please note - reviews on this site are purely the opinion of site visitors, so don't take them too seriously.
New Years day visit for a few pints before heading home.
Fairly busy but we managed to bag a table and was quietly enjoying my 2 pints of Thornbridge’s Jaipur. It was my round so I went to bar to order only to be told by the miserable looking female bar manager that this would be our last drinks! I questioned why and she didn’t reply so while she was pouring our 3 drinks I told her to stuff it and then walked out.
God knows what her problem was as we were not loud or offensive and certainly were not causing any trouble, maybe she got the 3 of us confused with another group.
Anyway it pi**ed me off and I won’t rush back.
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Better than your average Spoons. Very pleasant girls behind the bar, cosy without being cramped, civilised clientele, under 5 mins walk from Victoria Station and they have draft Erdinger on, both the dark and light varieties. Will be back soon.
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Small, very cramped & claustrophobic 'Spoons. be wary of tourists with their cases & theatre goers, desperate to nick your seat.
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Lovely brekkie in here today.
Few people in.
Good meeting place.
Off to pride now,epic.
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Popped into this pub last night and it seems to have clientel that have been barred from all the other pubs in Victoria, recognised a few undesirables from the past, walked in and walked straight out again
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Drinks in here yesterday before billy elliot.
Lovely staff and clean,better than station forecourt one.
Had a massive hot dog in here nice.
Visit is worth.
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Usual Wetherspoons. Not more to say really. Decent beer and staff.
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Good Wetherspoon's pub with a decent range of real ales in pretty good nick and good value for money.
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Had a nice breakfast and coffee in here yesterday,staff very pleasant and helpful,food came out quick
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As Wetherspoons go, one of the better ones with quite a good supply of real ales. The staff are well trained and pleasant. A good place to finish a Saturday evening because some of the nearby pubs close earlier.
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It's a fairly standard Wetherspoons. Gets pretty busy earlier on with travellers and commuters on their way home from work but by about 8.30pm, the crowd was starting to thin out. Staff were pleasant and helpful and there was a good selection of ales on including a couple from Nethergate and one from Saltaire. If you're killing time around Victoria and want a pint, there are worse places you can go.
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Dropped in after a trip to Belgium last year. Very bland indeed, even for a Spoons, had a half of whatever and swiftly departed. Apart from the Jugged Hare nearby, Victoria is sadly lacking when it comes to decent pubs.
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does seem to be a little underrated, always some interesting ales on. It's no architectural gem and you wouldn't spend all night there...but perfectly adequate for a quick pint or two.
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Pretty naff. Avoid.
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Another typical Wetherspoons with two entrances, the main one on Wilton Road, and the other at the rear on Vauxhall Bridge Road. As usual, there was a fairly decent range of ales on my visit yesterday afternoon - Greene King IPA, Richard Chennells Zulu Blonde, Marstons Fever Pitch & Pedigree, Ruddles Best and Shepherd Neame Bishops Finger. Beers from Itchen Valley and Phoenix were coming soon. Marcle Hill was the cider of choice. As usual, pictures of the local area abound, the cheap food is popular and the tables are sticky. I'll rate this slightly better than its current 4.4 rating, as it's extremely handy for Victoria station and I can't think of any better pubs in the immediate vicinity.
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Average 'Spoons, I do wish there was some decent pubs in Victoria near the station. Burgers were cold, although you're never really there for the food in a Spoons! Also, terrible barman... aggressive, rude, literally threw us out on the streets before drinking up time.
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Better than the "Spoons" at the staion and cheaper too! Called in yesterday to see what was on offer from the Beer Festival. I was surprised to see so many! I ordered some food which arrived after only 10 minutes and was well presented. Staff were friendly and customers were too. Worth going to rather than the one at the station!
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No atmosphere but generally good service.
Toilets are far better than the one on the station.
Better than many.
meict - 14 Feb 2010 12:30 |
The Kent Beer Boys use this pub quite often when we pass through Victoria for football games. It is a lot better than the Spoons inside the station, but then again I drank in bars in Sierra Leone that were better presented than the station Spoons! Always has a few football fans of various teams on a Saturday, but never any trouble.
