Editorial picks, not sponsored
13 places chosen for being distinct rather than for being everything: dockside fish, farm-to-table rooms in the Cowichan Valley, Tofino kitchens and a few serious Victoria dining rooms. Filter by where you are staying and what the evening is for.
4 of 13 restaurants
Restaurant and bakery
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An organic, ingredient-led restaurant attached to the Fol Epi bakery in the old town, cooking with island farms and its own wood-fired bread. Quiet, serious and good for a long dinner.
Neighbourhood brasserie
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A small French bistro in a former Chinatown schoolhouse with a chalkboard menu of steak frites, mussels and whatever the island's farms and boats brought in that week. A Victoria institution for a proper dinner.
Casual seafood
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Sustainable seafood with a South Indian and French accent — fish curries, tartines and a good chowder — from a small kitchen in downtown Victoria. Casual, colourful and reliably interesting.
Dockside takeaway
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A shipping container on a wharf in the Inner Harbour serving sustainably sourced fish and chips, tacones and chowder to a queue that forms before it opens. Eat on the dock with the seaplanes landing beside you.