different main as the lamb was still frozen (not something I would expect from an establishment with such high prices) and could not be cooked. She requested the salmon instead, but, as they had waited until we were done with our starter to tell us this, we had to wait a little while for our main meals.

When our mains came, I bit into my sandwich to find that the meat was cooked well done, as opposed to the medium-rare that I had requested. I checked every price of meat and they were grey all the way through. I waited for someone to come and ask how the meal was, but no one came and I had to flag the waitress down to explain the issue. She didn't seem too bothered, didn't apologise for my order being wrong and only offered me a replacement after I stressed that this was not what I had requested. The new meal arrived almost instantly; however, it was exactly the same as the previous one. Completely well done.

This time, not only did no one come to check how the meal was, but no member of staff came to our portion of the restaurant for me to flag down. My friend ate her meal and I was left waiting. Unfortunately, she also did not like her meal, saying that the salmon was stringy as opposed to flaky and she felt like it may have also been frozen originally. After about 15 minutes I managed to speak to a member of staff: I asked for my meal to be taken off the bill as I had not eaten any of it. The waitress appeared disgruntled by this, saying she would check with her manager. She came back saying that they would take it off the bill, but that the kitchen said they were unable to cook the meat differently due to the cut and went as far as to say: 'This is our medium-rare'. Personally I feel that if you cannot cook the dish to the customer's liking, you shouldn't offer this when they order! Furthermore, there is no way that meat which is very clearly well-done can be passed off as medium.

When the bill came, we saw that my friend had been charged for the frozen lamb that she hadn't been served! This was altered after we raised the issue; however, it only added to our disappointment with our meal. Such a shame, as we'd really been looking forward to our lunch. We ended up eating somewhere...