There are better pubs in the area, but it is cheap and very close to the staion which gives you the 'lets have a quick one while we wait' oppertunity.
In my experience the food is hit-and-miss as are the staff who range from excellent and friendly to useless and obstructive.
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Fairly standard urban Wetherspoons and adequate as a place in Victoria to have precictable food and drink at something less than city-centre prices. So not worth a special journey, but why not if you're waiting for a bus or train?
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Has a funny smell usually I think it's the unwashed punters who discuss the world in there all day every day to be honest. If you must enter, its a spoons but not a good one at all.
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Cheaper than the Spoons above platforms inside Victoria
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If this is such a crap pub, why do they have such loyal and intelligent bar staff? I've no idea why the Lovely Lydia, fluent in more languages than you can even dream of, would want to work here. But she does!
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The Willow Walk, like many Wetherspoons pubs , is not particularly inviting, unless you are one of those peole who likes to sit about gabbing about football and othe inconsequentialities against a background of over-loud voices. It does, however, have one enormous advantage over other bars in the vicinity in that, like most other Wetherspoons establishments, there is no ******* pop music.
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This isn�t the worst spoons that I have been into even if it has less than no atmosphere due to the transient crowd from the station. I thought that the staff were above average and there were a number of guest ales available alongside the usual Pedigree, Abbot and Marstons. I had a nice pint of Twickenham ale whilst I thumbed through my newspaper.
I wouldn�t go back as I find Spoons depressing, but there�s not much wrong with having a quick pint in here.
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Perhaps owing to the very nature of the building, this establishment lacks any real character and is unlikely to live long in one's memory. Nevertheless, it should be commended for its beer range and quality (the customary JDW values regarding real ales are well in place here and if you enjoy your ales at competitive prices, then this certainly increases the appeal of an otherwise routine pub). Service was surprisingly efficient on my recent emergence - far superior to that seen in many of its peers, although lest we forget, everything is relative. A mixed clientele seem to populate this pub, which I suppose is reflective of its position close to Victoria and the cosmopolitan custom one sees passing through.
If nothing else I would recommend this as an alternative to the Wetherspoon's in the station itself, which I note has been given a generally poor set of reviews by BITE users.
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More often than not, they only have one ale on aside from the �1,49 (not 99p) IPA and the standard London Pride Fayre.
Best thing about it is its handiness for Victoria Station. Have never had any trouble here, but not the kind of place you'd go for a whole night out. Just a stop-off for a quick drink on the way to somewhere else or before catching a train home.
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I agree with most comments below have never understood why weatherspoons have to make their places dull as dish water. The prices are ok and service is yeah weatherspoons but why are they not offering the 99p deal?? I thought this was suppossed to be at every weatherspoons �1.49 for a btl is just not that good I'm afraid for the service and atmosphere they give I would recommend other local places first!
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This pub is going downhill rapidly.It is the nearest thing to a dosshouse bar.Come on Wetherspoons pull it out the mire before it is too late.
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Beer and food have always been fine but it really does depend on the type of punters that are using the place at the time - sometimes a good crowd and sometimes you don't want to stay.
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Certainly not as female friendly as it once was.
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On 2 separate visits to this part of London 1 year apart, my partner & I have made this our local for breakfast & evening meals. Being fans of Wetherspoons (check other reviews), no real complaints about this place. Very busy during peak times with stressed, morbid looking staff, its still cheaper & has a better range of drinks than most of the pubs in this area. We will be back at some stage in the near future.
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I have been to many horrible and disgusting places, but this places takes the first prize... truly terrible
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A second visit, and it was even better, excellent beer, quick service and very friendly staff. However, the Manager might need a Geography lesson - We had plastic glasses as they expected a large number of football fans on the basis that Bristol City fans used it on the way to Palace 2 weeks previous and Portsmouth fans on the way to Wembley the week before. However, Hull and Bristol City fans going to Wembley were never really likely to be at Victoria in great numbers!
