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Offshore Seafood
- Price Range:
-
$$
- Good for Kids:
- No
- Alcohol:
- Full Bar
- Has TV:
- No
3 reviews for Offshore Seafood
3 reviews in English
-
Review from Rose V.
10/21/2010
Should you find yourself in the western wilds of British Columbia craving local seafood, this should be your dinner spot. Ate here Canadian Thanksgiving Day. Our menu was:
Dungeness Crab Cake appetizer - excellent! so tender, much more so than east coast Blue Crab - one of my mother's favorite things to eat and it had us both swooning.
Wild Sockeye Salmon - exactly what we wanted to eat but unfortunately only one portion left by the time we arrived! A beautiful bright pink big fat fillet of salmon, adeptly prepared and served with bok choy and carrots.
Tiger Shrimp Green Curry - unusually served with linguine, but it worked. more of a Thai-feeling? dish than I might have expected. loaded with shrimp and spinach.
The young woman chef was a force, making desserts and chatting up the customers. I took the chill off the damp night with a perfect Hot Toddy, even though it was not on their menu. Unfortunately we were too stuffed for dessert, but I'm sorry I missed out on the Asian Pear Crisp. The guys next to us were eating a seafood hotpot with giant crab legs hanging out of it; had we stayed in town another night I would've been tempted to return.
In short, after your day reveling in jungles and oceans in Pacific Rim Park, head straight to Offshore Seafood for dinner! The place is tiny, 4-6 tables, but if you have to wait, you'll be glad you did. Yum! -
Review from The New Gastronomer V.
Port Moody, BC
8/27/2011
I'm not sure what's changed since the first two reviewers, but most of our meal was terrible. First we were met at the door and served by a sociopathic twenty-something male who couldn't get out a full sentence, couldn't make eye contact, and mumbled incomprehensibly.
We ordered chowder, some dungeness sushi, and crab cakes as appetizers, and the seafood hotpot as an entree.
Aside from the fact that everything - appetizers and entree - came at once, the meal started okay. The appetizers were fine. Chowder was quite good, crab sushi tasted fresh, crab cakes were only slightly overcooked.
The $25 seafood hotpot was hardly worth eating. Well, maybe if you like frozen scallops and machine peeled tiger prawns you buy in big bags from Costco. The tastelessness of each and the deathly pallor of the prawns were a dead giveaway from first bite, Each of the three other servers out front had no clue if anything was local or not and called someone out of the back to ask. In the end the someone in charge confirmed that indeed they were not local or fresh.
There was supposed to be salmon and halibut in there too, but I only found a tiny morsel of each after digging around to find at least some redeeming taste. The broth was moderate, but rather non-descript. The two legs of dungeness hanging over the edge of the bowl were the only good thing about this dish, but those ended up being pretty expensive crab legs.
I'd have sent the hotpot back if the prospect of trying to communicate with the server wasn't so daunting. -
Review from Jessie J.
5/24/2010
My family and I have been traveling to the west coast of Vancouver Island for twenty years. For the first 12 years, we would usually restrict ourselves to one dinner out, which we inevitably ate at Tofino's Crab Bar restaurant. We loved the Crab Bar for its delicious, simple seafood served at reasonable prices in a phenomenal atmosphere.
Tragically, the Crab Bar changed hands and identities (it's now shelter) 7 years ago, and we've been hunting for a new place for our one meal out ever since. We've pretty much exhausted the options in Tofino. There's a lot of good food, but it's all pretty expensive, and there's a lot of "hooha". Sometimes I don't want my food piled high in a teetering stack and drizzled with coulis. The one exception is SoBo, which we do like, but which doesn't do anything to help with a dungeness crab craving.
So, our last trip out, we decided to see if we could meet our culinary needs in Ucluelet. After some internet research and calling around, we decided to try out Offshore Seafood. Jackpot.
This is a simple restaurant. If anything, I would still call their short menu a little too ambitious. If they stick to doing a few things as well as they did the crab all four of us ended up ordering, they won't be able to help being successful.
The crab was delicious, as was the simple ceasar salad it came with - as it should. The ambiance is cheerful, the service delightful. We mentioned the two scathing Trip Advisor reviews we'd read before coming, and the staff remembered those customers vividly. Apparently they were the kind of people you expect to write bad reviews, if you get my meaning.
We, however, were charmed, and are thrilled our hunt for our regular Pacific dinner joint has finally ended. Here's hoping no one buys Offshore and fills its menu with hooha!
