Bill's Victoria London - TWWK rating 3

Last visited February 2023

High chairs: YES

Baby changing: YES

Kids menu: YES

Price: £25 pp (no alchool)

Bill's tries to be a kids friendly restaurant, and even goes as far as to set up a pancake parlour for kids or do 'kids eat for free' during half term, which is great. However, the Victoria one fell short when I visited alone with my two kids and some family (without my husband). What's great is that it's easy to get to. Victoria underground station is entirely step free from platform to street level, including all the interchanges, which made Victoria one of my favourite hang outs during my first maternity leave. The restaurant is a one minute walk from the Cardinal Place exit. As I always do with online bookings, I specified on the form that I was going to turn up with a pushcair. However, my brother and his girlfriend arrived first, without a pushchair, and were shown to a table on the first floor, to which of course they objected, so they were seated on the ground floor. The space is very limited. Bill's restaurants are very popular, so they use the space to the fullest, meaning there isn't much left for moving around or parking a pushchair. At some point we were even asked to fold ours to make space for another one, which wasn't great as I usually store the equivalent of a small supermarket worth of essentials underneath it, if I don't expect to have to fold it. If you have a pre-walker or a new-walker who love to explore and walk around, the space is too limited inside and the only option is to take them outside. Luckily the outside is covered and pedestrianised, but still not ideal when it is freezing cold or you are on your own with multiple kids. The other downside is that, while for adults everything on the breakfast menu (till 11.30am) is also on the lunch menu, the kids ones are different. We ordered at 11.15am and were told we would have to wait till 11.30am if we wanted anything on the lunch menu. Try explaining that to a terrible twoer or a threenager who's decided they want Macaroni & cheese. Anyways, thankfully, the portions are huge. I ordered 3 pancakes from the kids breakfast menu to keep them busy while we waited to order lunch, but they were so big that both my kids filled up on them and didn't need anything else, which also turned out much cheaper.

On the plus side, the food is really nice, they have healthy options and they provide colouring sets to keep the kids entertained.