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Pretty much a standard Wetherspoons pub, but in London, that's not necessarily a bad thing. With a 12.15 kick off at Palace, this was ideal, and we enjoyed the Farmhouse Breakfast and a couple of pints of quality real ales. The beer was so good that we returned after the game for a couple of celebratory drinks. All of the beers that we tried were in excellent condition, with the Otter Bright being exceptional. So, we had decent food, top notch beer at �2.29 a pint, and the service was good. For those of you who don't like football fans, on this occasion it was mostly middle-aged real ale drinkers, and all were impeccably behaved.
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Am I mad? I think I actually prefer the Wetherspoons inside Victoria station. Help - call the men in white coats...
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There are few surprises here: it's a 'spoons right by a major national rail terminus and so is patronised by builders, commuters and a few suits all looking for that magical Wetherspoons formula of very cheap beer.
Always busy and bustling, though I've never had to wait unduly long before being served. Sometimes it's a bit cramped for space though as the pub itself is rather narrow.
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the pub itself is the pits they only good thing is the bar keep black haired girl from york very polite and friendly
anonymous - 18 Sep 2007 15:46 |
Couldn't agree more with previous review. This place has become a pub to avoid. At weekends its more like a greasy spoon cafe than a pub until midday. Don't use at weekends when Chelsea or Chelsea are playing at home, as it gets rammed with supporters. a decent manager and trained staff could turn this pub around
anonymous - 7 Sep 2007 08:25 |
This pub is fast becoming the number one for football supporters at the weekend. It has become rowdy and unpleasent. Suggest management have a good look at how they want this pub to develope
anonymous - 13 Aug 2007 06:58 |
A standard JDW. Service is a bit slow sometimes, and the eastern European bar staff come across as very unfriendly and impolite.
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Some pubs you wonder why.This is one of them
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well worth a 2 min walk from the station , must be the best pub in the victoria area , friendly staff good cheap beer , no atmosphere well it is a spoons
ive never had a bad pint in here , use this pub around once a week maybe more if im in the area more , can get packed when the office monkeys kick out but its normally ok .
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As said on the 12th Jan I also could not put it better, the only thing to add is the discusting comparrisons they do in the toilets to prove they are the cheapest in the area. YES YOU MAY BE CHEAP BUT GET SOME ATMOSPHERE!
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The last poster said - "It is a standard pub, lacking in any atmosphere, cheap beer and full of us blokes."
I can't possibly sum it up any better than that. 4/10.
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As whetherspoons pubs go it is a standard pub, lacking in any atmosphere, cheap beer and full of us blokes.
I was in the other night and noticed that it has had a little tart up although they seem to have left all the bad bits in. The beer was fine cheap as always but the whole place is just boring for want of a better expression, there is no music no females and a large selection of retired men. If you feel like a quick pint after work then yeah visit this one but only stay for one it is just not the place that you want to spend your night in.
I did also go for lunch and yeah great prices but I think they only have a microwave in the kitchen, I would rather pay a little more and get them to learn how to cook and not just re-heat
anonymous - 12 Jan 2007 13:18 |
The Willow Walk has just reopened after yet another refurbishment that results in it looking almost exactly the same as before. They have, however, put in a ramp for disabled customers, and they have also thoughtfully created a new and deceptive step for the able-bodied ones to fall down! I can only think that they want to increase the number of disabled customers so that the ramp gets some use occasionally.
Anyway, once you have massaged your twisted ankle, the WW is still hands down the best pub for real ale anywhere near Victoria. As usual at this time of year, they are stocking a great selection of 'festive' ales. And I'm pleased to note that JDW have re-introduced the loaded nachos that they inexplicably removed from the menu a few months ago (albeit brought back in a slightly disguised form as a 'shared Mexican Platter' or somesuch). But it's good to see that they learn from their mistakes.
