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.
5 of 13 restaurants
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.
Floating patio restaurant
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A Mexican restaurant on a float in Nanaimo's boat basin, all patio and umbrellas, open in the warm months. The most enjoyable lunch on the Nanaimo waterfront, a short walk from the whale-watching offices.
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.
Food truck
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The orange taco truck in a surf-shop parking lot on the Pacific Rim Highway that grew into a Vancouver restaurant group. Fish tacos, burritos and a chocolate-diablo cookie, eaten on a picnic table after the beach.
Organic bakery
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A stone-milling organic bakery on the waterfront in Cowichan Bay village, baking with BC-grown heritage grains. The morning stop before a whale trip from the dock across the road.