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.
8 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.
Waterfront resort dining room
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The dining room at a small resort on Discovery Passage north of Campbell River, with a menu built on local seafood and a view of the channel the whale boats work. A quiet, comfortable dinner after a long day on the water.
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.
Farm-to-table dining room
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A Courtenay restaurant in a heritage house that names the Comox Valley farms, fishers and foragers behind each dish on the menu. The valley's food scene in one room.
Fine dining with rooms
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A chef-owned restaurant in Ucluelet with a small tasting-menu dining room and a handful of guest rooms above it, cooking the coast's seafood and foraged ingredients with real ambition. The reason to eat in Ucluelet rather than drive to Tofino.
Winery restaurant
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The restaurant at Unsworth Vineyards in Mill Bay, in a restored farmhouse among the vines, serving Cowichan Valley produce with the estate's wines. The natural lunch on a wine-tour day.
Small restaurant with harbour views
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A chef-owned restaurant above Sooke Harbour cooking a short, changing menu from the farms, boats and foragers of the Sooke coast. The dinner that turns a West Coast Road day trip into an evening.
Upstairs dining room and bar
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Tofino's best-known dinner: a two-storey room above the harbour with a menu built around what the coast provides — cedar, seaweed, wild fish, foraged greens — and a bar that takes cocktails as seriously as the kitchen takes fish.