For some reason, the WW keeps producing absolute stars among the bar staff. The lovely and super-efficient Emily may have moved on (though only as far as the Victoria Island I believe), but her absence is more than made up for by the equally lovely and super-efficient Rachel, who also happens to be a dead ringer for Lucy Davis (Dawn from 'The Office', in case you didn't know). No bad thing in my humble opinion!
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One of the better options for drinking very close to Victoria Station, one of the better Wetherspoons, benefits from not being too big
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It's a good pub, better than average for a W'spoons. Fantastic selection of beers, especially of the strong Eiro variety. I have absolutely no recollection of how I got home that night, other than coming to my senses in Seven Sisters and bemoaning the fact that I'd gone the wrong way on the tube.
Still, the night buses are always good value!
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Not bad for a pub lunch midweek if you work in the area, though with Cardinal Walk nearby, you are now a bit spoilt for choice eating out at lunch times. I enjoyed my lasagne here though. Yet, I once came here on a Friday night with work colleagues. YAWN. I immediately abandoned the H-File search given the sheer number of blokes present and it can take ages to be served at the bar. Fortunately, I had a Charlton away trip to plan the next day, so made my excuses and left others to sample the lack of atmosphere and female talent. Unacceptable on a Friday night if you ask me, especially after what for most people is usually a tedious and soporific week at work. To be honest, I would prefer to go home than spend another Friday evening in this place. If you fancy a quick cheap drink after work in this area, I'd probably prefer to drink in the Spoons in the station, as at least you can see the time your train leaves (and still miss it!). For a Friday night this boozer is quite simply vapid and I would never come to (YAWN) Victoria on a Saturday night anyway. Poor.
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I used to frequent this pub regularly when I used to work in the area, but aside from the laughs I used to have here with work mates, it's just your bog standard, no thrills 'Spoons at the end of the day. If you've been to one, you've been to them all.
HTM69 - 31 May 2006 19:42 |
As far as Wetherspoons McPub's go this isn't bad, a friendly place and the service that I've had in here has never been all that bad.
As I've said in posts about previous 'spoons pubs - what exactly do you expect from them. They are there for cheap booze and not much else - if you've got a group of mates and you want to start the night off somewhere quieter and easy on the wallet then what more could you want?
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I really don't think the negative reviews of the Willow Walk are fair. True, it can seem like a typical JDW with the typical one-speed service regardless of how busy it is. But it depends who's on duty. If you are lucky enough to visit when the phenominally efficient Emily is running the bar, your experience will be quite different. She is like a whirlwind. She routinely pours four pints simultaneously. And while they're pouring she's clearing the bar of empties. It helps that she's also very easy on the eye!
My only real complaint is that, like almost every other pub in central London these days, they have acquired the habit of ringing the final bell three minutes early. Why do they do that? It doesn't get the bar staff home any earlier, but it does succeed in alienating a lot of customers.
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I don't think this is nearly as bad as some contributers make out.....and a couple of the barmaids are crackers! Also ther is a wide range of decent ale. Make your own atmosphere...
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Simpley Souless - but then it is a JDW pub !!
Avoid - unless you have no personality.
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Can get crowded in the late afternoon, when people are getting an after work drink before going home. It is quieter during lunchtimes. The pub is quite narrow, I think, and that causes it to be more crowded than it might otherwise be. Other than that - a fairly standard Wetherspoons pub.
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Both times I have gone in here I've come out ten minutes later having failed to get served. Not worth missing your train for.
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Great reviews lads. Not too disimilar to my experience. We got served a dodgy real ale (for the life of me I can't remember what it was), and were directed to the manager. Fairplay, he agreed with us, poured them down the sink and replaced them with something (it was one of those nights) better. What i fail to understand is why he didn't take the beer off completely. Other poor souls were served it. Why?
I used to be a big fan of Wetherspoons but as you can see by my other reviews of their pubs, I have become somewhat disillusioned.
