At the Vic, the outdoor patio is definitely the star of this show. The food and the bar/kitchen service do need some work though.
Went on a Tuesday night and the patio was pretty full around 7.00 but we were seated straight away. Our waitress was friendly and attentive. She told us a bit about the change of name/menu and pointed out a few highlights on the menu. She was lovely.
We ordered a glass of wine (I'm always disappointed when restaurants don't have even a single Ontario - or Canadian for that matter - wine on their list) and a pint of Mill Street Organic. But they were out of most of the domestic draft beers. Seems poor form for a pub to be out of a lot of draft beers on the menu, no? After about 10 minutes, our lovely server returned to apologize for the wait. Apparently the bar staff were a bit behind. We ended up getting our drinks about 5 or 10 minutes later. Little did we know that this would set a trend for the evening. Kitchen and bar service were both pretty slow which makes me wonder if the Vic shouldn't be putting more staff on at peak times.
We started off by sharing a Chorizo sausage pogo. It was really pretty delicious! Perhaps not the best choice for a first date sharing appetizer (or maybe the perfect one, considering the neighbourhood - hey-o!) but the sausage itself was perfectly spiced and the cornbread coating was crispy and slightly sweet in that yummy cornbread sort of way. The pogo came with a dish of triple crunch mustard which was a perfect condiment.
I was really looking forward to trying the duck tacos and the Regency salad (baby spinach, cherry tomatoes, candied pecans, goat cheese and pulled pork - the waitress said the pulled pork was really good and very popular) but, unfortunately, both were disappointing in their own way. The duck itself was cooked well enough but the flavour of it was completely lost in the hoisin sauce, of which there was far far far too much. As for the salad, it was brought to us with no pulled pork in it. Wha-what? But, not a problem, we just let our waitress know, she apologized and brought us a side of the pork to add to the salad. The pork wasn't bad but I wouldn't say it was REALLY good. The portion we received was quite dry and not very flavourful.
I would probably go back to the Vic again but not specifically to have a meal - mostly if I wanted a great patio to have a few (non-domestic) drinks on...and if I wasn't in a hurry to get those drinks!