There’s a new restaurant open in Borovets for the 2018/19 winter season and onwards, the “Victoria”, also known as “The Bear”. Victoria is one of the most famous and recognizable restaurant chains in Bulgaria and has establishments in Sofia, Plovdiv, Bansko and now Borovets and has been in business since 1997. They specialize in pizzas made in a real pizza oven but have a wide selection of other foods for every taste. Price wise, we rate them in the middle/top of the specter, as their menu is far from the cheapest in the area, but there are some more expensive places to eat.
The Victoria is located in probably one of the best spots in Borovets, just in front of the hotel Rila and 5-10 meters below the “Rila” surface lift. If you’ve been to Borovets in the past, it’s taken the location of the traditional Bulgarian restaurant “Bulgare”. It’s at the edge of the slopes, but there is snow up to its entrance throughout most of the season. This means you can literally ski to its front door and leave your equipment directly on the ski rack in front. This is very fitting as it’s interior design is based off your typical alps après-ski, with plenty of wooden motives. During the ski season, we highly recommend booking a table beforehand, as it gets very full during the evening.
One of the best things about this restaurant has got to be the fact that they obviously hired a fantastic interior designer! There is so much attention to detail everywhere, that you probably won’t notice all of the touches here and there.
The main part of their menu is pizza, which is made in a typical pizza oven, not like in some other restaurants in the resort, where they cook their pizza in a normal electric oven. A small pizza is around 400-500 grams and costs between 8lv for a margarita and 15.89lv for a Classico (tomato sauce, mozzarella, prosciutto, basil, olive oil). The big sized pizzas are around 650-750 grams and cost between 11lv and 18lv. Victoria also offers family sized pizzas, which are 25-35lv for about 1.5kgs of pizza. This is more than enough to serve 2-3 people, depending on how hungry you are. My personal favorite is the Bonifacio, followed by the Pepperoni, which is mildly spicy.
Other than pizza, you have a selection of pork, chicken, veal, fish and lamb dishes with offerings such as “American style ribs”, “roasted tenderloins with cheddar cheese”, “chicken Milano (oven baked chicken fillet marinated by special recipe with mashed potatoes with steamed spinach with butter and garlic) and much more. Prices for most of the chicken and pork dishes are around 15-20lv, while the fish, veal and lamb are a bit more expensive – 25-30lv. They also offer a selection of high-end stakes with prices over 80lv a serving, but as far as we’ve heard they don’t always cook them perfectly, as you would expect for such an expensive dish. I haven’t tried them, so they could be amazing. If you like your meat well-done, then there really isn’t any point in ordering from the most expensive steaks. There is also a small selection of burgers, including the delicious double cheeseburger with black Angus for 16.50lv.
Vegetarians and especially vegans, I’ve got some bad news for you. You won’t find a great many things on the menu to your liking other than salad and drinks. Many of the meat-free dishes have dairy products and the few that are vegan-friendly are spoiled by the deer trophies mounted on the wall looking at you.
One of the main reasons we waited till now to write this review is to see what guest of the resort had to say on TripAdvisor where things are a little 50/50 in the comments and ratings. It seems the most persistent problem for many foreign visitors was bad service, cold food and a few had a problem with the bill at the end. It’s possible we didn’t experience this as we’re locals and never went at peak times and most likely a few of the bad reviews are from the local competition in Borovets, who probably aren’t very happy that there’s a new high-end restaurant. You can read other peoples reviews HERE.
Ski & Board Traventuria is a leading provider of lift passes, equipment rental, airport transfers and ski school for the Borovets area. To book your next ski vacation in Borovets with us, please check our website – www.skiborovets.bg
