Wondering About Wiz: A Review of Todd English P.U.B. in Birmingham, AL

Todd English P.U.B. in Birmingham, AL, is attached to a Westin Hotel, which is in turn attached to a Sheraton (which we stayed at). A whole cluster of city blocks are connected by veins of skywalks, no doubt to shelter travelers from the sweltering summer sun of the American South. Because we refused to expose ourselves to the heat after a productive day of sightseeing and museum meandering, we had few choices: Casey’s Sports Bar and Grill, the Atrium Café, or Todd English P.U.B. Casey’s looked hopelessly bland and the Atrium Café looked rich for our blood. So, we navigated the labyrinthine corridors that led from our hotel room on the 15th floor of the Birmingham Sheraton to the very trendy Todd English P.U.B adjacent to the Westin’s lobby.

My first impression of the P.U.B was tainted by the presence of what I imagined was a wedding rehearsal dinner—tables guarded by wine glasses, guests in business casual attire, the nervous atmosphere of a time before the knot gets tied. It elevates a location to a level of sophistication it otherwise doesn’t enjoy. When we returned the next day to dine, I saw behind the curtain.

Now you might notice that not only pub an acronym. If your next question is "Why?", take comfort in knowing that much of this review will be spent on meditating that very question with regards to the aesthetic and philosophy of the restaurant itself. First thing’s first, though: let’s talk about that name.

"Todd English P.U.B." is no doubt a play on the phrase "English pub." But it’s taken a step further. No longer is pub just a word, but now it’s an acronym that stands for Public Urban Bar. Now, any English major or anglophile worth their salt can tell you that pub is a shortening of the term public house. Bar here now just seems redundant since a bar tends to be a necessary factor in a pub setting. Urban, it seems, is unexplainable. I suppose it is located in an urban environment, but there isn’t anything about this place that is distinctly urban. Oh wait. The servers wore T-shirts. Maybe that was the urban element.

The interior decorating doesn’t shout urban, unless urban can be interpreted as an American imagining of an idyllic pub in the United Kingdom. It doesn’t have to be England. It could be Scotland. Hell, why not Ireland? We have a couple of fake dartboards painted on sheets of metal that appear to have dents on them. That’s like an English pub, right? They do darts. Or how about our placemats? We put a bunch of quotes because we’re intellectual, too. We printed them in old-looking typefaces because that’s what an English pub’s printed quotes would look like: fresh off the Gutenberg printing press.

I'm not a stickler on service. You can insult my lineage back to medieval Poland and if you give me good food, I'll still give you a tip. But the service that evening in Todd English P.U.B. was, to borrow very English, very trendy terms, shite and bollocks. After we were sat, we waited a good while before we were asked for our drink orders. In the interim, we subsisted on the complimentary cup of popcorn that the hotel compound seemed hellbent on serving to everyone and Sam left to get ibuprofen from the lobby of the Westin. She took said ibuprofen and returned in time to join me in a game of "Who's Our Server?" in which we craned our necks to figure out who the culprit was. Waiters and waitresses all buzzed by our table avoiding eye contact. It was like Clue except ideally we'd be fed in the end and not dead.

The menu was a collection of modernized pub favorites--burgers, tacos, et cetera--but given that special Todd English touch. What that Todd English touch is I can't quite tell you except pretentiously presented bland food boldly branded with TE before the title. Feeling some Mexican food? Try our TE Tacos. What makes the TE Tacos? They have "wiz." Cheese Whiz but not all share the wiz that makes the TE Tacos oh so TE. A few items are simply branded with Todd's name, like "Todd's Fish & Chips." It's got aioli, just like the TE Tacos, so maybe I'm getting somewhere.

I'm a simple man with simple tastes, so I forewent anything with Todd or TE attached to its name. I ordered the “Pub Burger,” which surprisingly wasn’t the “P.U.B. Burger” in a rare show of restraint for the establishment. An old standard, the fanciest things about it were its “brioche bun” and “fatty fries” (or potato wedges, as we plebes call them). The server asked me if I wanted cheese or bacon. I voted both, with a choice of cheddar. When our food arrived (timely, surprisingly enough), I was presented with my burger atop not a plate but a wooden paddle shaped like a cricket bat with a piece of parchment paper to cover the surface. Cricket bats, as you might be aware, are narrow, not the optimal space to eat anything on at all. Fatty fries came in a small metal pail like one might put peanuts in. The burger was underwhelming, even more so given its $12 price tag. Never before had I been so bored with a burger with bacon on it. I found myself getting distracted by the toppings, thinking that maybe they were to blame for the burger’s poor performance. In truth, it was that “8oz. all beef patty” itself. What happened? I whispered to the burger before I finished it. Expectedly, I received no response.