Fireside Sushi at Akemi

Fort Street Korean tapas and cocktails: low-lit, late-running, and serving a 'Squid Game' gochujang dish with the world's most appropriate name.

Victoria's long-running Ethiopian-Eritrean room, where dinner is one shared platter by hand and the closing act is a from-scratch coffee ceremony.

A 50-seat Fernwood wine bar in a charmingly creaky heritage building, built for daily-changing small plates and old-world wine.

Victoria's tiny Indian-spiced seafood room on Fort Street, where vindaloo mussels and French technique share a table at 4.6.

Victoria's neon-lit Korean pocha pub, where you pile the table with tteokbokki and pour each other rounds of soju all night.

Family-run Thai on Fort Street's antique row, where Mama and Papa Sookjai make the green curry Victorians won't stop raving about.

Fort Street's Italian-leaning West Coast institution: house salumi, 300 bottles of wine and a room that makes three hours vanish.

A candlelit brick courtyard down a Victoria back alley, doing wood-oven Italian for 35 years and not sorry about it.

An 1889 heritage house in James Bay where the cooking is vegetable forward, the light is good and nothing is in a hurry.

Chinatown tortilleria where heirloom corn gets nixtamalized overnight and pressed into tacos that embarrass every other taco in Victoria.

Sidney's teal boothed diner on Beacon Avenue, turning out stuffed Belgian waffles and five different hashes three blocks from the sea.

Victoria's Chinatown tasting menu that critics keep whispering 'Michelin' about, with just enough seats to feel like a genuine secret.

Tasting flights of award-winning organic cider on a ten-acre Saanich Peninsula orchard above the water, reservations required on weekends.

Cook Street Village's 4.6-rated cult chicken joint: double-fried, shatteringly crispy, and almost impossible to leave without a Megan croffle.