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So, tomparry claims he would have stayed "for ever" (sic), had he not had a prior engagement. I find this rather strange, as I too visited said 'pub' recently and am still recovering from the experience. I attended on a very hot summer's day, and was therefore initially relieved to find the pub, assuming that it would provide shelter from the intense heat of the day. However, the temperature inside appeared to be the equal of that outside, and so the unpleasant feelings of stickiness and dehydration persisted. Not that this dehydration would have been furthered by their draught beer, which was so watered down I expected to see the EU beach hygeine unit roll up and declare it safe to swim in.
This feeling of gloom was furthered when me and my co-drinker discovered that the computerised quiz machine was inexplicably refusing to take British legal tender, stubbornly defecating any coinage that we inserted. Clearly, then we were forced to converse normally, rather than debating how many UK number one singles Bruce Springsteen has had (zero), which exacerbated the stress of the visit even more.
The switch to bottled beer improved matters slightly, although upon receiving the drink the bartender attempted to pour it into a wine glass, which must have been a sorry attempt to produce a 'European' style atmosphere. On exploring this notion further I began to think that this wasn't the case, indeed, it is difficult to imagine you are drinking high quality German lager, served by a buxom Fraulein on the balcony of a Bavarian lodge, when you are being enveloped with recycled air, surrounded by ageing, pot-bellied office workers with balding pony-tails, and being coated in a fine layer of grease from the kitchen's deep fat fryer extraction machinery. I can only assume, therefore, that the glass was provided as a means of ending the torture, by simply smashing it on the table, slashing one's own carotids and screaming "never come here again, I have died for your sins!"
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I went to this place last Friday with a couple of friends. The conversation was predictably turgid, and we were all relieved that the drinks were cheap, as it helped numb the sapping melancholy that hovered over the three of us.
One of my friends, showing a wanton dis-regard for his health that, at his age, is irresponsible, ordered a burger and chips from the bar menu. When said dish arrived, it looked positively Spartan - a rather limp burger with a few french fries dropped onto the plate next to it. Where was the salad? The garnish? The sauce? Well, actually you collect your own sauce, so that answers that question - the general point stands though ... it didn't look very nice or very generous for the �5 that it cost.
When this issue was raised with the garcon, he was rather apologetic, but explained that the portion sizes are preset - something that seems a little unlikely, unless, as my friend remarked very dryly, these portions are then just stuck in the microwave.
So come on Wetherspoons, sort your portions out!
The beer was nice and cheap though, which was good. If I hadn't had to go and catch "The Boss" at the Albert Hall, I would happily have stayed for ever.
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If you enjoy the 'airport departure lounge' atmosphere, this is the place for you. I work across the road and haven't been there for three years.
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Usually only write good things on this site where I have had an enjoyable evening - but for this place i'll make an exception! Last year an extremely rude and ignorant barmaid took my money for a couple of pints, but when challenged for the said pints of beer, it became apparant tha she had served them another chap at the bar. When pointed out that chap & beer had departed into the masses, was told that I should have paid more attention to where she was serving. When I demanded the pints from the landlord, the reaction I received was a shrug and told that I should pay more attention and cough up for a further two pints. There was no offer to provide a beer let alone an acknowlegement of error. Go for the cheap beers if you must, but dont expect an ounce of customer service. Actually do yourselves a favour and stroll down Vauxhall Bridge Road to the Jugged Hare.
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We enjoy the Thursday night curries at this pub. They are good value and the portions are good. The drinks are also brilliant value. There is no music but it gives you a good opportunity to have a good old chat. The staff are always friendly and polite.
Alexis - 26 Jan 2004 14:22 |
Not impressed. Went in the other day, fairly busy day, and the bald manager was standing behind the bar looking at till receits and not helping to serve. Put money in the golf game, swallowed my money, and they refused to give my money back. Terrible pub.
thomas - 11 Jan 2004 12:49 |
Easily criticised for having no character, but so few pubs in London actually deliver on that anyway. Great value, bring your own atmosphere!
anon - 30 Nov 2003 23:15 |
farking cheap drinks - no atmosphere
ken - 26 May 2003 20:28 |
Typical Weatherspoons Pub really, but I quite like it. Reasonably priced drinks for London.
anonymous - 7 Apr 2003 21:33 |
